WIL Trigger Node

The WIL Trigger node starts a workflow when a user clicks a WIL Button trigger or submits a CHEFS form trigger. WIL runs the workflow internally with the workflow owner's credentials (the triggering user is passed to the node as data, not impersonated), so there is no webhook URL to copy or protect.

Once a workflow containing this node is published, it appears in the workflow dropdown of the WIL trigger form.

How It Works

1. Add WIL Trigger as the first node and publish the workflow.
2. In WIL, create a Button or CHEFS Form trigger and pick the workflow (and node) from the dropdown.
3. When the trigger fires, the external-hooks service checks the caller is allowed, re-validates that the workflow is still published and the node still exists, then starts the execution at this node.

The node does not listen for anything itself. WIL stores only the workflow id and the node id, so renaming the node or the workflow does not break a trigger. Unpublishing the workflow or deleting the node shows the trigger as Unpublished / Node removed in WIL, and firing it returns 409 WIL_TARGET_UNAVAILABLE.

Parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
Display Label	node name	Name shown in the WIL dropdown.
Description	–	Help text shown next to the workflow.
Accepted Sources	Button, CHEFS Form	Which WIL trigger types may select this workflow.
Input Source	Accept Any Input	passthrough or declared workflowInputs fields. Declared fields are shown when configuring a button, and their types are validated on save.
Respond	Immediately	lastNode waits for the run and returns the last node's output to WIL.
Response Timeout (s)	30 (max 120)	Only for lastNode. On timeout WIL answers 202 and the run continues.

Changing the parameter names or defaults requires the same change in external-hooks helpers/wil-trigger-node.ts, because n8n omits default-valued parameters from saved workflow JSON.

Output

One item per fire:

{
  "source": "wil",
  "trigger": { "id": "…", "type": "button", "name": "Approve" },
  "actor": { "email": "user@gov.bc.ca", "tenantId": "…", "roles": ["…"], "groups": ["…"] },
  "input": { "requestId": "abc-123" },
  "firedAt": "2026-10-06T19:00:00.000Z"
}

• Button: input is the configured input values (legacy JSON body as fallback).
• CHEFS form: input is the submission.
• Declared fields that were not supplied are null.
• In the editor, Execute step emits a sample item built from the declared fields.

Operations

• WIL_N8N_NODE_TRIGGERS_ENABLED=false disables the feature (dropdown empty, firing returns 503) without a redeploy of the node.
• WIL_TRIGGER_NODE_TYPES overrides the accepted node type strings (default CUSTOM.wilTrigger,community-nodes.wilTrigger, the prefix depends on how n8n loads the package).
• Runs start with execution mode trigger, so they appear in the execution list like any trigger-started run and count as normal executions.