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I recently came across a question from a user who was looking to find the State for a New Facebook Lead by using the area code for the phone number the lead entered.Zapier has great tools already in the product for doing this type of data manipulation and addition. Mostly we would find these tools in our Formatter options.If we were to exclusively use Zapier tools here we could set up a Zap that does the following: Trigger New Facebook Lead Ad Formatter > Numbers > Format Phone Number (put the numbers in the same format) Formatter > Text > Split Text (isolate the area code) Formatter > Utilities > Lookup Table (find the state by matching on the 3 digit Area Code) We can also use a Google Sheet in place of Steps 3 and 4 - and my workflow below will step through how to do that - as well as why I prefer the Sheet for this workflow.Step 1 - Trigger Facebook Lead Ads New LeadThis step is straightforward - the Zap triggers when we get a New Lead from Facebook - and pr

Hi there! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. We write a lot of Google Sheets tutorials on the blog. Think: pivot tables, conditional formatting, and using Sheets as your to-do list. In each of those cases, we offer our readers a template that they can follow along with. So our readers click the link, make a copy of the template (as we instruct in the article), and use it for themselves.Sometimes.More often than not, though, people click the template link, try to use it, and realize they can’t edit it. So they request edit access. This ends with me getting dozens of edit access requests every day, which of course I can’t grant because then the template itself would change.I even made a Zap to automatically write people back telling them to click “File > Make a copy...”And then, Tyler, hero to Zapier support and my professional workflows, came along with this tip:Automatically copy your shared Google filesYOU CAN FORCE PEOPLE TO COPY YOUR GOOGLE SHEET. This is truly the best tech tip I’v

Hello! Deb here, from the Zapier blog with some big news: Google Sheets is magic.Zapier Senior Customer Champion Tyler, who you know from his prompt, thorough, and witty replies to your support inquiries, just published an article on the blog about making Google Sheets your browser homepage.Why you should use Google Sheets as your browser homepageThe gist is that Google Sheets can do literally everything your brain could possibly imagine other than give your dog the best belly rub. And honestly, it might even be able to do that.Read the article to see all the bananas things Tyler does with a spreadsheet, but here’s a sneak peek.This is a working clock in Google Sheets. I just...can’t.Imagine combining the power of Google Sheets with the power of automation. Jk you don’t have to imagine—that’s what Zapier’s for. Even if your Google Sheets aren’t quite as luxurious as Tyler’s, you can still create a little magic with automation. Here are a few ideas to get you started:6 ways to automate

There are countless ways to be reminded of important holidays, observances, birthdays, etc. You could use a calendar, assuming you’ve got all of those events added already (but that’s kind of a pain). You could ask your digital assistant of choice to remind you. You could use a good ol’ fashioned paper calendar.Here’s a pretty simple way to receive notifications X number of days before that event takes place.HOT TIP: At the bottom of this post I’ve shared a link to the Airtable base (that you can copy) and a link to some Shared Zaps. That way you can get a head start!The Trigger (what kicks off the Zap)Here we’re going to use Airtable (you could hack your way through it with Google Sheets) because of how flexible it is. The Views feature is what allows us to have a list of events and then to trigger our Zap 2 days before the important date.I’ve got the entire year in my table, and it looks like this: By creating a View in Airtable that has this filter… ...it then allows me to use this 

Hey, folks! Janine here from the blog team. We’ve been looking at RSS automation lately, and there are some cool things we’ve put together. If you use RSS feeds (or if you want to but don’t know where to start), I recommend any of these articles. How to use RSS feeds to boost your productivityThis piece is great for someone who’s just starting with RSS feeds. It explains what they are and how they’re used, and shares some examples of how to add Zapier to make RSS feeds even more useful.4 popular ways to use RSS by ZapierThis article focuses on the RSS by Zapier app, and the main ways people use it to automate their work: posting to social media, creating email or team chat alerts for sites that are important to you, adding items to a spreadsheet, and to simplify calendar sharing.Turn any website into an email newsletterIf you’d rather get notifications in your inbox, check out this piece that shares all the ways you can use Zapier to create your own email newsletter. You can pull items

Hi everyone! Clint here again with another Workflow Wednesday.I don’t know about you, but this is what my personal Gmail inbox looks like:I apologize to the inbox zero people for the sudden rise in blood pressureI’m not the most organized person in the world, it turns out. So, it helps to have some extra tools to catch things that I might not catch, even with my highly-tuned system of “reading the subjects of emails, sometimes.”That’s why I set up a Zap that sends me a message in Slack every time I get an email from Jira! I work on a few projects and, from time-to-time, I’ve missed an email letting me know there’s an update. Now, it’s much harder for me to miss since I have a bot gently nudging me about it as soon as it happens.It’s a pretty simple Zap, but not one that would have occurred to me personally! One of my colleagues suggested it, and it’s been tremendously useful. Here’s the setup:Trigger: New Email Matching Search in GmailThis is a simple trigger: when a new email comes in

Hi! Deb, from the Zapier blog, here with a very unexciting confession: at least once a day, I copy/paste the wrong thing. It’s generally harmless (a link to the wrong doc) and sometimes embarrassing (a text from my mom), but it’s never disastrous.But if you’re working with data, a wrong copy/paste can be disastrous. One wrong number (even if it’s close) can snowball into all the wrong numbers and, before you know it, all your books are off.Alex Kulbei, the co-founder of Probe, a product that helps companies automate monthly business reviews, recently wrote a piece for our blog about data collection: How to get started with data collection and analytics at your business. And one of his tips? Automate. It removes the possibility human error while also eliminating lots of repetitive work. Here are some tips.Collecting complex data? Here's how to automate it with ZapierHave you made any disastrous copy/paste errors? Or just embarrassing ones? Let me know in the comments, if only to help me

Hey, folks! Janine here from the Zapier blog team. We recently published this very cool story about how Zapier customer Jeffrey Sun uses autoamtion to run a customized apparel store. I love hearing about the unique Zaps people set up, and Jeffrey’s is amazing. Using automation, he’s able to generate unique chess-themed apparel, featuring individually generated images of whatever chess position someone requests. Check it out!What Zaps are critical to how your business operates? Do you have a favorite workflow that keeps things going? If so, we’d love to hear about it.

Hi there! This is Deb from the Zapier blog. We’ve been having small business owners share their stories and tips, and one that stood out to me recently was this piece by Matthew Meier.Customer reviews: The most important small business marketing strategyMatthew runs a small tour company out of Las Vegas, and they use customer reviews as the center of their marketing strategy. I’d never really thought of it as a marketing tool before, but MaxTour leans into customer reviews in a massively strategic way. If you try out any of their tips for increasing the quantity (and quality!) of your reviews, you’ll want to be able to wrangle them all. So here are some tips we put together for automating the process.4 ways to automatically gather and track customer reviewsDo you have any creative ways to get customers to leave reviews? Let me know in the comments!

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. I use Google Forms exclusively when I create forms. At first, I felt a little embarrassed. I chose it because it’s so easy to use—but there are so many other form apps to choose from, and in comparison, Google Forms seems a little...amateur. But when you stop judging the book by its (very purple) cover, you can see that Google Forms is super powerful.Our staff writer Justin just wrote a piece on all the different things Google Forms can do, and how you can customize it for whatever you need.6 Google Forms settings you should know aboutThe bonus is that, when you automate it, you’re automating from a spreadsheet (where your form answers are stored), which gives you so much more control. Send form answers to Trello, Slack, or Mailchimp, or even create Google Calendar events based on responses. I have almost a dozen active Google Forms, and they’re all automated to send the information where I need it.What form app do you use? And with so many options,

Hi! It’s Deb from the Zapier blog, here to talk about how I overcame my severe parserphobia (fear of using email parsing tools). I was a little skeptical about robots reading my emails, but the real fear was just that I would spend hours trying to set it up only for it not to work. That’s hours I could have spent watching back episodes of Survivor (or working or whatever).Anyway, I finally decided to try it. And without going into detail about how many times I swore at the computer, I set up an automation to pull invoicing details from my email into the spreadsheet where I monitor my budget—and I did it in 15 minutes. 15 minutes! Over the past week-ish since I made the Zap, I’ve absolutely already saved at least that much time not having to open multiple documents and copy and paste and all that jazz.So here I am telling you: try an email parser. It won’t bite.Our staff writer Justin did loads of research and put together a list of the best email parsers. Yes, Email Parser by Zapier ma

Hey - Jared back again with another workflow idea for you!I use Trello to manage most of my tasks.There are a lot of tasks I want to run on a recurring basis (every week or month).For example - maybe I want a Trello card to run a full backup of my computer on a monthly basis.I could build a Zap for each Task using Schedule by Zapier - but that would create a lot of Zaps to manage - since each Task would need it’s own Zap.Plus I want to be able to add and delete tasks from this list easily.Google Sheets will enable me create tasks as a row on a Spreadsheet - but how do I get them to run automatically each Week or Month?Make Your Sheet.Step 1 is to make our Google Sheet.I’ve shared a template here you can use to get started. :)Just choose File > Make a Copy - and it will create a copy you can alter for your own Zap.You’ll notice the regular fields you’d expect here when creating a Trello Card like Title, Description, Due Date, Time.I’ll talk about the Trigger Date and Due Date in a bi

Do you use formulas in your Google Sheets like =today()?Google Sheets formulas like NOW, TODAY, RAND, and RANDBETWEEN - will often only update when the Spreadsheet is opened or updated.This can cause issues with Zaps if we expect those dates to be updated automatically to trigger Zaps.In the Sheet itself - we can adjust how often Google updates the values for those formulas.Go to File > Spreadsheet Settings.   In the screen that pops up - click on the Calculation tab and change the setting for Recalculation to be either “On change and every minute” or “On change and every hour” - then click Save.   With the every minute setting - Google will update the calculations for formulas like today() every minute. Every hour would do the same thing on an hourly basis.This will enable Zaps that use those formula columns to trigger (or find records) without the spreadsheet needing to be opened to update the value.

Hey, Zapier Community! I’m Janine, one of the managing editors of the Zapier blog.As we close out the year, I wanted to ask you a question: What could we write that would help you better use Zapier? My team puts together articles about why, when, and how to use Zapier. We write about ways to automate a specific app, how to set up a specific Zap, interesting ways automation can help you run your business, share success stories from customers, and highlight unique or useful Zaps for you and your work.And while we track pageviews and other traditional audience metrics, there’s really no substitute for hearing directly from the people who use Zapier and read our content.If you have a few minutes, I’d love to hear from you: What would you like to see us write about next year?

Hello! Janine from the blog team here.We’ve written several articles about resolutions on the Zapier blog, like the most common resolutions for 2020 (how did everyone do on these?) and why resolutions are bad, particularly in January.A year ago, we published this piece on productivity resolutions to help you save time at work, and this year, we’ve let the state of things guide our advice. We just published this piece from writer Krystina Martinez on resolutions that help you cultivate habits that help you grow your business—but by taking something off your plate rather than adding more to it. She recommends things like auditing processes, following up with networking contacts, tackling your inbox, staying on top of scheduling, and making it easier to follow up with customers.Check it out, and if you’d like, share what you’re planning to do for you and your business next year. 

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. I recently had a chance to work with Nikki Gusz, the co-founder of Lloyd. Lloyd dubs themselves a Waze for working professionals. It’s a massively valuable service, and the brother-sister co-founders knew they could really help folks looking to find their professional way. The problem: neither of them knew how to code, and they didn’t have the money to hire a developer.So they built an entire product with no-code tools (including Zapier!)—and did it all while spending about $100/month. Not too shabby. Read their story at the link below, and then share with us in the comments: what’s the biggest thing you’ve built with no-code tools?We don't code. But we built our MVP for $100/month.

Hello! Janine from the blog team here. Have you ever had a great idea for an app, but not the coding skills required to bring it to life? Check out this post on the Zapier blog from Hiram Nunez. He walks you through the steps needed to get from concept to working app—without using any code. How to create a no-code app using popular tools and Zapier Hiram is the founder of Swyftlight, a digital agency that, among other things, helps businesses create low- and no-code apps. The steps he shares in his post help you break down your idea into steps, find existing apps that can help you along, and then connect them to bring your app to life.Have you built a no-code app? What techniques did you use to get it up and running?

Hi everyone, it’s Deb—one of the managing editors of the Zapier blog. Our mission at Zapier, as you might know, is to democratize automation. One roadblock we run into is that not everyone wants to use automation. According to a survey we commissioned, 11% of people are either afraid of using it or are afraid it will drastically change the responsibilities of their role.And I get it—if I didn’t work for an automation company, I might also be wary. ROBOTS ARE COMING TO GET US. But, as it turns out, automation is a very human thing.In this article on our blog, early childhood expert Colin Johnson talks about how the desire for efficiency—essentially, automating our brains—is at the core of who we are as humans. Have a read.Automaticity: Finding the humanity in automationHow does automation make you more human? Let me know in the comments! 

Hey, folks! Janine here, one of the editors for the Zapier blog. We just published a piece about how to use automation to cut off the copy-paste tasks you do over and over again.A personal story on this: I volunteer with a local theater company, and one of the jobs I do for them is put together their programs. Everyone in the cast and crew would email me answers to a set of questions, and then I would copy and paste information to update bios in the program for the latest show. When I started using Zapier, I realized I could stop a lot of that copy/paste process. I set up a Google Forms to Google Docs Zap, and dropped answers to specific questions in the skeleton of a bio. I still have to copy each of those bios into the final document, but now I’m just tweaking a few words rather than copying over lots of info (or retyping answers0. Whether it’s copying files, copying notes, copying information, or sending information between two apps, Zapier can help. Let us know: What would you like

Hi there, it’s Deb from the Zapier blog. It’s Thanksgiving week, and it’s gonna be a tough one for almost everyone. I’m feeling especially grateful this year that I’ll be able to spend time with my husband, kids, and dog; that we’re all healthy; and that we can have a meal all together.Lots of folks aren’t as lucky—and not just at Thanksgiving. At the beginning of the pandemic, Rhiannon Menn was looking for a way to support the families in her community while still following stay-at-home orders and keeping her family safe. She decided to deliver meals to local moms who were struggling. From there, thousands of other volunteers joined in to help—and now her nonprofit, Lasagna Love, is delivering meals to families all over the country. In order to scale, Rhiannon used Zapier to automate a lot of the tedious work. Learn more about Rhiannon, Lasagna Love, and Zapier here:How a one-woman nonprofit scaled to deliver thousands of meals to people in needWe have lots of other customers using au

Hey, folks! Janine here from the blog team, to share another automation inspiration tip for you. CRMs help people get work done. They organize and manage leads and contacts, help you track deals as they advance through the pipeline, and make it easy for team members to see information in one place. But keeping them updated can be a daunting task, and if you’re manually entering data, there’s always the chance for human error. Automation can help!Writer Chris Hawkins put together a piece about ways to use Zapier with your CRM to improve your team’s productivity and efficiency. Read the piece for ideas, and to see a hand-selected list of valuable Zaps you can use to:Improve sales workflows by automating parts of your contracting process, tracking leads, and creating contacts Strengthen marketing efforts by connecting your CRM with marketing automation, webforms, and social media Reduce information silos by streamlining notifications in team chat or connecting your CRM with task and proje

Hi! I’m Deb, one of the managing editors of the Zapier blog. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with some folks at Bonjoro, a video email app that helps you connect with leads and customers. I knew about Bonjoro—I’ve gotten video emails from businesses using it, and they’re awesome—but what I didn’t know was that the MVP for the app itself was built using Zapier.Check out CEO Matthew Barnett (aka “Papa Bear”) talking about how Bonjoro came to be, and how one simple Zap helped create their booming business.How one simple Zapier workflow created a multimillion-dollar businessIt continues to amaze me how many projects and apps are powered by automation. Are there any other apps you know that started with a Zap? Let me know in the comments, and maybe we can feature them on the blog!

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. We’ve been talking to small business owners across the globe, and we’re learning so much about how you all streamline your work. Recently, business owner Judith Meyer wrote a post on our blog about how standard operating procedures helped her scale her business.How standard operating procedures can help you grow your businessThe gist: standardizing and documenting processes isn’t just a bureaucratic task to check off your list. Instead, it’ll open your eyes to processes that could be better—or could be automated. What other unexpected tasks have given you insight into an automation opportunity? Let me know in the comments!

Hey, folks! Janine here from the blog team. I wanted to share an article that feels timely, at least in my own life. We’re balancing work-from-home and school-from-home, and are entering a very busy celebration and holiday season for our family.It all feels like a lot. But there are some techniques I’m using to help keep me focused on what needs doing. Our writer Krystina Martinez put together a collection of useful Zaps aimed at fighting burnout. Included in the collection are Zaps that can:Set your status so your team knows when you’re available Tie your Philips Hue bulbs in with your calendar Schedule breaks and remind yourself to actually step away Remind you to take vacation time Filter information so you’re able to stay focusedAutomate healthy work habits and fight burnout One tip that’s not included in that piece is my favorite Zap to combat burnout: A bot that tells me to sign off Slack.Are there any Zaps you use for things like this?

The use case I’ve got in mind here is for when you know your trigger step will be producing line items, but you either aren’t able to pull in sample data or you aren’t able to access the app in order to create new items. Sometimes you can skip the trigger step’s test and you’ll have some dummy data to work with, but a) it’s not always valid in terms of the structure, so maybe you don’t get line items in that sample or b) it’s not provided at all, so you aren’t able to get anything at all from your trigger.NOTE: some of these methods might be useful for workflows besides the use case I laid out above, which is a bonus :)Method 1: Use a Code step as your triggerI don’t profess to be an expert in Code but way back when I had someone help me out with this snippet and I’ve used it extensively ever since. I added it to TextExpander so I can easily make myself some line items when I want to test something in a Zap.Choose the Javascript option and use the following (adjust for your needs, clea