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Read about creative workflows, awesome app tips and interesting use cases.

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  • 680 Replies

How we automated the replacement of hundreds of images in the Zapier Co...

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Replace Blank/Empty/Null Values in Array with Default Value Using Code

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Please stop automating emails that should be written by a human

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334 Topics
Janine_Anderson
Janine_AndersonZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Automation ideas for your email newsletter

Hey, Zapier community! Janine from the blog team here with another set of automation tips for you, this time about email newsletters.I've often had a hand in creating email newsletters for my company. Sometimes, they were completely automated. Other times, they were completely manual. And often I wished for something somewhere in the middle.Staff writer Krystina Martinez put together a collection of ways you can use automation to improve how you manage your email newsletter, like adding or segmenting subscribers, keeping lists up-to-date in your CRM, repurposing campaigns as content, and creating backups. Read her article and pick one new Zap to try.Improve your email newsletter with these tips Then, come back here and tell us how it went!

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Janine_Anderson
3 years ago
deb
debZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Automate your Google Alerts

Hi there! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. We recently published an article about how to use Google Alerts for SEO. It was written by a small business owner who relies on Google Alerts to do things like find guest post opportunities, get ideas for blog articles, and get more backlinks.But here’s the thing:tThe only two delivery methods for Google Alerts are email and RSS. And if you’re like most humans, you assume RSS is a thing you don’t want to use. But it is! I promise. If you choose the RSS delivery method, you can then use Zapier to get the alerts sent to wherever you want: your team chat app, your to-do list, your notes app, a spreadsheet whatever.That means all your Google Alerts end up in a place you’ll actually read them, and they don’t clog your inbox in the meantime.Here’s how to track Google Alerts in any appDo you have any Google Alerts tips or tricks? Let me know in the comments, and we might feature you on the Zapier blog!   

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3 years ago
deb
debZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Automate your files to spend less time in the cloud

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. As a user of Box (work), Dropbox (home), and Google Drive (both), I get the fact that the cloud storage options can be a little overwhelming. They all feel...vaguely similar?That's why we recently published an article about what to look for when you're evaluating cloud storage apps:How to evaluate and choose a cloud storage appOne of the main criteria is integration capabilities. The whole point of the cloud is to store stuff—your cloud storage app is not a place you want to hang out. Instead, try things like automatically saving certain email attachments to the cloud, saving new social media posts to the cloud, and more.(Here are more tips on how to keep your files and folders organized with automation.)Which cloud storage app do you use—and why? Let me know in the comments!

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deb
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Behind the Scenes: Multiple Ways to Tackle the Same Workflow Challenge

Well, well, well. This wasn't the post that I set out to write but during the course of trying to create a Workflow Wednesday article I realized I was faced with several possible options for accomplishing my goal. So I thought I'd give you a little behind-the-scenes look at my thought process :)The Workflow What I'm ultimately trying to accomplish is to use the Zapier Chrome extension to trigger a Zap that will auto-generate an image that looks something like this:Source: https://zapier.com/apps/slack/integrations/google-sheetsHow to Create the Image AutomaticallyThe way we have the image auto-generated is by using an app called Glitterly. My Thought Process Going InTrigger: Zapier Chrome Extension (trigger from the 2-app page)Action: Get the app names from the URL (https://zapier.com/apps/slack/integrations/google-sheets)Action: Look up the app logos, to insert them into the image template in GlitterlyAction: Send the image link back to the Chrome extensionIn Reality, There Are Multip

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nicksimard
3 years ago
deb
debZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Create more effective lead gen forms with automation

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. We've been writing a lot about lead gen recently—we know it's a pain point for marketers, and so we've pulled in experts and business owners to offer their perspectives. Most recently, we published an article with tips for creating more effective lead gen forms.5 tips for creating effective lead generation formsBut, of course, creating the perfect lead form is just the first step. If you get submissions and then either forget to check them or don't get to them quickly enough, you'll lose the lead. So (say it with me): automate the process.No matter what tool you use for your lead gen forms—whether it's a standalone form app like Google Forms, an embedded form on your WordPress site, or a paid lead ad form on LinkedIn or Facebook—you can connect it to your other tools to be sure nothing slips through the cracks. (Here are some more lead management automation tips to get you started—or bring you to the next level.)How do you automate your lead gen and

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deb
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Formatter Features: MEDIAN/AVERAGE and ROUNDUP/ROUNDDOWN in spreadsheet-style formulas

What’s up Zappers? Welcome to the 4th installment of the Formatter Features series (and last of the spreadsheet-style formula posts). If you haven’t done so already, please check out the first three:What We’ll be CoveringMEDIAN / AVERAGEMEDIAN: Returns the median (the middle value) of a list of numbersAVERAGE: Returns the average of a list of numbersROUNDDOWN / ROUNDUPROUNDDOWN: Returns a number rounded up to a certain number of decimal placesROUNDUP: Returns a number rounded up to a certain number of decimal placesWhen Might You Use Each One?Let’s take a look at some use cases for each of the above-mentioned functions. That might help you to understand the relevance of these particular spreadsheet-style formulas.MEDIAN / AVERAGEFirst, let’s look at the difference between the median and average of a set of numbers. You may have seen them used interchangeably, and in some cases the results might be close. Depending what you’re trying to calculate you may want to use one over the other.M

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nicksimard
3 years ago
Janine_Anderson
Janine_AndersonZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Use automation to put your contact form to work

Hi, folks! Janine here, one of the managing editors on the blog, dropping in to share an article with you on some ways to use automation to grow your business. Today’s focus: Contact forms. These are important tools. They let you gather leads and get feedback. That kind of information is crucial for your business, by bringing in new customers or clients and making sure you know what your customers want or need from you.   We wrote about three ways that automation can help you leverage the insight you gather from your forms to grow your business by: Making follow-ups instant so warm leads stay warm Adding customers to your CRM without data entry so you and your team focus on the customers, not on updating your database Putting user feedback where you can use it so you keep customers in mind as you plan new features and offerings Head to our blog post to learn more and find some pre-selected Zaps you can use to get started.

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3 years ago
Janine_Anderson
Janine_AndersonZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How to automate a manual process without feeling overwhelmed

Hey there, Zapier Community! Janine here from the Zapier blog team. One of our staff writers recently talked with a few Zapier Experts, @AndrewJDavison_Luhhu  of Luhhu and Paul Kortman of Connex Digital, about how they approach automation—particularly for complicated processes that might feel overwhelming.Their recommendations came down to these five things:  Start with an outline Find the inefficiencies Review the decision points Dive in and start simple Stay flexible For more on how to put these tips in action, read our piece:How to automate a manual process without feeling overwhelmed What manual processes do you want to automate? (Or, if you've automated something that you're proud of, share that in the comments!)

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Janine_Anderson
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Retrieve existing items from an RSS feed and store them in Airtable

Howdy, Zappers! Nick here, with another workflow...on Wednesday (would ya look at that). I personally think that RSS feeds can be a neat way to retrieve data, but there’s a limitation where our RSS by Zapier app only works on new items created after your Zap is enabled.The ChallengeI’ve had multiple people ask me if it’s possible to retrieve existing RSS items, rather than creating a Zap and triggering it moving forward. It’s not obvious because if we look at the RSS by Zapier app we’ll see this for actions:There’s no option to retrieve RSS items from a feed :( As you can see, we don’t have an action that can check an RSS feed and pull in existing items. Have no fear! Workflow Wednesday is here :)The WorkaroundThis isn’t something that many people know, necessarily, but we do have an app (and it’s by Zapier) that can retrieve RSS items from a feed. You may not have used it before, or at least for this purpose, but here’s what we can use: Yes, it’s webhooks but what we’re going to do is

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nicksimard
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Formatter Features: RAND/RANDBETWEEN and MIN/MAX in spreadsheet-style formulas

What’s up Zappers? Welcome to the 3rd installment of the Formatter Features series. If you haven’t done so already, please check out the first two:What We’ll be CoveringRAND / RANDBETWEENRAND: Returns a random number between 0 and 1RANDBETWEEN: Returns a random number between two integers, respectively.MIN / MAXMIN: Returns the smallest value from a list of numbersMAX: Returns the largest value from a list of numbersWhen Might You Use Each One?Let’s take a look at some use cases for each of the above-mentioned functions. That might help you to understand the relevance of these particular spreadsheet-style formulas.RANDWhen might you want to return a number that’s between 0 and 1, you ask? Though I suspect RANDBETWEEN is used more frequently here’s one way you could use RAND.RAND() Generating a Number in Order to Randomize a List of ItemsThough there are likely more efficient ways to do this, you could use RAND in order to produce random numbers that then get added to a spreadsheet to b

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nicksimard
3 years ago
deb
debZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Automate your client onboarding (with a 6-step checklist)

Hi Zapier Community! This is Deb, from the Zapier blog. We've chatted with a bunch of folks who use Zapier as part of their client onboarding process: everything from a freelancer connecting her scheduling tool to her project management app to a community with an 82-step Zap to bring more people on board.So we decided to create an onboarding checklist to help you all get your new clients up to speed—and make sure you have your ducks in a row.The 6-step client onboarding checklist (with template)For each step in the process, there's plenty you can automate. Some examples: Get a notification whenever a client fills out an intake form Prepare documents for new clients and get alerts for completed signatures Send follow-up emails after documents are signed or forms are filled out Send out W-9s Send new payments to your accounting app Add new clients to your project management app Send notifications whenever files are added to your cloud storage The list goes on. Client onboardi

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deb
3 years ago
Janine_Anderson
Janine_AndersonZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How Ostrich launched its app with no-code tools

Hey, folks! Janine here, part of Zapier's blog team. I wanted to share a guest post we recently published from William P. Glass III, co-founder of Ostrich, and how he launched his app using no-code tools. William describes himself as a non-technical person, and said he and his co-founder were close to spending a lot of money for a software development firm to develop the app for them. But instead, he turned to no-code tools—like AppGyver and Zapier—and used those to create the app. If you've got an idea for an app or business, but not the coding know-how to make it run, check out William's tips on how to set yourself up for success with no-code tools. He outlines the steps he used, like:  Define the problem you want to solve, so you have a clear path to follow. Outline key features and design ideas so you know what to build. Choose your tools so you have things in place for front-end and back-end needs. Test and iterate so you can catch problems and improve as you work toward lau

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Janine_Anderson
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How to create a daily agenda in Google Docs using Google Calendar

Hey everybody! This week’s workflow will be a quickie, but a goodie :)The ChallengeAbout a month ago we had a Community member ask the following: See the thread:  The credit for the workflow actually goes to that Community member (@mmorrissey), who responded with a brief explanation of how they achieved it.The SolutionThis Zap consists of three steps:Trigger: Gmail — New Email Matching Search  Formatter: Format the date from the trigger step Google Docs: Create Document from TemplateYou might be asking yourself why the trigger is Gmail if we’re populating the document with Google Calendar events. Allow me to explain.Actually, I’ll let Google explain This is the key to the whole process. Google Calendar sends the email daily, the Zap triggers on that email, formats the date and then fills in the Google Docs template.Gmail — New Email Matching SearchYou’ll want to make sure that yours matches, but the subject for the emails should be something like this:Formatter — Format the Date to You

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3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Formatter Features: a brief introduction to spreadsheet-style formulas

Welcome to the very first post in our new article series, Formatter Features! In this article we’re going to cover the basics of the spreadsheet-style formulas transform, in preparation for the next 3 pieces, which will dig into some more use cases and examples.Definition: When we say “transform” we’re referring to the various functions within the Formatter by Zapier app. For example, spreadsheet-style formulas, format phone number, remove HTML tags, etc.So, What Are Spreadsheet-Style Formulas?If you’re familiar with using formulas in popular spreadsheet apps like Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets, you can use spreadsheet-style formulas in Zaps with the same syntax.It can be used with numbers or with text. That means you can find it here… and also here:What Types of Things Can You Do With Them?We have an extensive list here, in our help docs. Take a look at some of the things that are possible: A few of the more popular functionsThis is just a handful of the many functions that are avai

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nicksimard
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Zap Tips featuring Julietta Dasilva, RecruiterVideo

We sat down with one of Zapier’s Recruiters, Julietta, to ask about her best tip for remote work. Here’s what she had to say :) You can check out the post on Instagram as well if you’d like to join the conversation there!

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B
3 years ago
deb
debZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Schedule recurring messages in Slack with Zapier

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. We recently wrote about a new Slack feature: the ability to schedule messages. It's a great feature for a lot of reasons, but one thing it can't do is schedule recurring messages. You can use Zapier for that: set up a trigger using Schedule by Zapier and then customize the message. Here's a Zap template for daily Slack reminders, but you can do it weekly or monthly too.Get daily reminders in SlackThere are tons of reasons you might want to schedule a recurring message: As a reminder to stop working. Send yourself a Slack message every day at 5 p.m. (or whenever your workday ends) reminding you to get offline. As a pick-me-up. The Content and Communications team at Zapier has a weekly message scheduled (with rotating GIFs, no less) asking us about our wins for the week. As a reminder to fill out a recurring agenda. I used to put things like this on my calendar, but it got cluttered. A quick Slack reminder does the trick. What kinds of daily, weekl

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deb
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Using Sub-Zaps to Create Reusable Formulas

Hey everybody! Nick here, from the Community team. Today’s post is a bit of a primer for the first part of an upcoming Formatter-related article series. We’ll first be tackling the mysterious spreadsheet-style formulas in Formatter by Zapier.In this article, I’m going to show you how you can use that feature, along with Sub-Zaps, to create reusable steps.The ChallengeIf you’re anything like me, you probably find yourself using the same type of Formatter steps in multiple Zaps. Since we don’t have a way to copy and paste steps across Zaps (I wish we did), one way to solve the problem would be to duplicate a single Zap over and over, swapping out the apps if necessary. But there’s another way you can do it.The SolutionUsing Sub-Zaps by Zapier you can build a Zap (or Zaps) that will do all of the formatting work for you, and maybe put those all into a single folder to make them easy to find. Think of these as Zap parts that you can plug & play into parent Zaps.An Example Using Spreads

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nicksimard
3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
5 ways that Asana and Zapier are better together

A couple of members of the Zapier Community team (myself and @Danvers) recently partnered with Asana to run a joint webinar about how to make use of the two apps together. The following goes into more detail than the brief overview we gave during the webinar.Here are some ways you can take your Asana to the next level by using Zapier :)1) Add tasks to projects/sections dynamicallyWe’ve had members ask us in the past if there’s a way to add tasks to specific projects/sections based on something that comes through the trigger step. I remember one example where the trigger was Typeform, and depending which option was selected in one of the form fields, they wanted to create the tasks dynamically in the appropriate area.There are a few ways to accomplish this:Option 1: Using 2+ Zapsclick to enlargeWhen using multiple Zaps with Filters, you decide which conditions you want to set, and each Zap has a different outcome. In the example above, one of the could be for when nick@zapier.com is an

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nicksimard
3 years ago
Jared
JaredZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How to Attach a File to a Jira Issue

Jira is a popular App for planning, tracking and managing agile and software development projects.One of the key components in Jira are Issues where details about that particular task or issue are tracked.In Zapier today - we can create and update Issues - but we don’t have the ability to attach Files to issues through Zapier’s current Actions.I always love a good workaround - and especially workarounds with webhooks. As usual - the 2 keys for making a webhook workaround work in Zapier are: Does the App provide API Key or Basic Authentication access to their API (as opposed to OAuth only) Do they have an Endpoint for doing what we want to do. In the case of Jira and Attaching a File to an Issue - the answer is Yes to both.Step 1: Getting our Jira API KeyJira has instructions for creating an API Key at this link.The quick summary is Go here: https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens Click the Create API Key button on the Top Label your API Key and click Create

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Jared
3 years ago
TimS
TimSZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How to repeat action(s) in your Zap for a variable number of values

Last Updated: 05-27-2021UpdateThere is now a 3rd option for accomplishing this: Looping by Zapier!Looping by Zapier was built with some of the issues in mind that could crop up using a Code Step, like not inputting Line Item data with null values properly. It works similarly to the Code Step below behind the scenes, but has some nice bells and whistles, like Line Item support and more.You can read about it here: https://zapier.com/help/create/other-functions/loop-your-zap-actionsYou can add it to your Zaps by searching for Looping by Zapier as the app when adding a new Step.IntroSometimes we want to run an Action or set of Actions more than once in our Zaps. Today I’d like to show you how we can do that if the number of times we want to run that action is variable. In the world of programming, we can create loops that run a bit of code once for each of a set of values. We can do this in a Zap as well. If you don’t know how to code, that’s ok! It’s my hope that with this guide, you won’

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3 years ago
nicksimard
nicksimardZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Share your blog posts beautifully across social media

Hey everybody! This week I’m going stay surface-level on a workflow that could really get into the weeds, in the hopes that it inspires you to try it out :) The ChallengeAnyone who creates written content can tell you that it can be quite time-consuming and take a lot of time to do it well. So when it comes to sharing that content on social media it’s easy to do the bare minimum or to not do it all. What if you could automate it, and stand out in the process? The SolutionI’m going to show you how to:trigger on your blog posts, wherever you’re creating it shorten the URL into something nice and memorable create a nice featured image populated dynamically with blog post data and that short link share it across whichever social networks you use.Let’s Jump in!Trigger (WordPress, Ghost, Medium, RSS Feed, etc)There are triggers on new posts for WordPress and Ghost, and for Medium you can use RSS by Zapier (more info on Medium feeds here). This part is pretty straightforward.Shorten the URLZa

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nicksimard
3 years ago
Janine_Anderson
Janine_AndersonZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How to use Zapier to distribute leads without a CRM?

When leads come in, does your team have a process to distribute them so all your prospects are given the attention they need to turn into customers? If you’re not using a centralized CRM, it’s probably a tough system to manage.Matt Jackman wrote about a way to use Zapier automation to give your team the benefit of an automatic lead distribution system without needing to invest in a costly system until you know you need it. Using a form app, spreadsheet, and email platform, you can be sure that incoming leads are always sent to the right person—without anyone having to step in to send things along.See how Matt recommends getting started with lead distribution.

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Janine_Anderson
3 years ago
erinoz
erinozZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
How to filter an array or line items using a Code Step

Hi there, this is Erin Oz from the Zapier Support Team with another workflow idea to share!Often a user wants to perform actions in their Zap only on certain items in an array. The Filter by Zapier step does not filter each item in an array, so the solution here is to use a Code Step. You can use the filter method in Javascript to only allow the items you’d like to pass into the next steps of your Zap. ExampleThis user has a Zap that triggers on a call ending. They would like to send a survey to all call participants that do not work at their company. What we’ll do here is use the filter method to only allow email addresses to continue in the Zap if they do not contain the @zapier.com domain. For example, let’s pretend we have a trigger step that returns an array of five email addresses - three of them end with @zapier.com, so we’d like to filter those out of the actions that come next. Our Code Step will accomplish three things:  All data that is brought into a Code Step is brought in

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3 years ago
ClintEmsley
ClintEmsleyZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Formatting unlimited fields in 3 tasks using line items

Lately, I’ve had quite a few people write in to support with very long Zaps where they are performing the same formatting step over and over, except on different fields. For instance, they might have 10 different names come in all at once, and they want to make sure each name is capitalized properly, so they have 10 different formatter steps, 1 for each name.That might seem like the only answer, but there’s a much faster, easier, and task-saving way to do this! If you have 4 or more fields that you need to do the same formatting step on, then we can follow a workflow like this:Convert all of those fields to Line Items → Perform the formatting on those line items once → Convert them back to textThis works because (almost) all of our formatters support line items, and will perform the same function on each item individually. So we can pass as many items to a formatter as we want, as long as they’re line items, and it will only take 3 tasks when the Zap runs.I could spend a whole post jus

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ClintEmsley
3 years ago
deb
debZapier Staff
published in Featured Articles
Read newsletters without clogging up your inbox

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. Our staff writer Justin wrote an article this week about newsletters—specifically, how to enjoy them without cluttering your inbox.How to read newsletters without clogging up your inbox One of the suggestions he offers is using Zapier to send newsletters to your read-it-later-app. It’s super simple. You use Zapier's RSS integration to automatically save newsletter articles to whatever app you already use. Here are some Zap templates you can use to get started.Save new RSS items to Pocket Add new RSS feed articles to InstapaperYour inbox is a personal place, so it’s worth using automation to keep it that way. Do you have any other tips for keeping your inbox clean? Let me know, and we might feature you on the Zapier blog!  

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deb
3 years ago
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