Using workflows to alter product status and inventory policy

Shopify Plus

Topic summary

Goal: Automate changing Shopify product status (e.g., to Active) via Shopify Flow. Early attempts to use “Update product metafield” failed; no native action existed at first.

Key updates:

  • Initially confirmed: No Flow action to change product status.
  • Later update: A new Flow action “Update Product Status” is now available, supporting archived, active, and draft.

Context and use cases:

  • Need to bulk activate products at season launch; prior channel publishing flows became ineffective after a channels update because product status still required manual change.
  • Desire to auto-archive products when stock goes negative and auto-activate when stock returns.
  • Interim workaround mentioned: Matrixify for bulk status updates (before the new action existed).

Current state and next steps:

  • The new action addresses the core request; users can now build flows to set status directly.
  • One user requested a downloadable example; guidance given to start a new topic with specifics. No example flow provided yet.

Unresolved: Implementation details for specific workflows; inventory policy not addressed.

Summarized with AI on January 14. AI used: gpt-5.
1

I’m attempting to use a workflow to set a product status to active. The problem I seem to have is getting the action to work.

I have the trigger and checks all set up as I need but whilst I can check the product status there’s no dedicated action for changing it.

After some digging, it looked like I could utilise the “Update product metafield” action to control it

but I haven’t had any success.

It is likely that I’m using the action wrong so I’ve attached an image of my guess work for updating the product status.

Does anyone know if what I’m doing is wrong or if this is even possible?

Shopify - Update product metafield.PNG
Shopify - Update product metafield.PNG639×643 12.8 KB

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2

Hi @FDM_Tom !

Currently, there is no Flow action available to change the status of a product.

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3

Hey Josh,

Are Shopify planning on working on this? It would make an eCommerce Managers life so much more seamless if so. :grinning_face: At season launch I have to uploading thousands of products and I’d love to give my users access to these ASAP. The flow for publishing products is also a little miss-leading as yes, you can automatically publish product to a channel but that’s useless if we still need to manually update the product status.

I had a flow that worked last year, however, with the recent channels update, my flow no longer works and there is no resolution around this, apart from manual publishing or using Matrixify to bulk update the status of products.

2 Likes
4

I also need this, it is a very good option for when a product falls negative, I archive it and if in the future the stock changes, I activate it again and it is available in the store

5

FYI, there is now an action to Update Product Status (to archived, active, or draft)

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6

I have been trying to do this but struggling to write the flow. Is there one I can download or can someone help me?

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7

This is the place to ask for help, but for best results start a new topic and clearly describe how you want it to work.

1 Like