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AI-Powered Employee Database Management via Telegram using OpenAI and Airtable

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Created by: Billy Christi || billy

Billy Christi

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Last update 12 days ago

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Who is this for?

This workflow is perfect for:

  • HR professionals seeking to automate employee and department management
  • Startups and SMBs that want an AI-powered HR assistant on Telegram
  • Internal operations teams that want to simplify onboarding and employee data tracking

What problem is this workflow solving?

Managing employee databases manually is error-prone and inefficient—especially for growing teams. This workflow solves that by:

  • Enabling natural language-based HR operations directly through Telegram
  • Automating the creation, retrieval, and deletion of employee records in Airtable
  • Dynamically managing related data such as departments and job titles
  • Handling data consistency and linking across relational tables automatically
  • Providing a conversational interface backed by OpenAI for smart decision-making

What this workflow does

Using Telegram as the interface and Airtable as the backend database, this intelligent HR workflow allows users to:

  1. Chat in natural language (e.g. “Show me all employees” or “Create employee: Sarah, Marketing…”)

  2. Interpret and route requests via an AI Agent that acts as the orchestrator

  3. Query employee, department, and job title data from Airtable

  4. Create or update records as needed:

    • Add new departments and job titles automatically if they don’t exist
    • Create new employees and link them to the correct department and job title

  5. Delete employees based on ID

  6. Respond directly in Telegram, providing user-friendly feedback

Setup

  1. View & Copy the Airtable base here:
    👉 Employee Database Management – Airtable Base Template

  2. Telegram Bot: Set up a Telegram bot and connect it to the Telegram Trigger node

  3. Airtable: Prepare three Airtable tables:

    • Employees with links to Departments and Job Titles
    • Departments with Name & Description
    • Job Titles with Title & Description

  4. Connect your Airtable API key and base/table IDs into the appropriate Airtable nodes

  5. Add your OpenAI API key to the AI Agent nodes

  6. Deploy both workflows: the main chatbot workflow and the employee creation sub-workflow

  7. Test with sample messages like:

    • “Create employee: John Doe, [email protected], Engineering, Software Engineer”
    • “Remove employee ID rec123xyz”

How to customize this workflow to your needs

  • Switch databases: Replace Airtable with Notion, PostgreSQL, or Google Sheets if desired
  • Enhance security: Add authentication and validation before allowing deletion
  • Add approval flows: Integrate Telegram button-based approvals for sensitive actions
  • Multi-language support: Expand system prompts to support multiple languages
  • Add logging: Store every user action in a log table for auditability
  • Expand capabilities: Integrate payroll, time tracking, or Slack notifications

Extra Tips

  • This is a two-workflow setup. Make sure the sub-workflow is deployed and accessible from the main agent.
  • Use Simple Memory per chat ID to preserve context across user queries.
  • You can expand the orchestration logic by adding more tools to the main agent—such as “Get active employees only” or “List employees by job title.”