Early Access: Add user-driven steps, tasks, and approvals to automations in Retool

đź“Ł Retool Announcements đź’Ą Product Updates
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As of May 22, 2025 the user tasks private beta is closed to new participants. Thank you for your interest in this functionality in Retool! We will be updating this post with any investments we make in this space in the future.

Sign Up For User Tasks Private Beta & Watch the User Tasks Demo!

Retool now supports the creation and assignment of user tasks in Workflows.

What’s a User Task?
User tasks are blocks in a workflow that require user input in order to proceed, and can be assigned at the group level. When triggered, a user task will pause a workflow mid-run to await a specific user action, such as submitting an approval form in a Retool app. Once the action has been taken, the workflow continues to execute, and can leverage the user task’s output in downstream logic. Watch the demo for a quick example!

User Tasks in Action
Before user tasks, doing approval processes in Retool required a ton from builders.

You would need to set up a new database to manage tasks’ state, create multiple apps to expose tasks to users, find a way to reference a permissions scheme, and string together multiple workflows to assign and notify users of tasks assigned to them.

Instead, user tasks in Workflows provide a built-in state machine to let builders create, assign, monitor, and update processes in flight.

Here’s what we’ve seen people build with user tasks so far:

  • Establishing IT approval flows to provision and audit user access to critical systems
  • Assigning urgent customer escalations to operational staff
  • Introducing human approval steps in AI-driven automations
  • Monitoring and completing multi-step compliance processes with internal stakeholders and external vendors
  • And now your use case!

Getting Started
User tasks will be available via a private beta starting the week of July 29th on cloud and in the Q3 stable release for self-hosted customers. Sign up here to get private beta access!

What’s everyone’s first project?! Comment below with ideas and questions!

Excited to hear your feedback!

Lizzie OBO Workflows

lizzie@retool.com

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Hi @lizzie! This is so exciting.

We have so many user tasks we’re almost ashamed… and definitely overwhelmed by the complexity of managing our own custom task system. This is an awesome unexpected feature.

Quick note that the video above doesn’t play (for me at least), but the loom page is fine.

Looking forward to this!

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Thanks for your comment, @matei! Super excited to get this feature in your hands this week. Thanks for the callout as well -- replaced the Loom link, hopefully works okay for people now!

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This looks really cool! We were literally just about to start building our own task system within Retool for some approval processes and escalations, so this is immediately useful. Would love to test it out as soon we can!

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Love it when the timing works out like that @Ike2! Will be sending some onboarding information out this week to those who have signed up for the beta above, so definitely do if you haven't already! :blush:

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This is epic! Can you shed a little light on how the underlying data is stored? `

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Hi there @caffeine -- In the self-hosted context, the underlying data is stored in the externalized self-hosted Postgres database that underlies all Retool deployments. In the cloud context, the data is stored in a Retool-hosted Postgres database. If you have any specific data tenancy requirements for the state machine given your hosting style, would love to hear them!

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Which plans will this be available for/what is the current ETA for release? Would love to be able to use this in my workflows!

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Hi Vlad! In private beta, we aren't limiting access to user tasks based on plan at all. Definitely sign up if you haven't already!

Right now we are still in a stage of better understanding how our customers would like to leverage user tasks, and don't have strict guidance to offer on what, if anything, will be gated when we reach the GA stage. That being said, I feel confident that all plans will be able to access user tasks with some feature limits in place for non-ENT plans, so would encourage you to try it out!

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Would love to try it out! I signed up for the private beta last week using the link under the demo video, but let me know if there's anything that I need to do. Thank you!

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Flag should be on for you as of this afternoon :slight_smile: Let me know if you have any early feedback, eager to hear what you think!

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When creating a userTask in a workflow it allows you to create an app only for the approval of that user task. How do I use an existing app instead of a brand new one? The dropdown in the userTask block in the workflow doesn't show other apps.

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Hi there @metechnologies! You read our minds! In the next iteration of this feature you will be able to select from existing apps. In the meantime, here's a loom that describes how you can do this in the current state:

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In your loom, the workflow under block userTask1 is showing App: User task - My First Workflow.

I see that you have another app in your tab called Untitled, and you're able to query the tasks from the workflow. But back in the workflow, under userTask1 isn't the App still the original app not Untitled?

Don't you need to update the app in the dropdown? Or is the workflow monitoring just for that TaskID to change state?

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Hi there! That's correct -- because the block is currently a 1:1 relationship with an app, you will have to create an app in order to instantiate a user task definition, even if you aren't planning on using that app to surface a user task. Changes coming in this space soon, but that's the correct workaround for now!

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Hi @lizzie can i still apply for beta testing?

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Hi there @Almopt! Absolutely! Can you fill out the form here? Can get it turned on for you ASAP!

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Just fill it out! Can we use it in multi-page apps? @lizzie

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Hi @almopt! Absolutely. User tasks are surfaced to apps with user action queries, so any app -- including multi-page apps-- can be used to access tasks. Just flipped the flag on for you! Sending docs over email now :slight_smile:

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