沟通

Google Contacts Birthday Reminders to Slack

Check Google Contacts each morning and send a Slack reminder for each birthday today.

Setup

Enable the People API in your Google Cloud project and obtain OAuth client credentials plus an offline refresh token with https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly consent. In Open Flow, create secret Variables for the client ID, client secret and refresh token, and bind them in Read every contacts page. Connect Slack and set the channel ID in Prepare the next reminder. The workflow reads the authenticated user’s contacts.

In n8n, connect Google Contacts and Slack, and select the Slack channel. Both the schedule and birthday comparison use UTC. Activate one format.

Behavior

At 08:00 UTC each day, the workflow reads contacts, matches structured birthday month and day, and sends one Slack reminder per matching contact. A missing birth year does not prevent a match; February 29 matches only on February 29. Names use the primary display name, then given and family names, a nickname or “your friend”. No matches send nothing. Open Flow compares the scheduled occurrence date; n8n compares the execution date, so a run delayed across UTC midnight can differ.

Open Flow refreshes its Google access token for each contacts page. A page error or invalid or repeated page token stops before reminders; each response must fit the 1 MiB Code fetch limit and the collected contacts must fit the run’s execution limits. Google OAuth refresh tokens can expire or be revoked. A Slack failure stops later reminders; earlier sends are not undone, and rerunning can duplicate them.

Inspiration & credits

Changes to the source

The source never sets today, compares a structured birthday as a string, and its Slack block is invalid. Both formats now compare month/day and send a valid block with the contact’s name. n8n disables its automatic workflow link.
Open Flow uses Google OAuth refresh and the People API for complete pagination because no Google Contacts Provider or Action is available. n8n keeps its Google Contacts node with raw fields. The original channel was unconfigured.

Adapted from Send Daily Birthday Reminders from Google Contacts to Slack in Zie619/n8n-workflows. The source export does not identify a separate template author or license.

The collection’s MIT notice is pinned at a later revision. This is the collection notice at that revision; it does not establish a separate original template author’s license. Our changes are listed above; see repository licensing.

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