Feature Request: Manual Trigger Support for Metaobject Entry Workflows

Shopify Flow
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Feature Request: Manual Trigger Support for Metaobject Entry Workflows

Overview

With the recent release of the “Metaobject entry created” trigger in Shopify Flow (October 17, 2024), we now have the ability to automate workflows when new metaobject entries are created. However, there’s currently no way to manually trigger these workflows for existing metaobject entries. Adding manual trigger support for metaobject entry workflows, similar to how we can manually trigger workflows for orders, products, and customers would be great to have.

:zap: Current Situation

Currently, Shopify Flow allows manual workflow triggers for:

  • Orders (Order created, Order deleted, Order paid)
  • Draft orders (Draft order created, Draft order deleted)
  • Customers (Customer created, Customer deleted, Customer enabled, Customer disabled)
  • Products (Product created)

However, despite the addition of metaobject entry triggers, we cannot manually run these workflows on existing metaobject entries yet.

:bulb: Use Cases

  1. Batch Processing Historical Data
  • When implementing a new metaobject-based workflow, merchants need to process existing entries
  • Testing workflows on specific metaobject entries during development
  • Running automation on a subset of entries that match certain criteria
  1. Data Recovery & Synchronization
  • Re-running workflows after fixing issues or errors
  • Synchronizing data between systems when integrations are temporarily down
  • Updating external systems with existing metaobject data
  1. Testing & Validation
  • QA testing of workflows before deploying to production
  • Verifying workflow behavior with specific metaobject entries
  • Debugging integration issues with third-party systems

:sparkles: Proposed Solution

We could have manual trigger support for metaobject entry workflows in the Shopify admin, including:

  1. Individual Triggers
  • Add a “Run Flow automation” option in the metaobject entry detail view
  • Allow selection of applicable workflows
  • Show results in the Flow Activity page
  1. Bulk Action Support
  • Enable selecting multiple metaobject entries
  • Add “Run Flow automation” to bulk actions
  • Support running workflows on up to 50 entries at once (consistent with existing bulk action limits)

:wrench:There are no admin action/extension targets in the metaobject entry UI, which could be a potential holdup for this Targets Overview

:books: References

Running workflows manually in Shopify Flow

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Thanks for the feedback. There isn’t a way for us to do this now, without improvements on the custom data / metaobject side of things, but I did pass along the feedback.

2 Likes
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Yeah I figured that when I got to the end of writing this, but I had to post so that this does happen at some point I guess.
With how much focus there is on metaobjects, the admin does need to catch up soon.

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@Taksh_Shah In addition to Flow’s built in manual runs, our Admin Buttons app (free plan available) gives you a few more options for manually triggering workflows from any admin app block. For instance, you can set up a form to send optional parameters to the workflow for use in testing different conditions for the Flow.

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@evnbttr thanks for sharing, however, like I mentioned in my post, you cannot actually add a button to the admin UI using extensions since Shopify doesn’t have an extension target for the metaobjects page.

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Right. Got you. Was thinking that a workaround to the limitation could be to set up manual triggers in admin actions on the related admin pages: for order-related metafields, add a manual trigger to an order details app block.

1 Like