Google Docs

A sheet is for data somebody will scan. A document is for words somebody will change before they go out — a proposal, a brief, a summary, a contract draft. The difference matters, because a document that arrives finished is a document nobody trusts, and a document that arrives empty is a document nobody uses.

This node writes into Google Docs and shares what it wrote. Seven operations, and two ways of building a document that are worth knowing apart.

Generate it. create_document with initial_text assembled from templates. Fast, and the whole document is defined in the workflow — which means changing the wording means editing a workflow, and nobody outside the team can do that.

Fill it in. Keep a real document with literal tokens in it — {{client_name}}, {{amount}} — and use replace_text to swap them. Slower to set up, and the wording lives in a document your colleagues can edit without touching anything technical.

The node's own guidance is to use unique tokens for templated documents, and the reason is in the next section. For anything a non-technical colleague owns — proposals, offer letters, statements of work — the second approach is the one that survives contact with the business.

A deal changes. A draft proposal is written from the deal's own fields and handed to whoever owns it, with edit access and a note saying what still needs doing.

Three things in that pair are deliberate. The document is shared as writer rather than reader, because the point is for a person to finish it. notify is on, so it appears in their inbox rather than in a folder they never open. And the body contains an explicit TODO where the scope should be.

Leave the holes visible. An automated draft that reads as complete gets sent as complete. A section that says, in plain words, that it has not been written yet is the cheapest safeguard there is — and it is why the message on the share says the same thing again.

The second node reaches back with {{googledocs_1.document_id}}. That id is the only handle on the document, and everything after creation — appending, replacing, sharing — needs it.

A token you forgot to replace ships as-is. Nothing checks that every placeholder was filled. If your replacements map is missing a key, the document goes out with {{amount}} in it, and the run is green. If the document matters, read it back with read_document and fail the workflow when it still contains a brace.

Insertion indices are positions in a document that is changing. insert_text at index 1 puts text at the very start, which is reliable. Any other number is a position in a document whose length depends on what you already wrote — and two inserts in a row mean the second index is not what you calculated before the first. Prefer append_text and build in order, or write the whole body once in initial_text.

Sharing is an outward-facing action with no undo in the workflow. notify on sends a real email to a real person. Test with your own address, not a colleague's, and remember that a document shared as writer can be changed by them in ways your next replace_text will not expect.