Friday, just before five. The knitting mill has answered: the fibre composition and weight of the new running tights, and a photo of the care label. Who checks it now? And who finds out on Monday that the running tights’ product passport is ready to be signed?
In many companies the answer is a forwarded email, a spreadsheet with a status column or a colleague who happens to remember. In Transpareo the answer is the tasks: each one says whose turn it is, by when, and which product it concerns. From now on these workflows reach your other tools as well through n8n, from the shop to merchandise management.
A task for every step
A task is something one person asks of another: check a supplier declaration, fill in the missing care instructions, answer an auditor. It goes to one person or to a whole group, with a due date, a priority and the files it needs, and it is attached to the product it concerns.
With a group task, whoever reaches for it first takes it, and everyone else sees who holds it. So nothing is left lying because everyone assumes someone else is on it.
The task says whose turn it is.
The number beside the bell counts what is waiting for you. Reviews also go out by email the moment they are handed out, and a morning mail gathers everything else: what is new and what is overdue. On a day with neither, no mail comes.
Nobody has to ask where something stands, and a request stays in view until someone has dealt with it, however full the inbox.
Checked before it counts
The running tights face two reviews. Both make sure someone looks before a figure counts.
The first is of the knitting mill’s answer. It lands with everyone who may edit the product, and whoever takes it decides field by field: accept, correct, or send back with a remark. Only once no field is left open does it become a new version of the product. What the mill sent never reaches your records unchecked.
The second stands before the signature. If someone who may not publish passports asks for a signature, the request goes as a review to everyone who may publish and edit the passport. The passport stays as it was until someone decides. The review says what approving will do and lists the open recommendations of the validation, so you see at a glance whether anything is still missing.
Requests to suppliers are tasks too
The knitting mill’s answer did not come out of nowhere. Three weeks ago someone in purchasing asked the knitting mill for the data directly, and that request is itself a task: it belongs to the person who sent it and falls due on the day the mill’s link expires. Until then it waits among the things that depend on others, and Transpareo reminds the mill before the deadline, so nobody in purchasing has to chase it.
The mill needed no account and no software to answer. It replied through the link, on a phone and in its own language.
With the answer the task is done, and the review begins. If purchasing withdraws the request or it runs out unanswered, the task closes with that reason. If the mill’s own staff have an account in the application manager, they find the request as a task as well.
Requests sit in the same table as all your other tasks, so you follow the work with suppliers and the work in your own team in one place.
Into your other tools with n8n
n8n is a tool in which you put workflows together from building blocks without programming. Transpareo now has a building block of its own. You connect it with your workspace’s address and an access you create in the application manager, and you decide what that access may do.
A workflow can then start as soon as a product or a component is created or changed, and likewise for every passport: when it is created, changed, published or recalled, or when something else happens in its life, such as a repair or recycling. Once the running tights’ passport is signed, the workflow tells your shop system and lets the team know in the chat.
The other way round, a workflow creates a new product from your merchandise management system in Transpareo and asks product development, with a task, to add the care instructions. The product is created once, in the system where it is looked after anyway, and nobody types it in a second time.
If you would rather build it yourself, you find the same in the public description of our interface: a passport’s events go as a signed message to an address of your choice, so the receiver can check that it comes from Transpareo, or you read them off in order.
The decision stays with people
A workflow with an access of its own acts as itself. It asks people for things and can withdraw or reopen what it asked for. Only a person takes on and finishes a task.
A workflow may ask for a review. A person makes the decision.
What a workflow may do you set through the rights of its access, as narrowly as you need. Where a right is missing, Transpareo refuses the call and names the right it lacks. A workflow without the right to publish therefore cannot sign a passport, but it can ask someone to review and publish it. So you decide whether a workflow may sign, or whether every signature passes through a person.
That makes some workflows one step longer, and we think the step is right: a published version is signed and cannot be taken back. The assistant in the application manager works with your tasks in your name, with exactly your rights and with your approval before every sensitive step.
Make and Zapier follow
We started with n8n, and Make and Zapier come next. Until then you reach Transpareo from any tool that can talk to an interface. AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT already work directly in your workspace, through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and with the rights you grant them when you sign in.
Back to the running tights
On Monday morning the review has been in the product manager’s inbox since Friday. She accepts the knitting mill’s data and asks for the signature, and by midday someone with the right to do so has approved the passport. The shop knows, and the team has read about it in the chat, without anyone forwarding an email.
Nobody had to ask whose turn it was, and the passport shows what the mill delivered and someone in the team checked.
Questions on this article
Do I need n8n to use tasks and reviews?
No. Tasks, reviews and requests to suppliers are built into Transpareo and work without any other tool. You need n8n only once a workflow should take in your other systems as well.
How do I connect n8n to my workspace?
You create an access for programs in the application manager and receive a key and a secret for it. You enter both, together with your workspace’s address, in the Transpareo building block. What the access may do is set by the groups you assign it to, and you can create a suitable group right there as you set up the access.
Can a workflow give my team tasks?
Yes. A workflow asks a person or a group for something, with a due date, a priority and a note, and attaches the task to the product, component or passport it concerns. Your team sees it like any other task, at the bell and in the morning mail. Only a person can take it on and finish it.
Can a workflow in n8n publish passports?
Only if you give its access that right. Without it, every attempt is refused, and the workflow can ask a person to review and publish the passport instead. A published version is signed and cannot be taken back, so grant the right with care.
What does the Transpareo building block cost?
The building block itself costs nothing. It is open source under the MIT licence, and on GitHub you can read what it does before you put it to work.
Where does my data stay when a workflow reads it?
In Transpareo it is held in the EU, with European providers, and every workspace has its own database. A workflow reads only what the rights of its access allow, and what it reads goes wherever your n8n runs. With narrowly drawn rights, you decide yourself what leaves your workspace.
What about Make and Zapier?
Both follow after n8n. Until then you reach Transpareo from any tool through the publicly documented interface. You can connect AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT today through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which makes every workspace reachable at its own address. You enter the address in the assistant, sign in and grant access; there is nothing to install. More on this: Transpareo in the agentic age.
