Examples & Use Cases
Need inspiration? Here are a few example use cases of Autom8.
Request Slack Review: connect Slack to Tableau, send data from one to the other seamlessly.
Lead Identification: create Trello/JIRA/... cards from a dashboard, e.g. a ticket for a support use case or a lead to follow up on.
Customer Satisfaction: leverage the analysis from a Tableau dashboard to contact displeased customers strategically, and... automatically.
Data Alert: run an action without human interaction, but based on a data condition.
Writeback: a classic - update the data in your database straight from the dashboard.
Tableau - Manage Inactive Users: one of the many Tableau Server/Cloud admin-related use cases. Creating reporting on inactive users, stale content, etc. is fun. And now, it’s also directly actionable.
Inventory & Procurement: a widespread, common dashboard topic: inventory reporting. Now made actionable with Autom8!
“Live” data refresh for a dashboard with extract: in a single click, without leaving the dashboard, update the underlying extract and refresh the visible data.
Request Slack Review
Type: Autom8 Action
Concept: “Insights where you work”, i.e. in Slack/Teams without having to copy/paste and go back and forth.
Lead Identification
Type: Autom8 Action
Concept: connect to any system, platform, CRM, ERP, etc. Trello is one example, but literally any platform can be connected through n8n.
Customer Satisfaction
Type: Autom8 Action
Concept: AI/Agentic workflow. Delegate part of the work to an agent and use human-in-the-loop for final approval.
Data Alert
Type: Autom8 Alert
Concept: without human interaction, monitor a dashboard and trigger an alert or action when a data condition is met.
Writeback
Type: Autom8 Action
Concept: database writeback.
Using Autom8 for Writeback
There are a few things to be said about using Autom8 and n8n for performing writeback operations with databases, mainly pertaining to security. First:
Potential security risk
Using writeback functionality comes at a risk. As soon as writeback comes into play, the software used (n8n, Autom8, the database) are no longer solely responsible for the security of the data.
→ The author(s) of the n8n workflow and Tableau dashboard become responsible for the security design, and its potential flaws.
This is the classic “with great power, comes great responsibility”. Autom8 makes implementing writeback from Tableau dashboards a breeze, but it should be done carefully. A few basic guidelines…
Database user/account used for writeback
n8n nodes that connect to your database to perform writeback will have to authenticate. It is recommended to use the principle of least privilege, and thus use an account with privileges only for writing to the target table(s).
In other words, it’s recommended to not give this account any read access to any other tables than the ones to which the writeback will occur. The implementation will vary depending on the database engine used.
SQL Injection
Depending on how your n8n workflow is structured, and how it performs e.g. INSERT and UPDATE queries, it may be opening up opportunities for SQL injection (a very common technique against data-driven applications).
To minimize the risk of SQL injection, general best practices (used outside of n8n and Autom8) should always be used:
Use parametrized statements if the n8n node and database engine support it (e.g. Postgres).
Ensure other mechanisms (e.g. multi-statement block for Snowflake) function as expected where needed.
Perform input validation/sanitization before the actual SQL statements, e.g. a Code node that strips or escapes single quotes and semicolons from any user-supplied values before they reach the SQL string.
Other
Aside from the above, assume that the input can be manipulated by the user at any time. In other words, don’t rely on logic in the Tableau calculations, workbook, or Extension to secure the input. Tech-savvy users would still be capable of intercepting and tampering with messages being sent to Autom8 and n8n. They are, after all, the client communicating with the service. Hence, assume that data sent to n8n and used as input for the flow should still be validated and reviewed; whether used for writeback or something else.
Tableau - Manage Inactive Users
Type: Autom8 Action
Concept: “Tableau on Tableau”. Not only Tableau, but manage any platform though its reporting/analytics/…
Inventory & Procurement
Type: Autom8 Action
Concept: business-specific use case.
“Live” data refresh for a dashboard with extract
Can we trigger the refresh of a workbook's extract from a dashboard on Server/Cloud, like we can refresh data for a live connection?
Now, we can! This can be achieved by having Autom8 kick off the extract refresh in the background, and then simulate clicking the "refresh" button, which is a relatively simple workflow in n8n (see below).
Why? It's not for long-running extracts, but at Biztory we were testing a workbook with the new REST API connector, which requires an extract. We wanted to display near-live survey results though, so we did not want to go and refresh the extract elsewhere in the UI and then go back to the page.
Autom8 takes care of this; press the button, the refresh is kicked off. It checks every 3 seconds whether it's done and when that is the case, the data is updated right away in the workbook, all after that single click!