Blog · · 3 min read
How to get a daily AI summary of your business in n8n (step by step)
A simple guide to have n8n send you an AI-written summary every morning with what mattered yesterday: emails, bookings or sales, by email or Telegram, using the Schedule Trigger.
Most small businesses have their information scattered: emails in Gmail, bookings in Google Calendar, sales or orders in a spreadsheet. Checking all of it every morning takes time, and the urgent stuff gets mixed up with what can wait.
In this guide you'll build an n8n workflow that, every morning at the time you choose, collects yesterday's data, hands it to an AI model and sends you a short summary by email or Telegram. No coding.
What you'll build
A workflow with four pieces:
- Schedule Trigger: starts the workflow on its own, for example every day at 8:00.
- Collect data: the Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Sheets nodes fetch what you want summarized.
- Summarize with AI: a language model node turns that data into five or six clear lines.
- Send: the summary lands in your email or Telegram.
Step 1: the Schedule Trigger
Create a new workflow and add the Schedule Trigger node as its trigger. Under Trigger Interval pick Days, leave 1 day between runs and set the hour (for example, 8) and minute.
One important detail: check the timezone. In Workflow Settings you can set the workflow's Timezone. If your server is in another country and you don't set it, your summary may arrive at an odd hour.
Remember the Schedule Trigger only runs on its own when the workflow is activated (or published, depending on your n8n version). While you build it, test it by hand with the execute button.
Step 2: collect yesterday's data
Pick one or more sources. Start with one and add more once it works:
- Emails: the Gmail node with the get many messages operation (Get Many) and a search filter such as
newer_than:1d, so it only fetches the last day's mail. - Bookings: the Google Calendar node to get today's events. It pairs well with the Google Calendar bookings workflow.
- Sales or orders: the Google Sheets node to read your sheet's rows. If you already use AI invoice extraction to Google Sheets, that same sheet works.
Each node returns many items (one email, event or row per item). So the AI can read them all at once, add an Aggregate node next, which combines all items into one. That way you make a single call to the model instead of one per email, which is faster and cheaper.
Tip: keep only the useful fields (sender, subject, a snippet of the text, time, amount). The less text you send the AI, the better the summary and the lower the cost.
Step 3: summarize with AI
Add a language model node, for example Basic LLM Chain with your model connected (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or another). In the prompt include the previous node's data and clear instructions. An example that works well:
You are the assistant of a small business. Using the data below, write a summary in English of no more than 6 lines. Start with anything urgent (customers waiting for a reply, complaints, payments). Then today's appointments with their times. End with numbers: how many emails and sales came in yesterday. Don't make anything up: if a piece of data isn't there, don't mention it.
That last sentence matters: it tells the AI not to invent information. For more ideas on tone, see the customer service AI agent prompt guide.
Step 4: send yourself the summary
Add the sending node you prefer:
- Gmail (Send): a fixed subject like "Daily summary" and the AI's text in the body.
- Telegram: if you already have a bot, it's the easiest way to read it on your phone. We cover it in the Telegram AI bot guide.
Run the workflow by hand, check the summary arrives looking right and, once you're happy, activate it.
Don't let it fail silently
This workflow runs while you're not looking, so protect it: turn on Retry On Fail in the AI node and the sending node, and connect an error workflow that alerts you if something breaks. It's all in the n8n error handling guide.
If some days there's no data (say, a Sunday with no emails), add an IF node before the AI so you don't get an empty summary.
Ideas to extend it
- A weekly summary on Mondays with the whole week's numbers.
- New Google reviews, combined with AI review replies.
- Unanswered quotes worth chasing, as in quote follow-up.
Start with ready-made templates
If this is your first workflow, start with the guide to build your first AI agent in n8n. And if you want to save hours, download the free WhatsApp agent or check out the AgentKiosk pack with 8 agents ready to import.
