n8n Google Drive Qdrant Chatbot: OpenAI Answers w/ Sources

Ask questions from your Google Drive—powered by Qdrant and OpenAI with source citations

This n8n workflow automatically syncs your Google Drive documents into a Qdrant vector knowledge base and answers user questions through n8n Chat or Slack using OpenAI. Every response is drafted from retrieved document content and includes formatted source citations back to your files.

What this workflow does

• Syncs Drive → Qdrant (every minute): It triggers when a file is created or updated in a specific Google Drive folder, then downloads the file.
• Extracts text from common formats: It detects whether the file is a PDF, Google Doc, DOCX, or TXT and extracts plain text. For DOCX, it copies to a temporary Google Doc, exports as text, then deletes the temporary doc.
• Keeps vectors fresh: Before inserting new vectors, it deletes any existing Qdrant entries in the collection that match the same Google Drive file ID, preventing outdated duplicates.
• Builds a searchable knowledge base: It chunks extracted text, adds metadata (file ID, name, Drive URL, last modified time), creates OpenAI embeddings, and inserts vectors into the Qdrant collection (e.g., company_knowledge_base).
• Answers with retrieval + citations: When a message arrives via the public n8n Chat endpoint or when the Slack app is mentioned/receives a message, it normalizes inputs, ignores bot-generated Slack events, retrieves relevant chunks from Qdrant, and uses an OpenAI chat model to answer using only retrieved content—adding formatted source citations.
• Slack replies: If the question came from Slack, it posts the formatted response back to the same channel/thread.

Use cases

• Answer support questions using internal docs stored in a Google Drive folder.
• Enable SaaS teams to query product policies, FAQs, and guides with traceable citations.
• Keep knowledge retrieval current by re-embedding documents whenever Drive files change.

Technical details

• Integrations/Credentials: Google Drive OAuth2, OpenAI, and Qdrant (REST API delete-by-filter; Qdrant API for vector insertion).
• Workflow logic: Uses nodes including if, set, code, no op, merge, and Slack.
• Chat triggers: Public n8n Chat endpoint and Slack mention/message handling.
• Retrieval: Qdrant “company_knowledge_base” retrieval tool with conversation memory for grounded OpenAI answers.