Quick Overview
This workflow runs daily and uses the Clio API to find overdue “Document Request” tasks, then sends tiered reminder emails to clients via SMTP after passing them through a compliance approval sub-workflow, and escalates urgent items to internal staff.
How it works
- Runs every day at 8:00 AM (server timezone) on a schedule.
- Fetches firm users, open matters (including client email addresses), and all pending tasks from the Clio API.
- Keeps only tasks of the configured “Document Request” task type that have a due date, then calculates days overdue and assigns a reminder tier (1–2 days, 7–8 days, or 14–15 days overdue).
- Filters to tasks that are due for a reminder today and have a resolvable client email address, or cleanly skips the run when none qualify.
- Builds a tier-appropriate client reminder email (plain text and HTML), runs it through the compliance/opt-out guardrail sub-workflow, and sends it via SMTP only if approved.
- For tasks in the urgent tier, builds and sends a separate internal escalation email to the responsible staff member (or a configured fallback address) via SMTP.
Setup
- Add a Clio OAuth2 API credential and set the CLIO_BASE_URL variable to your Clio instance base URL.
- Set n8n variables for firm identity and sending addresses (at minimum FIRM_NAME, FIRM_EMAIL, and FIRM_FROM_EMAIL, plus optional FIRM_CLIENT_PORTAL_URL and FIRM_PARALEGAL_EMAIL).
- Create an SMTP credential in n8n and update the sender/from fields as needed for your mail server.
- Import and configure the compliance/opt-out guardrail workflow and set its ID in the GUARDRAIL_WORKFLOW_ID variable.
- If your firm uses a different Clio task type name for document chasing, set FIRM_DOCUMENT_REQUEST_TASK_TYPE to match it (default is “Document Request”).