Automate employee onboarding and Google Workspace account creation with Gmail, Google Sheets, PDFBro and Google Gemini

Description

📺 Watch the Video Demo

For a visual walkthrough of this automation in action, check out the tutorial below:

https://youtu.be/vX-0vv7OUXc

🚀 Workflow Overview

This n8n workflow creates a fully automated end-to-end recruitment and onboarding engine. It streamlines two critical phases of HR operations:

Offer Letter Generation: Automatically generating and emailing a PDF offer letter when candidate data is received.
Onboarding & Provisioning: Detecting candidate acceptance via email, provisioning a corporate Google Workspace account, and securely delivering credentials.

⚙️ Phase 1: Candidate Intake & Offer Letter Generation

Triggered via Webhook

This section handles the initial processing of a successful candidate.

1. Data Ingestion & Formatting

Webhook (POST):** The workflow starts when candidate data (personal info, job details, bank info) is posted to the webhook URL.
Edit Fields:** Cleanups and extracts key data points (Full Name, Address, Job Title, Manager Name, etc.) to ensure they are ready for document generation.

2. Database Entry

Google Sheets (Save Candidates Details):**
Acts as the "Employee DB".
Records all candidate details including emergency contacts and bank info.
Sets an initial status flag workplace_acc_created? to "no".

3. Document Generation

PDFBro (Generate Offer Letter):**
Dynamically creates a PDF offer letter.
Populates the template with the candidate's name, address, job title, department, and salary frequency.

4. Delivery

Gmail (Send Offer Letter):**
Sends an email to the candidate's personal address.
Attaches the generated PDF offer letter.
Subject: "Offer Letter" | Body includes a congratulatory message.

🤖 Phase 2: Acceptance Verification & IT Provisioning

Triggered via Gmail Polling

This section runs periodically to check if the candidate has accepted the job offer.

1. Intelligent Monitoring

Gmail Trigger:** Polls the HR inbox every minute for new emails.
Google Sheets (Lookup):** Checks if the sender's email exists in the "Employee DB".
Filter:** Ensures the workflow only proceeds if:
The email is from a known candidate.
The candidate has not yet been onboarded (workplace_acc_created? is not "yes").

2. AI-Powered Analysis

Google Gemini (AI Agent):**
Reads the email subject and body.
Prompt:** "Check if the mail is an acceptance of offer letter... respond with 'yes' if it is an acceptance."
This eliminates false positives (e.g., a candidate asking a question about the salary isn't mistakenly onboarded).

3. Account Provisioning (If Accepted)

If the AI confirms the email is an acceptance ("Yes"):

JavaScript Code:** Generates a secure, random 16-character temporary password (timestamp + random string).
Google Workspace Admin (Create User):**
Creates a new internal email account (e.g., [email protected]).
Sets the temporary password.
Security:** Forces the user to change their password upon first login (changePasswordAtNextLogin: true).

4. Credential Delivery & Sync

Gmail (Send Credentials):**
Sends a beautifully formatted HTML email to the new employee's personal address.
Contains their new Work Email and Temporary Password.
Includes a "Log In to Workplace" button.


Google Sheets (Update Status):**
Updates the candidate's row in the DB.
Sets workplace_acc_created? to "yes" to prevent duplicate account creation in the future.

🛠️ Prerequisites & Credentials Needed

To use this workflow, you will need to configure the following credentials in n8n:

Google Workspace Admin: For creating users (requires Admin SDK API access).
Google Gemini (PaLM) API: For the AI analysis of emails.
Google Drive/Sheets: Service account access to read/write the Employee DB.
Gmail (OAuth2): To read incoming replies and send outgoing emails.
PDFBro: a free community node for creating PDF offer letter.