Chase overdue client documents with Clio and SMTP email escalations

Description

Quick Overview
This workflow runs daily and uses the Clio API to find overdue “Document Request” tasks, then sends tiered reminder emails to clients via SMTP after passing them through a compliance approval sub-workflow, and escalates urgent items to internal staff.

How it works
Runs every day at 8:00 AM (server timezone) on a schedule.
Fetches firm users, open matters (including client email addresses), and all pending tasks from the Clio API.
Keeps only tasks of the configured “Document Request” task type that have a due date, then calculates days overdue and assigns a reminder tier (1–2 days, 7–8 days, or 14–15 days overdue).
Filters to tasks that are due for a reminder today and have a resolvable client email address, or cleanly skips the run when none qualify.
Builds a tier-appropriate client reminder email (plain text and HTML), runs it through the compliance/opt-out guardrail sub-workflow, and sends it via SMTP only if approved.
For tasks in the urgent tier, builds and sends a separate internal escalation email to the responsible staff member (or a configured fallback address) via SMTP.

Setup
Add a Clio OAuth2 API credential and set the CLIO_BASE_URL variable to your Clio instance base URL.
Set n8n variables for firm identity and sending addresses (at minimum FIRM_NAME, FIRM_EMAIL, and FIRM_FROM_EMAIL, plus optional FIRM_CLIENT_PORTAL_URL and FIRM_PARALEGAL_EMAIL).
Create an SMTP credential in n8n and update the sender/from fields as needed for your mail server.
Import and configure the compliance/opt-out guardrail workflow and set its ID in the GUARDRAIL_WORKFLOW_ID variable.
If your firm uses a different Clio task type name for document chasing, set FIRM_DOCUMENT_REQUEST_TASK_TYPE to match it (default is “Document Request”).