Elevate Your n8n Workflows: Google Sheets as Your Intuitive UI 🚀

As you dive deeper into automating with n8n, you'll often find yourself needing more than just simple data processing. Imagine a scenario where you want to:

• Store input data in a structured, tabular format that's easy to review and manage.
• Execute your n8n workflow only on specific, relevant parts of your dataset.
• Capture new fields generated by your n8n workflow's output, neatly organized.

In essence, you're looking for a user interface (UI) for your n8n workflows. While dedicated UIs can be complex to build, Google Sheets offers a remarkably popular, accessible, and straightforward solution. Its seamless integration with n8n makes it an ideal candidate for managing your workflow's inputs and outputs.

Let's walk through a practical example to demonstrate how you can leverage Google Sheets as an effective UI for your n8n automations.

Setting Up Your Google Sheet: The Foundation of Your UI

First things first, we need a Google Sheet to serve as our interface. We'll create a simple sheet with three key fields: Color, Status, and Number.

• Color: This column will hold our primary input data – in this case, just a color name (e.g., "Red", "Blue", "Green").
• Status: This is a crucial control field. It will indicate whether a row is READY for processing by our n8n workflow or if it has already been DONE. This allows us to selectively process data.
• Number: This column will be our output field. We'll use n8n to calculate the string length of the Color name and populate this column.

By using these fields, Color acts as our input, Number as our output, and Status provides the necessary control for sequential processing and clear visibility into what's been completed.

Building Your n8n Workflow: Step-by-Step Automation

Now, let's switch over to n8n and configure our workflow to interact with this Google Sheet.

Step 1: Reading Data with the Google Sheets NodeThe

Our first step in n8n is to read the data from our Google Sheet. We'll use the Google Sheets node for this. Configure it to read all rows where the Status column is set to READY. This ensures that our workflow only processes new or unhandled items.

Once you execute this node, you'll see your tabular data from the Google Sheet, specifically filtered to show only the rows marked READY. This immediate feedback confirms your connection and filter are working correctly.

Step 2: Processing Data with Loop and Set Nodes

Next, we'll add a Loop node followed by a Set node within that loop. The Loop node is essential because it allows us to process each READY row individually.

Inside the Set node, we'll perform two important actions:

1. Pass row_number to output: It's vital to retain the original row_number from the Google Sheet. This number will be used later to update the correct row.

2. Calculate and return the length of the Color name: This will be the value we write back into the Number column in our Google Sheet.

3. Update Status to DONE: After processing a row, we'll change its Status to DONE. This prevents the same row from being processed again in subsequent workflow executions.

Step 3: Updating Rows with the Google Sheets Node (Again!)

Finally, we'll add another Google Sheets node, but this time, its purpose is to update the rows we've just processed.

n8n is quite smart here! It will automatically map the columns from your workflow's output to the corresponding columns in your Google Sheet. Crucially, it will use the row_number we passed through the Set node to match and update the correct row in your sheet.

Executing and Verifying Your Workflow

With all nodes configured, it's time to execute our n8n workflow and observe the magic!

The n8n output should look exactly as expected, showing the Number (length of the color name) and the Status updated to DONE for each processed row.

Now, let's hop back to our Google Sheet itself to confirm the changes.

Fantastic! The Google Sheet has been updated as well. The Number column now contains the calculated lengths, and the Status for those rows is DONE.

Controlling Your Workflow's Input

Here's the real power of this setup: If you execute your n8n workflow again right now, nothing will happen. Why? Because there are no more rows with the Status set to READY! This simple yet effective mechanism allows you to fully control which input values your n8n workflow processes. You can add new READY rows whenever you need to trigger the workflow for new data.

This approach not only provides a clear way to feed input values to your n8n workflow but also gives you immediate visibility into the output values and the processing status of each item.

You can access the Google Sheet used in this example here and find the n8n template here to get started quickly!