On product creation, populate metafields with pre-defined data

Shopify Plus

Topic summary

Goal: Automatically populate product metafields with predefined data based on product type using Shopify Flow.

Context: The merchant wants products like “Ceramic Mug” to auto-fill metafields (key_features, care, dimensions) from a central data source. They created a metaobject (“Product Type Features”) with fields: Product Type, Key Features, Care, Dimensions, and attempted a Flow: trigger on product added, condition on product type, then update metafields.

Key technical terms:

  • Metafields: Custom fields attached to products for additional data.
  • Metaobjects: Reusable structured data entries that store content once and reference it elsewhere.
  • Shopify Flow: Automation tool for creating event-driven workflows.

Latest update: Shopify staff confirms metaobject support in Flow is not yet available but is on the roadmap. No method currently exists to reference metaobject entries in Flow’s “Update product meta field” value.

Outcome: No workaround or alternative solution was provided in the thread. Action: Wait for future Flow updates adding metaobject support.

Status: Unresolved/ongoing; the core question (referencing metaobjects in Flow) remains unanswered until the feature is released.

Summarized with AI on December 26. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello! I’m not entirely sure what I’m after can be done currently, but I’m hoping that maybe there’s an alternative that I haven’t thought of.

When I create a new product, I’d like to use Flow to populate a variety of metafields with predefined data based on the product type.

For example, if I create a product with the type “Ceramic Mug”, I want to automatically fill in metafields such as “key_features”, “care”, and “sizes” with data that’s defined elsewhere. I was going the route of creating a metaobject called “Product Type Features”, then creating entries for my different product types, but I don’t know how or if I can reference these metaobject entries from Flow.

My metaobject looks like:

Name: Product Type Features

Fields:

Product Type (display name)

Key Features

Care

Dimensions

My Flow so far is incredibly basic, and just looks like:

Start when product added to store

Check if Product “product type” is equal to “Ceramic Mug”

Update product meta field

– Metafield Namespace is: custom

– Metafield Key is: key_features

– Value: ???

What would I use in the value space to reference back to a metaobject entry (if that’s possible)?

If there’s another way anyone would suggest to accomplish what I’m after, I’d be open to suggestions!

Thank you!

2

Hi @wildpour ,

We’re still working on adding metaobject support to Flow, but it is very much on our radar and roadmap. Stay tuned for more on that in the future.

3

Thanks for the reply @DaveMcV ! Looking forward to that change.