Communication — Record Email

Communication — Record Email writes one captured e-mail into the systems. It creates or updates one Message in Communication, keyed by the e-mail’s Message-ID, and one Interaction in the CRM per thread, keyed by the thread link. It links the Message to the people who wrote and received it and the Interaction to the person, their company, the open Deal and the seller’s Membership, and it moves the follow-up date: reply today when the customer wrote, check again in three days after the first message the seller sent. Both records carry the tag email-log-n8n. It never creates a person or a Deal.

It is a sub-workflow: it runs when Email Capture calls it with a normalized e-mail and the context from CRM — Resolve Context.

The Communication maintainer owns the Message records; the CRM maintainer owns the Interactions and the follow-up rules.

Flow

Generated from the n8n version in the box above: every box is a node and every arrow is a connection in n8n. Pink pills are triggers, yellow hexagons are If and Switch nodes with their outputs on the arrows, blue cylinders read (Airtable, Data Table, HTTP GET), green cylinders write, purple boxes call another workflow, and dashed arrows are error outputs.

flowchart TD
  subgraph g0["Request and lookups"]
    n13(["Record Request"]):::trigger
    n1["Config"]:::logic
    n0["Build Lookups"]:::logic
    n9[("Find Message<br/><small>GET Communication Message</small>")]:::read
    n7[("Find Interaction<br/><small>GET CRM Interaction</small>")]:::read
    n6[("Find External People<br/><small>GET Communication Person</small>")]:::read
    n5[("Find Accounts<br/><small>GET Communication Tool Account</small>")]:::read
    n14["Resolve Accounts"]:::logic
    n8[("Find Internal People<br/><small>GET Communication Membership</small>")]:::read
    n12["Prepare"]:::logic
  end
  subgraph g1["Communication Message"]
    n11{{"Message Exists?"}}:::decision
    n17[("Update Message<br/><small>PATCH Communication Message</small>")]:::write
    n4[("Create Message<br/><small>POST Communication Message</small>")]:::write
    n2["Continue"]:::logic
  end
  subgraph g2["CRM Interaction"]
    n10{{"Interaction Exists?"}}:::decision
    n16[("Update Interaction<br/><small>PATCH CRM Interaction</small>")]:::write
    n3[("Create Interaction<br/><small>POST CRM Interaction</small>")]:::write
    n15["Result"]:::logic
  end
  n13 --> n1
  n1 --> n0
  n0 --> n9
  n9 --> n7
  n7 --> n6
  n6 --> n5
  n5 --> n14
  n14 --> n8
  n8 --> n12
  n12 --> n11
  n11 -->|true| n17
  n11 -->|false| n4
  n17 --> n2
  n4 --> n2
  n2 --> n10
  n10 -->|true| n16
  n10 -->|false| n3
  n16 --> n15
  n3 --> n15
  classDef trigger fill:#fde7f3,stroke:#d6409f,color:#111
  classDef decision fill:#fff7e0,stroke:#c99a00,color:#111
  classDef read fill:#e8f1ff,stroke:#3b82f6,color:#111
  classDef write fill:#e7f8ee,stroke:#16a34a,color:#111
  classDef subflow fill:#f3e8ff,stroke:#9333ea,color:#111
  classDef wait fill:#f1f1f1,stroke:#888,color:#111
  classDef logic fill:#ffffff,stroke:#999,color:#111

Systems it touches

Every Airtable call is an HTTP Request node with an Airtable token credential. The reads filter by field name: {External Message Id} on Message, {Evidence URL} on Interaction, {Email} on the Person mirror {Login Alias} and {Tool} on the Tool Account mirror, and {Membership ID} and {Company Email} on the Membership mirror. The writes use field ids. Renaming one of the read fields breaks the lookup without an error: the node returns no record and the flow creates a duplicate.

Input and configuration

Record Request receives two objects from the caller: message, the normalized e-mail (direction, seller, counterparty, external Cc, internal participants, Message-ID, thread id and link, subject, body, snippet, sent at), and context, the CRM context (membership, accountable company, person, person company, Deal, notes).

Config holds the record ids the writes need: channelId (the Communication Channel of the capture mailbox), and tagCommunicationId and tagCrmId (the tag email-log-n8n in each base).

Lookups

Build Lookups builds three formulas. The Message key is the RFC Message-ID, or the Gmail id when the header is missing. Find Message looks, in one call, for the Message with that External Message Id and for the Message whose External Message Id is the e-mail’s In-Reply-To header, when the header exists. Find Interaction looks for an Interaction whose Evidence URL is the thread link. Find External People looks up, in one call, the counterparty and every external Cc address in the Communication Person mirror. Find Accounts looks up, in one call, the seller and every internal participant in the Tool Account mirror, by Login Alias among the Google Workspace accounts. Resolve Accounts reads the Bound Membership ID of each account found, and Find Internal People reads those Memberships in the Membership mirror, by Membership ID or by Company Email, to reach the Person behind each internal address.

Write the Message

Message Exists? sends the item to Update Message when Find Message found one, and to Create Message otherwise. Continue then hands the prepared item on to the CRM half.

A second capture of the same Message-ID happens when another internal account was in copy: Google delivers one copy per internal recipient. In that case Update Message changes only About Keys, merging the new account: and participant: lines into the existing ones, and Participants (Account), adding the accounts of the new copy. Nothing else on the Message is touched.

Write the Interaction

Interaction Exists? sends the item to Update Interaction when an Interaction already has this thread link, and to Create Interaction otherwise. One thread is one Interaction: its Date and Result follow the last message processed.

“Today” is the UTC date at processing time. Result reports what was written: the Message id, the Interaction id and whether each was updated or created.

Fields written

Communication Message (Create Message)

Update Message writes About Keys and Participants (Account) only, as described above.

CRM Interaction

Every write sends typecast: true: a select value that does not exist yet is created as a new option.

Nodes

The workflow has 19 nodes: 18 that run and one sticky note. For an If node, output 0 is true and output 1 is false.

Connections

Settings and error handling

Before activating

Known gaps

Recover a partial write

Keep this page in sync

The box at the top shows the n8n version this page describes. Open the workflow in n8n: when its last save is newer than the date in the box, this page is out of date until the next review. Every node and every connection of that version is in Nodes and Connections.