Triggering a workflow with a webhook

A webhook lets an external system fire a CloudRadial AutomationAI workflow with an HTTP request, so another tool can start your automation the moment something happens on its side. This article is for Admins and Owners and covers enabling the webhook trigger, the generated URL and secret, how the request payload reaches the workflow, and how a webhook differs from the Integration Key.

Before you start, open the workflow you want to trigger in the Designer. The webhook is configured on that workflow, and your changes only take effect once you publish, so plan to publish after you enable it.

In this article:

• Enabling the webhook trigger
• The webhook URL and secret
• How the payload reaches the workflow
• Webhook vs. the Integration Key

Enabling the Webhook Trigger

The webhook is the Start node's trigger, and you configure it from the workflow's Properties page.

1. Open the workflow in the Designer.
2. Select Properties, then find the Webhook section.
3. Turn on Enable webhook. This saves to the draft automatically.
4. Publish the workflow. The webhook only becomes active once a published version has it enabled.

Important -> While the webhook is off, or before you publish, requests to the workflow's webhook URL return 404.

The Webhook URL and Secret

With the webhook enabled, AutomationAI shows a generated Webhook URL and a Secret, each with a Copy button.

• Callers must send the secret in the X-Crauto-Webhook-Secret request header. Requests without a matching header are rejected with 401.
• Use Regenerate to roll the secret. The old secret is invalidated once you publish, so update your caller at the same time.

Keep both the URL and the secret confidential. The section also provides a ready-to-run example request you can copy to test the trigger.

How the Payload Reaches the Workflow

POST a JSON body to the webhook URL to fire the workflow. The body lands in the workflow as the trigger output, which your nodes read with binding expressions of the form {{ nodes.trigger.output.<field> }}.

For example, if the body contains an order id, it is available as {{ nodes.trigger.output.orderId }}. For the full data contract between nodes, see the article on passing data between nodes.

Webhook vs. the Integration Key

These two are easy to confuse, so here is the difference:

• A webhook secret is scoped to a single workflow and authenticates inbound requests to that workflow's trigger. It lives on the workflow's Properties page.
• The Integration Key is a static API key that ServiceAI uses to poll your workspace's webhook catalog. It lives under Settings > Integrations.

They are managed separately. For details on the Integration Key, see the article on connecting ServiceAI with an Integration Key.

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