n8n: Gmail & Google Calendar Briefs with OpenAI Email

Turn upcoming Google Calendar meetings into a ready-to-send OpenAI email brief

This n8n workflow automatically scans your external Google Calendar meetings, pulls recent Gmail context from the primary external attendee, generates a concise meeting brief with OpenAI, and emails it to you—then logs the event in Google Sheets so you never get duplicate briefs.

What this workflow does

• Runs every 30 minutes (or manually via a manual trigger) to check for upcoming events.
• Loads a “Briefed” log from Google Sheets and filters out events that were already briefed.
• Selects only relevant external meetings: it skips cancelled events, meetings you declined, internal-only meetings (based on configured InternalDomains), and events outside your LeadTimeMinutes window.
• Builds a short email history by searching Gmail for recent messages to or from the primary external attendee (limited by HistoryEmailCount).
• Generates a four-part brief using an OpenAI chat model: WHO, WHERE WE LEFT OFF, OPEN THREADS, and GO IN WITH.
• Sends the brief via Gmail to your configured address (SendBriefTo) and appends meeting details to Google Sheets to prevent re-briefing.

Use cases

• Prepare for client and partner meetings by quickly summarizing the latest email thread before the call.
• SaaS operators: reduce prep time for recurring external stakeholders while keeping context accurate.
• n8n users managing many meetings: automatically get a consistent briefing format without manual searching.

Technical details

• Integrations: Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Sheets, and OpenAI credentials within n8n.
• Configured values: CalendarId, SendBriefTo, InternalDomains, LeadTimeMinutes, HistoryEmailCount.
• Logic: schedule/manual trigger, event filtering, Gmail history compilation, OpenAI brief generation, Gmail send, and Google Sheets “Briefed” tab logging.
• Expected sheet setup: a Briefed tab with columns like Briefed At, Event ID, Meeting, Starts At, Atten.