How To Trigger A Workflow From Another In Github Actions Read Version

Leo Migdal

-Dec 4, 2025, 7:30 PM

how to trigger a workflow from another in github actions read version

GitHub Actions has revolutionized CI/CD by enabling automated workflows directly in your GitHub repository. A common scenario in software development is the need to trigger downstream processes—like building and tagging a Docker image—when a specific event occurs, such as a version update. In this guide, we’ll walk through a step-by-step workflow that: By the end, you’ll have a robust, automated pipeline that ensures your Docker images and Git tags stay in sync with your project’s versioning. GitHub Actions workflows are triggered by events (e.g., push, pull_request). For cross-workflow triggering, we’ll use repository_dispatch, which allows external systems (or other workflows) to trigger a workflow via the GitHub API.

First, let’s define our project structure. We’ll keep it simple: How to automatically trigger GitHub Actions workflows To learn more about workflows and triggering workflows, see Workflows. When you use the repository's GITHUB_TOKEN to perform tasks, events triggered by the GITHUB_TOKEN, with the exception of workflow_dispatch and repository_dispatch, will not create a new workflow run. This prevents you from accidentally creating recursive workflow runs.

For example, if a workflow run pushes code using the repository's GITHUB_TOKEN, a new workflow will not run even when the repository contains a workflow configured to run when push events occur. For more information, see Use GITHUB_TOKEN for authentication in workflows. If you do want to trigger a workflow from within a workflow run, you can use a GitHub App installation access token or a personal access token instead of GITHUB_TOKEN to trigger events that... If you use a GitHub App, you'll need to create a GitHub App and store the app ID and private key as secrets. For more information, see Making authenticated API requests with a GitHub App in a GitHub Actions workflow. If you use a personal access token, you'll need to create a personal access token and store it as a secret.

For more information about creating a personal access token, see Managing your personal access tokens. For more information about storing secrets, see Using secrets in GitHub Actions. Communities for your favorite technologies. Explore all Collectives Stack Overflow for Teams is now called Stack Internal. Bring the best of human thought and AI automation together at your work.

Bring the best of human thought and AI automation together at your work. Learn more Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most. Bring the best of human thought and AI automation together at your work. Note: if you want to trigger a workflow from a workflow present in the same repository, you do not need to create a GitHub App and can skip to Step 3 (and remove the... Create a workflow file (e.g., .github/workflows/triggered-workflow.yml) that will be triggered by another workflow.

Create another workflow file (e.g., .github/workflows/triggering-workflow.yml) that will trigger the above workflow. Posted on May 16, 2025 tags: github-actions, ci If your builds run on github actions and you want to trigger one workflow from another, you might first believe that you can simply push a tag in workflow A and the have workflow... Github actions specifically deactivates that kind of workflow triggering though, to avoid recursive or unintended workflow runs, as documented here. This is surprising for many, as it was for me. Workaround: you can trigger another workflow using the github action REST API, e.g.

like so: Posted on Feb 7, 2024 • Originally published at nieknijland.nl Do you need to trigger a GitHub action workflow from another workflow? This is possible! You can use the GitHub API to trigger a workflow from basically anywhere. Let's dive into how this works and think of some practical use cases where this could be handy.

In this blog post I'm going to trigger a GitHub action workflow from a workflow in another repository. I'll reference to these repository by "target repository" and "trigger repository". At the base of this is the "repository dispatch event". This is an event that can be triggered using the GitHub API and can be acted upon by listening to the repository_dispatch Webhook event payload. Documentation about the GitHub API endpoint can be found here and documentation about triggering the workflow based on the event can be found here. This should be enough information to get you going.

However, if you want a practical example, please read on! Jul 3, 2024 · Travis Rodgers · 3 min read So you’re creating a workflow in GitHub actions and you want to call another workflow from it. Let’s say you have a GitHub action workflow that deploys your code to your website. We’ll call the file main.yml. You also have another GitHub action workflow that gets the most popular posts from Google Analytics and updates a file in your repo that your website will use for its “trending posts.” We’ll call...

But after you get the most popular posts from Google Analytics, you want to then deploy those changes to your site. GitHub Actions triggers are conditions that activate workflows in a repository. They are events prompting automation when certain actions occur in the project. Triggers rely on events, which can range from code pushes, pull requests, or scheduled times. This automation simplifies repetitive tasks. The integration of triggers within GitHub’s CI/CD pipeline allows teams to create workflows aligned with their development practices.

By defining actions that fire the workflows, project management and code quality can improve significantly. Understanding triggers is essential for utilizing GitHub Actions effectively and aligning automation strategies with project requirements. Events in GitHub Actions are actions such as pushing a commit or creating an issue. They act as signals for GitHub Actions workflows to start executing. Events can originate from GitHub’s platform, be scheduled, or be defined by users for custom needs. Built-in events include the standard set of actions within GitHub, such as commits, pull requests, and releases.

These predefined events are integral to the development process and are commonly used to automate testing, deployment, and other tasks. With built-in events, developers can create workflows that respond automatically to frequently occurring actions. Custom events allow users to define triggers tailored to unique project requirements. This flexibility ensures that teams can adapt GitHub Actions to meet their needs, optimizing their CI/CD processes while maintaining control over automation. Creating custom events involves defining new triggers and configuring workflows to respond accordingly.

How To Trigger A Workflow From Another In Github Actions Read Version

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