## Introduction
In a fast-paced product environment, effectively onboarding users to new features is vital for adoption and satisfaction. Manual intervention to trigger walkthroughs can be cumbersome and prone to delays, impacting user engagement and product success. By automating walkthrough triggers, product teams ensure timely and personalized user guidance without manual overhead.
This tutorial demonstrates how to build an automated workflow using n8n that triggers feature walkthroughs when users qualify for new features. This is ideal for product managers, automation engineers, and operations teams looking to improve user onboarding via automated, context-aware triggers.
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## Tools and Services Integrated
– **n8n**: The automation platform that orchestrates the workflow.
– **Segment** or any Event Platform (optional): To capture user behavior and trigger events.
– **HubSpot or Intercom**: Customer data platforms to identify user qualifications.
– **WalkMe, Pendo, or Appcues**: Feature adoption tools that present walkthroughs.
– **Slack** (optional): For team notifications when walkthroughs are triggered.
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## Use Case
Automate the sending of feature walkthroughs to users who become eligible for new product features based on their activity or subscription tier. The workflow will listen for eligibility events or user attribute changes, then call the relevant walkthrough tool’s API to trigger the tutorial.
Beneficiaries: Product teams improve user engagement and reduce churn; UX teams ensure consistent onboarding; and customers get timely feature guidance without delays.
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## Detailed Step-by-Step Tutorial
### Step 1: Define Your Trigger
The automation needs a reliable event to start:
– **Example triggers:**
– Receiving a webhook from your event tracking system (e.g., Segment) when a user becomes eligible.
– A scheduled n8n workflow that queries the CRM (HubSpot) for new users with updated feature flags.
**In this tutorial, we will use a Webhook Trigger node in n8n when Segment emits a “feature_eligible” event.**
### Step 2: Set Up n8n Webhook Node
– Create a new workflow.
– Add a **Webhook** node.
– Set HTTP Method: POST
– Save the unique URL; you will send your event data here.
Example event payload from Segment might look like:
“`json
{
“userId”: “12345”,
“featureName”: “NewDashboard”,
“timestamp”: “2024-06-12T10:00:00Z”
}
“`
### Step 3: Fetch User Details from CRM
– Use the **HTTP Request** node or a dedicated CRM node (HubSpot, Intercom) to retrieve user attributes based on `userId`.
– Purpose: Validate eligibility, enrich data with name, email, subscription tier.
Configure:
– Input: `{{$json[“userId”]}}`
– API call to fetch details (e.g., GET `/users/12345`)
### Step 4: Condition Node to Validate Eligibility
– Add an **IF** node to check if the user’s subscription tier or role allows access to the new feature.
– Example: `{{$json[“subscriptionTier”]}}` == ‘Pro’
If TRUE, proceed; if FALSE, end workflow.
### Step 5: Trigger Walkthrough via API
– Add an **HTTP Request** node to send a POST request to your walkthrough tool (e.g., WalkMe).
Example for WalkMe API:
– URL: `https://api.walkme.com/v1/walkthroughs/trigger`
– Body:
“`json
{
“userId”: “{{$json[“userId”]}}”,
“walkthroughId”: “new-dashboard-tour”,
“triggerType”: “manual”
}
“`
– Headers: Include API key or Bearer token for authentication.
### Step 6: Logging and Notifications
– Optional: Add a **Slack** node to post a notification in your product channel indicating a walkthrough was triggered for the user.
Example message:
“Walkthrough ‘NewDashboard’ triggered for user 12345 (email@example.com)”
### Step 7: Error Handling
– Use the **Error Trigger** node in n8n to capture and log errors.
– Add retries or fallback nodes if API calls fail.
– Ensure validation in the IF node to reduce invalid triggers.
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## Common Errors and Tips
– **Webhook not receiving payload:** Ensure your event source (Segment) is configured correctly and sends the expected JSON.
– **Authentication errors with APIs:** Double-check API keys, tokens, and required headers.
– **Conditional logic missing users:** Confirm your eligibility logic matches your product criteria.
– **Rate limits exceeded:** Implement throttling in n8n or batch processing if many users trigger simultaneously.
– **Timeouts:** For slow APIs, increase the node timeout settings.
Robustness tips:
– Validate incoming data schema using n8n’s Function nodes.
– Include idempotency checks to avoid triggering walkthroughs multiple times for the same user-event.
– Log all steps to a dedicated database or Google Sheet for audit.
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## Scaling and Adaptations
– **Multiple Features:** Parameterize the workflow by feature names to reuse the same process for various features.
– **Bulk Eligibility Update:** Combine with scheduled workflows to process batches from CRM for users who became eligible offline.
– **Multi-Channel Walkthroughs:** Extend to trigger walkthroughs in mobile apps or email campaigns using other tools.
– **Analytics Integration:** Push triggered walkthrough events back into your analytics tools to measure adoption.
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## Summary
Automating walkthrough triggers with n8n speeds up user education and feature adoption while reducing manual overhead. By integrating event sources, CRM systems, and walkthrough tools smoothly, product teams can deliver contextual, timely onboarding that scales as their user base grows. Leveraging n8n’s flexibility, conditional logic, and API integrations creates a robust, auditable, and adaptable automation.
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## Bonus Tip
To further personalize walkthroughs, enrich the workflow with user behavior data (e.g., from Mixpanel or Google Analytics) to trigger feature guidance exactly when users attempt relevant actions, not just on eligibility, improving contextual onboarding and user satisfaction.
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Start building your workflow today using this step-by-step guide, and see immediate improvements in how your users discover and adopt new features.