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Generate and email course certificates from Google Sheets with Canva and Gmail

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Created by: Jeremy Grancher || jgrancher
Jeremy Grancher

Last update

Last update 3 days ago

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Quick overview

This workflow watches a Google Sheet for rows marked ready, generates a personalized certificate in Canva using a brand template, exports and downloads it as a PDF, then emails it to the recipient via Gmail and updates the sheet with the delivery status.

How it works

  1. Triggers when the ready column changes in the specified Google Sheets worksheet.
  2. Checks whether the updated row has ready set to YES and ignores all other updates.
  3. Formats configuration values (including normalizing the date) and uses Canva Data Autofill to create a certificate design from a Canva brand template.
  4. Exports the generated Canva design as a PDF and downloads the file so it can be attached to an email.
  5. Sends the PDF certificate to the recipient using Gmail, using the email address and course details from the sheet row.
  6. Updates the Google Sheets row to DONE/SENT with the Canva design URL on success, or marks it as ERROR with the failure message if any step fails.

Setup

  1. Install and configure the community node @canva/n8n-nodes-canva, and ensure your Canva account is on Canva Enterprise with access to Data Autofill.
  2. Create a Google Sheet with columns such as ready, certificate_id, full_name, full_date, course_name, instructor_name, email, design_url, and status, and set the trigger to watch the correct spreadsheet and sheet.
  3. Create a Canva brand template that contains dataset fields matching full_name, full_date, course_name, and instructor_name, then paste the template ID into the workflow configuration.
  4. Add Google Sheets and Gmail credentials in n8n, and confirm the Gmail node’s sender account is allowed to email your recipients.
  5. Ensure certificate_id uniquely identifies each row so the workflow can update the correct record when writing back status and links.

Requirements

  • Canva Enterprise account (Data Autofill is Enterprise-only)
  • The verified community node @canva/n8n-nodes-canva (officially provided by Canva)
  • Gmail credentials