Virtual Buttons
Utilities & PersonalPress a Virtual Button to start an Alexa Routine from a flow, using the Alexa Smart Home skill that exposes numbered buttons. Agents reach smart home and physical-space automations that expose no API.
What This Integration Enables
One action is not a thin connector. It is a thesis about where the boundary should be. There is a large category of physical-space automation that exposes no API at all: the lamp above the packing bench, the speaker in the warehouse office, the plug the kettle is on, the scene the facilities manager spent an afternoon getting right. Virtual Buttons is an Alexa Smart Home skill that exposes numbered buttons, and any Alexa Routine configured to start when a button is pressed will fire. That is the whole surface, and its narrowness is deliberate.
The value is in what the connector refuses to model. It does not know what device is behind button 7, does not hold a copy of the routine, and does not need updating when the routine changes. The person who owns the space owns the routine, editing it in the app they already use, and the flow keeps calling the same number. FlowRunner agents get a way to reach the physical world at the end of a workflow that started somewhere entirely different: a form submission, a failed check, a finished batch, a delivery ETA. Whatever any other connector in the catalog can detect, this one can turn into something that happens in a room.
Without FlowRunner
With FlowRunner
Use Case Scenarios
An audible alert where the work is happening
A monitoring check on a line-side device fails. The agent waits out the debounce window so a flapping sensor does not start shouting, confirms the station is inside its shift, and calls Push Virtual Button on the button wired to a routine that announces the failure on the Echo devices in that area. The same agent posts the alert into the operations channel in Slack for the supervisors who are at their desks. One event, two audiences, and the people with their hands on the line hear it without looking at a screen.
A finished long job announced in the room
A nightly render, backup or data load finishes. The flow that manages it already knows the outcome, and for the team sharing an office the useful form of that knowledge is not another notification. The agent calls Push Virtual Button for a button whose routine speaks a short announcement and turns a lamp green. A failure presses a different button, which speaks the failure and turns the lamp amber. The colors belong to the routine, not to the flow, so the team can redefine what amber means without anybody touching the automation.
Bridging a form submission into the building
A visitor completes an arrival form in Typeform at the gate. The agent records the visit in the CRM, notifies the host, and calls Push Virtual Button for the button wired to the reception routine, which announces the visitor's arrival on the Echo at the front desk. Nothing about the reception setup had to be rebuilt to make this work, and no additional hardware went into the building.
Human-in-Loop Highlight
The gate here follows directly from the connector's deliberate blindness. Push Virtual Button is one call with one number, and the agent cannot see what is behind that number. Most of the time this does not matter, because the routine announces something or changes a light. It matters a great deal when the routine acts on a shared space: a door unlock, a shutter, a lights-out at the end of a shift, anything that changes conditions for people who are physically present and did not ask for it. When an agent's job is to fire that class of button, it stops first. A delivery ETA arrives and the agent has button 12, the dock door routine. It asks the shift supervisor: "Delivery DHL-8842 reports arrival at the dock. Press button 12 to run the dock unlock routine, or hold until the driver is confirmed on camera?" The supervisor can see the yard. The agent cannot, and it should not pretend otherwise.
There is a second, quieter reason a person belongs in this loop. Nothing happens unless a routine exists for the button being pressed, and the button number in the flow has to match the button chosen as the routine's trigger. Neither the connector nor the agent can verify that mapping, which means a silent no-op and a silent wrong-routine are indistinguishable from the flow's point of view. A person confirms the mapping when it is first wired and whenever the routine is rebuilt, which is the kind of small standing check that keeps an automation honest about what it actually knows.
Agent Capabilities
1 actionsButtons
1- Push Virtual Button Press one of your Virtual Buttons, which runs any Alexa Routine configured to start when that button is pressed. The routine can speak an announcement, control smart home devices, or perform any other routine action, and the connector does not need to know which. Used as the final step of a workflow that has to produce an effect in a physical space rather than in another system. Button numbers run from 1 to 99, and the number pressed must match the button chosen as the trigger of the routine. Button 1 is included with the free tier and the remaining buttons require a paid membership, so pressing a button outside your tier is rejected by the service.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can FlowRunner do with Virtual Buttons?
FlowRunner agents can run Push Virtual Button in Virtual Buttons.
Does connecting Virtual Buttons to FlowRunner require OAuth?
No. Virtual Buttons connects to FlowRunner with an API key, no OAuth flow required.
Can Virtual Buttons trigger a FlowRunner workflow automatically?
Virtual Buttons doesn't currently expose triggers in FlowRunner. It connects as an action step inside workflows started by another trigger.
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