How One Operations Manager Stopped Manually Creating Onfleet Tasks With a Simple n8n Workflow

The Late-Night Spreadsheet Problem

By 8:47 p.m., Maya was still at her desk.

As the operations manager for a growing local delivery service, her evenings had started to look the same. A shared Google Drive spreadsheet would fill up during the day with new delivery details, address changes, and special instructions. Drivers relied on Onfleet to know where to go next, but there was one fragile link in the chain:

Maya.

Every time the team updated the Google Drive file, she had to open it, scan for changes, and then manually create or adjust tasks in Onfleet. If she missed something, a delivery could be delayed or misrouted. If she worked too slowly, drivers sat idle waiting for their next task.

She knew what the real problem was. The workflow between Google Drive and Onfleet was completely manual. It depended on her attention and her time. And both were running out.

Discovering a Different Way to Work

One morning, after a particularly chaotic evening of last-minute changes, Maya searched for a better way to connect Google Drive and Onfleet. She did not want another tool to manage. She wanted automation that quietly handled the repetitive work in the background.

That is when she found n8n and a simple workflow template that promised exactly what she needed:

Automatically create an Onfleet task whenever a specific file in Google Drive is updated.

The idea was straightforward, but powerful. Instead of watching the file herself, a Google Drive trigger in n8n would do the monitoring. Instead of manually creating tasks, an Onfleet node would do it instantly whenever a change occurred.

For the first time in months, Maya felt like she might be able to step out of the critical path.

How the n8n Workflow Works Behind the Scenes

Before she trusted automation with live delivery tasks, Maya wanted to understand what was happening under the hood. The n8n template turned out to be built from just two core components that worked together in a tight loop:

• Google Drive Trigger that watches a specific file for changes, checking every minute.
• Onfleet Node that creates a new delivery task whenever the trigger detects an update.

It sounded simple, but that simplicity was exactly what made it reliable.

Rising Tension: The File That Everyone Depends On

The heart of Maya’s process was a single Google Drive file. Her team updated it constantly with:

• New delivery orders
• Address corrections
• Priority flags and time windows

Every change in that file needed to be reflected in Onfleet as fast as possible. If the file was the source of truth, then the automation had to be tightly linked to it.

So the first step in the n8n workflow was to tell the Google Drive trigger to watch that exact file and nothing else.

Turning Point: Teaching n8n to Watch Google Drive

Configuring the Google Drive Trigger

Inside n8n, Maya opened the template and started with the Google Drive Trigger node. She configured it to monitor a single file by using its unique file ID. This ID told the workflow exactly which file to track, so it would not react to any other documents in the Drive.

The key part of the configuration was the polling mode. Instead of waiting for a manual refresh, the trigger checked the file automatically using the everyMinute mode.

{  "mode": "everyMinute",  "triggerOn": "specificFile",  "fileToWatch": "<file_id>"
}

That small block of configuration changed everything. It meant:

• No more refreshing the file to see what changed
• No more constant mental load of remembering to check
• A predictable, automated rhythm of updates every minute

Once the trigger was in place, the workflow knew exactly when something in that file changed. The next question was what to do with that information.

From File Change to Delivery Task

Creating Tasks Automatically in Onfleet

Before using n8n, Maya used to copy details from the Google Drive file into Onfleet by hand. With the template, the second part of the workflow took over that job.

Whenever the Google Drive trigger detected an update, it passed that event directly to the Onfleet node. That node had one clear job: create a new delivery task.

In the configuration, the operation was set to create:

{  "operation": "create"
}

This meant that each time the watched file changed, the workflow automatically generated a new task in Onfleet using the data coming from Google Drive. No copying, no pasting, no manual entry.

From Maya’s perspective, it felt like Onfleet had finally learned to listen to Google Drive on its own.

What Changed After the Automation Went Live

On the first day she activated the workflow, Maya watched the logs in n8n like a hawk. Her team updated the Google Drive file with a new batch of delivery details. Within a minute, new tasks appeared in Onfleet, exactly as expected.

There were no frantic messages from drivers asking for their routes. No missing tasks. No late-night spreadsheet sessions.

What had been a fragile manual process was now a reliable automated flow:

1. The Google Drive file was updated.
2. The n8n Google Drive trigger detected the change.
3. The Onfleet node created a new task automatically.

Key Benefits Maya Noticed

After a week, the impact of the workflow was obvious. The benefits matched exactly what the template promised, but now they were visible in her daily work.

• Real-time task creation The moment the file in Google Drive was updated, a corresponding Onfleet task appeared. There was no gap between planning and execution.
• Improved efficiency Routine delivery assignments that used to demand constant attention were now handled by automation. Maya could finally focus on exceptions and strategy instead of data entry.
• Scalability As the business grew, she realized the same pattern could be expanded. The template could be adapted to monitor additional files or enriched with more advanced task details, without adding more manual work.

Why This Simple n8n Template Matters

Maya did not set out to become an automation expert. She simply needed a way to connect Google Drive and Onfleet so that her team could move faster without sacrificing accuracy.

The n8n template gave her exactly that:

• A Google Drive Trigger that watches a specific file by file ID in everyMinute polling mode.
• An Onfleet Node configured with the create operation to generate new tasks whenever an update is detected.

Together, they formed a lightweight but powerful automation that removed a bottleneck from her operations.

Resolution: From Firefighting to Flow

Weeks later, Maya’s evenings looked different. She still checked Onfleet, but now it was to review performance, not to rescue missing tasks. The Google Drive file remained the single source of truth, but n8n handled the constant translation from updates to tasks.

The stress of “Did I miss something in the spreadsheet?” was gone.

In its place was a simple, dependable automation that quietly worked in the background, keeping Google Drive and Onfleet in sync.

Start Your Own Google Drive to Onfleet Automation

If you recognize yourself in Maya’s story, you do not have to keep manually creating tasks every time a file changes. With n8n, you can connect Google Drive and Onfleet using this ready-made workflow template and let automation handle the repetitive work.

Integrate Google Drive with Onfleet, automate task creation, and give yourself back hours every week.