Manually Inserting External Secrets

Questions
1

Describe the problem/error/question

We’re currently building an MVP for workflows and need a way to load external secrets that we have stored in our DB (or that will be passed in the workflow HTTP request), is there a simple way to instantiate integrations like Salesforce or Zoho with external secrets without getting the enterprise plan as it’s currently an MVP?

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

Currently in the cloud demo enviroment

2

There is no simple way.

The complicated and risky way is:

  • Switch to self hosted
    • Preferably, set things up on a postgres db
  • Write your own utility (which could be a workflow using Postgres and n8n nodes with the appropriate access to the database and/or n8n API) to modify the data in the n8n tables to update or create credentials items and remap the credential IDs to workflow nodes.
    • The data structures and table relationships change sometimes, so you’ll be aiming at a moving target.
    • This may also require encrypting some parts of the data the same way the n8n application does.

Also:

  • You need to be sure you know what you’re doing with the data so you don’t mess things up.
  • This (obviously) wouldn’t be supported.
1 Like
3

Thanks for the prompt response!

How would you recommend we manage multi tenancy then? we plan on having each company have it’s own workflow but need to correctly use their credentials for operations within the workflow.

Playing around the dashboard it seems the only way is to have the company create a n8n cloud account, sign into their integration, then share the credentials with us, is there a cleaner implementation?

4

Your use case sounds like you might need an embed license anyway. There are some features for managing tenancy with that license type I think (I haven’t tried to set up or use n8n with the “embed” features).

5

The Sustainable Use License is a fair-code software license created by n8n in 2022. You can read more about why we did this here. The license allows you the free right to use, modify, create derivative works, and redistribute, with three limitations:

  • You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use.
  • You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
  • You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices of the licensor in the software. Any use of the licensor’s trademarks is subject to applicable law.

We encourage anyone who wants to use the Sustainable Use License. If you are building something out in the open, it makes sense to think about licensing earlier in order to avoid problems later. Contact us at [email protected] if you would like to ask any questions about it.