Questions about Custom Forms

Help me Build my Workflow
1

Trying to set up an approval workflow where I notify someone to take a look at some data, massage it if necessary, and send it on its way. I tried it with “Human in the loop” with Custom Form options, but they all have the same problems I can’t figure out:

  1. I can’t pre-populate values into the fields. On a standard form, you can use query parameters on a normal form, but they are not surfaced for Custom Forms.
  2. Forms security. Custom Forms do not appear to have a way to set any sort of authentication, and they iterate sequentially.
  3. I know this one is a long shot, but is there any way to track who approved something? Without authentication, it seems like approvals are basically just for single user instances and not for any sort of multi-user environment.

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version:. 1.102.3
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): Docker
  • Operating system: MacOS 15.5
2

If you wish to have a more feature-rich HITL process, you could go with a third party tool, which would support pre-population and allow for some security.

The workflow could look something like - the workflow generates a URL to one of 3rd party tools with pre-populated fields (including a resume url), send an email or a message to an individual, and stop at the wait node, which would wait for a webhook call). Many third party tools allow calling webhooks at the end of the form, which you could use to resume your workflow.

Alternatively, you could send a link to a separate form-trigger-based workflow, which would allow to pre-populate fields and also basic auth.

3

Just to expand on this last idea, the flow could looks something like this (two workflows on the same canvas, separate them into two).