Gmail Messages Can Now Trigger a Workflow
A new poll.gmail_message trigger lets a workflow start itself when a matching email lands in a connected Gmail inbox, no webhook required.
Workflows can now start themselves when a new email arrives. The new poll.gmail_message trigger checks a connected Gmail inbox for matching messages on a schedule and starts a run for each one it hasn't seen before — no inbound webhook, no Zapier-style "email parser" step, no manual check required.
How it actually works
This isn't a live push from Gmail — it's a poll. Every five minutes, a dedicated scheduler on workflow-worker calls connector-worker's Gmail integration on behalf of every workflow using this trigger, running the same underlying gmail.list read that already powers Gmail actions elsewhere on the platform (there's no second, separate code path talking to Gmail). Each workflow keeps its own cursor — the ID of the last message it's already seen — stored alongside the trigger's own settings, so two workflows watching two different Gmail queries never interfere with each other. New messages start one run each, oldest first, and if starting a run fails partway through a batch, the cursor stops advancing past the last message that actually started — nothing gets silently skipped.
The trigger only fires for workflows whose author has connected a Google account (the same connection used for Gmail and Sheets actions). If that connection is missing or revoked, the poll simply skips that workflow on its next tick rather than erroring.
The fourth gap closed this cycle
This trigger was the last of four gaps closed in a single push to bring Workflows' automation surface closer to parity with tools like ActivePieces: programmatic, draft-only workflow creation through MCP tools; Slack and email notifications when an approval step is waiting; new third-party action steps (Slack, Discord, Google Calendar); and now, an inbound polling trigger that doesn't depend on a webhook the workflow author has to wire up themselves.
Gmail polling is available now wherever workflows already support triggers. Point one at a filtered Gmail query — a support alias, an invoice inbox, anything you'd otherwise be checking by hand — and let the workflow pick up from there.