N8n "action buttons"

It would be interesting to have the ability to create “buttons” that could trigger workflows.

Some of the workflows could be executed on demand (webhook, I take it) though you’d want to see them generated/represented in an easy way (imagine a Shields.io badge) and able to show the status of the workflow inside the button itself.

Example:

  • I create a button on a page with some quick JS code.
  • I click on the button > Processing animation
  • Workflow does its thing
  • Depending on the result, the button shows message

That way you could build some dashboards to monitor and execute some maintenance operations. Makes sense?(edited)

The idea is not to respond with complex data, just status “OK, Error, maybe a value?”.

(Value >> In the case of having a switch scenario where something gets On <-> Off - Say for instance you are starting a process somewhere and once you are done you stop it)

Thoughts?

Edit: Shields.io link was incorrect.

Cool idea! Ive setup a few usecases in Airtable/Coda where a button execute a webhook trigger workflow. However this opens a new tab where the response is shown.

Since usecase is dashboards, have you checked out Retool? It’s a pretty awesome combo with n8n as the backend, and Retool as frontend. Fairly certain something along these lines can be whipped up in there to consume n8n workflows. Plus, it has a pretty fair free tier.

For these sorts of utilities, triggering via Slack/ Mattermost/ Discord slash commands can also be helpful if you’re using one of those in your stack.

2 Likes