The full name of this n8n node, that enables Autom8 Actions, is: Autom8 Tableau Action Trigger. For its counterpart that acts as a “data alert node”, see: Autom8 Tableau Alert Trigger (aka n8n Alert node).

See: Getting Started | n8n nodePreview.

The n8n Action node for Autom8 offers simple but powerful configuration possibilities, enabling the most common request/response scenarios needed to provide clear feedback to the user. For example, the message displayed in the dashboard can be fully customized. See n8n Action Node | RespondPreview for more information.

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The parameters tab for the Autom8 Action n8n node.

See: Authentication.

The webhook path will determine where your workflow can be reached, which is information needed when we’ll configure the Tableau Extension.

The Webhook Path should be unique in your n8n environment, and we recommend using a descriptive but succinct name. E.g. for a Slack integration that facilitates a review of sales data, we could consider autom8-slack-sales-review, because we want to send our sales data to Slack for review.

To view the full resulting webhook URLs (Test and Production), use the section at the top.

The respond setting allows us to tweak how n8n will respond to the request coming from the dashboard. It affects both the timeliness and the content of the response:

To return a custom response that is the displayed in the Tableau dashboard, we can configure the n8n node and workflow as follows:

• The Autom8 Action node should be set to Respond: When Last Node Finishes.

• The workflow should end with a node that outputs a single data point (1 column, 1 row) with column name autom8_response).

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A custom response after sending data to Slack.

An example of such a workflow:

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A workflow with a response provided at the very end.

In the example above, the Autom8 Action trigger node at the start is configured to respond when the workflow is finished.

And more importantly, the final node is designed specifically to return the message we wish to display:

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A clear and good-looking message!

Notice the field name being set to autom8_response, which is mandatory for the Extension in the Tableau dashboard to pick up and display the message.

Also, we’re referencing some data from the workflow (e.g. count of rows in the input) to customize the message, in this case confirming a review was requested for two states.

Moreover, the message supports very basic markdown features:

• **bold**: for bold text.

• *italic*: for italic text.

• [link text](https://…): for links.

• \n: for newlines.

Include the following metadata fields as output from the Autom8 trigger node:

• dashboardname: the dashboard from which the data was sent.

• timestamp: when the request was sent.

• user: a hash representing the user on Tableau. This can not be reversed to determine the user’s identity. If this is required, considering passing a calculation from the worksheet using the USERNAME() function; but bear in mind that this can be manipulated by the user, so do not use it for security/authorization.

• referrerurl: if available, the web page (e.g. on Tableau Server or Cloud) from which the call to the workflow was made. May be useful to identify e.g. the source workbook, but this does not always work due to constraints related to browsers.

• filters: a list of filters and how they are applied (type, to which worksheet, values selected, etc.)

• parameters: a list of all the parameters in the workbook, and their values.

Instead of parsing the data sent by Tableau, return the raw body.