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

📺 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:

1. Offer Letter Generation: Automatically generating and emailing a PDF offer letter when candidate data is received.
2. 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., firstname.lastname@blankarray.com).
• ▪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:

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