How to deploy changes to a workflow?

Questions
1

Greetings!

I’m new to n8n and have a really basic question about development best practice. How exactly do I “deploy” workflow changes to live/production?

Am I correct that saved changes are immediately “live” for an active workflow? I was kind of expecting an explicit “deploy to live” action somewhere that would push changes after they’ve been thoroughly tested, but maybe I need to adjust my mental model. I searched the docs and forum, so I think I’m missing something really fundamental.

Thanks for any info or insights.

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8nVersion: 1.58.2
  • platform: docker (self-hosted)
  • nodeJsVersion: 20.15.0
  • database: postgres
  • executionMode: regular
2

It looks like your topic is missing some important information. Could you provide the following if applicable.

  • n8n version:
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):
  • Operating system:
3

Not sure where to find the first item, so I’m assuming default. The rest is in my original post.

4

That is correct - changes are deployed when saved. Our Enterprise plan supports different environments, like dev/test/staging/prod:

5

Thanks for the quick reply, @bartv, but my question remains. For those not on the Enterprise plan, what’s the recommended way to deploy changes without taking a workflow offline?

If I have a critical workflow, how do I update it and thoroughly test it before making it live? The only thing that comes to mind is to duplicate it, make and test the changes, and then activate the duplicate before deactivating the original. Is that the best way?

6

hello you can just clone the workflow :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

sfx is correct; you can duplicate a workflow from the menu on the top-right of your screen. Alternatively, I suppose you could create a workflow that uses that uses the n8n node to fetch a workflow and create a duplicate, and after testing, overwrite the ‘live’ version with the tested one (that would in fact be a cool thing to try!)

image

8

Ok, thanks for the replies! So basically, what I said…

EDIT

Just a quick edit to note that I was thinking along those lines as well. I’d use my local machine for development and testing, though, and then overwrite the live workflow via the API. :slightly_smiling_face: :+1:

Thanks again.

2 Likes
9

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