Read about creative workflows, awesome app tips and interesting use cases.
IntroductionHi there, this is Erin Oz from the Zapier Support Team with another workflow idea to share. Background InfoHave you ever wanted to create a Delay in your Zap that lasted longer than 30 days? Or, have you ever wanted to make changes to your Zap but you can’t, because you’ll break Tasks that are currently in a delayed status?Here’s how you can use Google Calendar to create better, more flexible Delays. Workflow ExampleA Zapier user would like to send a followup email to their clients booked through Acuity. They’d like to email to go out 45 days after the appointment took place, in order to prompt their client to book again. The user has created a calendar on their Google account called “45 Day Followup Email Calendar” that will only handle the events created for this workflow. This helps keep the Zap from triggering on other events by mistake and cluttering other calendars. This set up will require two Zaps: Zap 1Trigger - Acuity, Appointment StartFormatter - Set the Event St
Hey there, Zappers! Following up on our intro article about spreadsheet-style formulas, let’s dig into some more detailed examples of how to use them in your Zaps. We’re going to start with something that a lot of people use in their Zaps: IF/AND/OR statements.What We’ll be CoveringIF StatementsIF(Something is True, then do something, otherwise do something else).IF/AND StatementsIF(AND(Something is True, Something else is True), Value if True, Value if False)IF/OR StatementsIF(OR(Something is True, Something else is True), Value if True, Value if False)Nested versions of the above. NOTE: The “something” above can be any of the following: Let’s Start With Something Pretty BasicBefore we get to complex examples, let’s ease into things first with a few easier ones.IF | Two Strings Match, Output Value 1, Otherwise Output Value 2Let’s say you want to compare two strings (these could be words or numbers) to see if they match. If they do, you want to output value #1. If they don’t match then
Hello everyone! Jesse Parker here, doing a deep-dive into how best use the Formatter utility to format/manipulate phone numbers. Apps that send and receive phone number data often require different number formatting so this can be a useful tool to modify numbers and minimize issues when sending data from one app to another.This option can be found at:Formatter by Zapier — Numbers — Format Phone NumberWhat it Looks LikeIt can... Check to see if a phone number is valid or not Format a phone number based on a list of pre-selected formats including: E164 National International RFC3966 International, No Country Code International, No Hyphens National, No Parenthesis No Symbols, National No Symbols, International It can not... Automatically detect the country code of a phone number (workaround) Remove a “+” and/or pre-existing country code from data coming from your trigger step (workaround) Extract a phone number from a block of text (workaround) Lookup a country by
Or perhaps, you’d like to learn what a round-robin is? Then keep on reading!Every once in a while, we get a support request to help them with set up a round-robin Zap. While there are some resources scattered around, I wanted to help provide a robust solution that everyone can implement—without using external SaaS apps.Bonus! There is a shared Zap linked below, so you can start building out a round-robin Zap, right away.First, here is what makes a round-robin possible:These are the steps we’ll need:Storage by Zapier > Increment Value Formatter by Zapier > Numbers > Spreadsheet-Style Formula Formatter by Zapier > Utilities > Lookup TableThe breakdownIn order for the Zap to keep track of how many times it ran, we’ll want to instruct the Zap to keep a record. This can be done with an increment-value step.For the key, I used “roundRobinKey” but you can choose something of your liking as well. Each time the Zap is triggered, we’ll want to increase the value with 1:Then, the f
Bots - they repeat themselves repetitively over and overAt Zapier, we use Slack all the time, and there are a ton of “bots” running via Zaps. By their nature, bots can be a bit repetitive, and repetition can lead to people ignoring important messages. But what if the bot had a lot of different variations to keep people on their toes? And what if you could add that variety very simply using a single step? And this doesn’t have to just be Slack - maybe you send regular emails or texts to folks, and you’d like to give those a little bit of variety too!Well, if you know me, you know that I see a problem and I think “Google Sheets can fix this!” It turns out that every problem truly is a nail when Google Sheets is your hammer. Let’s make a table!First, we need to build a sheet with all of our snippets. Feel free to add as many snippets as you want - and in fact, you can add multiple columns if you want to have more than one snippet per message, like so:(view larger)And that’s our table! Sim
Have you ever wanted to trigger a Zap for a specific field level change in Pipedrive?For example - maybe you want to know when a Contact’s primary email address changes.In Zapier today - we have an Updated Person trigger - but it will trigger on any change to the Person Record (not just for specific fields).Using Pipedrive’s built-in workflow automation - we can focus-in on specific field level changes to Pipedrive records - and trigger Zaps when they change.Step 1: Set Up Pipedrive WorkflowThe first thing we want to do is set-up a Workflow in Pipedrive. This will enable us to isolate field level changes.You can see Pipedrive’s Workflow Documentation here.Our Pipedrive Workflow would work like this. Trigger Person Updated Filter to only Look for Changes to the Primary Email Address - and only when it Exists (if it is changed to Blank we don’t want the Zap to trigger). Create Activity in Pipedrive. Here’s the full Pipedrive workflow.I want to point out a few things in that screensh
I 🧡 Google Sheets.My Zaps are full of Sheets triggers and actions - and if I have a tricky problem to solve - I often look to Sheets first for a solution.One common use of any Spreadsheet App is formulas.And when creating Sheets rows from a Zap - we’ll often want to apply existing formulas to the new rows we create.There are already 2 fantastic Zapier Community posts on how to do this using 2 Steps in your Zap or the INDIRECT and ROW functions in Sheets. Today I’m going to cover a 3rd option using Google Sheets Array Formulas.The Issue - New Row Created After Rows with Existing FormulasIn a previous post - I covered how we can add extra data to a new Facebook Lead Ad by saving data to a Google Sheet and using the Sheet to do a VLookup.I want to expand that Zap to keep track of my leads on the Google Sheet - and I want the new rows to look up the same data.Normally - when we add Formulas to a Google Sheet - we copy them down the page.The Sheet will look similar to this below - where w
Background InfoHave you ever found yourself sending the same reply to a wide variety of emails? With this workflow, manually adding a label in Gmail will send an automatic reply containing text you’ve programmed to the sender.ExampleLet’s say I’m frequently getting emails from new clients who want to know more about my product or service. These emails will of course come in a wide variety of formats with different subject lines. I can create a label in Gmail called “Leads” that will kick off this workflow. If I get an email inquiry that I would like to send my standardized response to, I can manually add this label to start the Zap. (view larger)We’ll add a Filter as Step 2 that only allows the Zap to continue if the From Email field does not contain our own email address. This will prevent the Zap from accidentally triggering on replies in the same thread! (view larger)For the Action step, we’ll use Reply to Email in Gmail: (view larger)In the Reply to Email template, we’ll map the Th
What's up Zapficionados! In this "By Zapier" article I'm going to take a look at Looping by Zapier. What it is, how it works, and some examples of how to use it in your workflows. Let's dive in!What It Is How It Works Create Loop From Text Create Loop From Line Items Create Loop From Numbers What You Can Build With It Example 1: Looping Through Calendar Attendees to Find and Update Airtable Records Example 2: Updating Something (Maybe an Invoice) With Multiple Items [Workaround] Example 3: Take Action on Each Item of an eCommerce Order Wrapping UpWhat It IsLooping by Zapier is a helper app to repeat action(s) in your Zaps a variable number of times for sets of values.Ok, but what does that mean? Let's use an image to illustrate:Here you can see that the Zap has a step that provides 4 line items. Using Looping by Zapier, each one of those line items can run through that first action step and the second action step. It's as though the Zap was triggered 4 separate times, except that
Hi there, this is Erin Oz from the Zapier Support Team with a workflow idea to share. Have you ever wanted to trigger on a specific calendar event in Google Calendar, but only in cases where a specific person is attending the event? For example, let’s say you’re an executive assistant, and you want to trigger on all Google Calendar events that the executive has marked “attending”. Or, let’s say you are working from a shared calendar and only want the Zap to trigger on events you are attending!You can use a Code Step to search the list of event attendees for your target email address, and add a filter that only allows the Zap to continue if that person has marked “attending”.ExampleI've created a code step solution that will find a specific attendee by email address and return their response. Start by mapping the Attendees Email and Attendees Response Status fields from Google Calendar as values into keys "attendeesEmails" and "attendeesResponses" as shown below:Then copy and paste thi
The ChallengeI want to automate scanned expenses receipts.The folder structure:expenses inbox 2020 1. Quarter 01_Jan 200105_expense.pdf 2. Quarter 3. Quarter 4. Quarter My desired workflow:The file with the naming structure YYMMDD_expense.pdf gets added to the expenses inbox folder. A zap would look for the right Year, Quarter and Month and move that file into that folder.A Proposed SolutionOne way to tackle this is to use a Lookup Table (more info) to output the proper folder, depending which month the Zap is triggering in. Then you can use a Formatter step to get you the YYMMDD format, which you can use as the title of the PDF.The tricky thing about lookup tables is that the incoming value has to be an exact match, so you’ll need the date to show you just the month — the Formatter can do this. NOTE: You can use any format (Jan, January, 01, etc) as long as what your Formatter outputs matches the value in your lookup table. This will make more sense as you keep reading belo
Hey Zapier Community folks! Sam from Zapier Support Team here. Have you ever wanted to automatically set a date to be the last day of the month but weren’t quite sure how to do it in Zapier? Yes? Then read on my friend, because Formatter by Zapier is about to become your best friend! Ok, so here’s how it’s done. First, we’ll need to add a Formatter (Date / Time > Add/Subtract Time) step and use the {{zap_meta_human_now}} command to add the current date and time as the input. Next, we add 1 month to that date using the expression +1 month. We’ll want to also set the To Format to be MM/YYYY, like so: This will give us the next month and current year. If the app step that we’re putting this date in is able to accept the date in DD/MM/YYYY format then great! We can handle it with that by taking the value from that Formatter step and manually adding in the first day of the month as 01/ and use -1d to subtract one day from it to get the last day of the previous month. For example
Welcome back! This week’s Formatter Features article is for all you math nerds out there. I too am a math nerd (*nerd wave*), so it is with great nerd excitement that this week I get to dig deep into math operations.What we’ll be coveringSo first off - let’s put away the graph paper and TI-83’s. You won’t be needing them today. Instead, let’s kick this off by talking about what exactly constitutes a math operation in Formatter and why you might need one. Then we’ll dig into exactly how to get to these math operations.How do I get to math operations?So glad you asked. You can find math operations under Formatter by Zapier > Numbers. Once there, you’ll want to select “Perform Math Operations”.What It Looks LikeWhat is a math operation?Fortunately for us, Formatter is going to do all the hard work of figuring out the order of operations (PEMDAS, anyone?) and the crunching of numbers. But we still need to understand what exactly a math operation is.A math operation is a mathematical pro
We have an existing help doc for the Line Itemizer, and it does a great job of breaking down how to use it. I wanted to present a practical use case (inspired by a question from one of our Community members, actually).ExampleUsing the example above, let’s say you had a lead generation form and when someone submits their information you’d like to create an order in something like WooCommerce, or QuickBooks Online.For each submission, it’s always going to be the same items and quantity. These are free items, so you don’t have to worry about having a cost affixed to them. But you’d like to keep track of those, maybe to provide an invoice to the person (“here are your freebies, thanks for giving me your information”) or for your own accounting.The ObstacleThe tricky part is that WooCommerce and QuickBooks Online support line items, but you don’t have data in that format when the Zap triggers from your form.You could use a Code step, assuming you’re familiar with how that works, but there’s
The trigger is a critical piece of our Zaps - as the trigger tells us when we have a new record to run the Zap for.At the moment there are 3 main types of triggers that start Zaps.Instant TriggersWith Instant triggers - something happens in the Trigger App and they immediately send a notification to Zapier.This notification is what we use to trigger the Zap. (These are webhooks sent by the App to Zapier).With an Instant trigger - your Zap will trigger immediately - regardless of your Zapier Plan. In Zapier we’ll see a Tag identifying the trigger as Instant.Polling TriggersWith Polling triggers - instead of being notified by the App - we go out and look for changes (We ask the App for changes in your account via their API with a GET request).We do this every X minutes based on your plan level. Free and Starter Plans are 15 minutes - all other Plans vary between 5 minutes to 1 minute.With Polling Triggers we also check for records that already exist (or have already triggered the Zap) u
Our Digest app is one of our lesser-known, but oh-so-powerful tools. With this app you can decide what information you want to receive, how you receive that information, and how often you receive it.The way the digest app works is it collects the information that comes through multiple triggers and then sends it to another app at the time you determine.So, why would you want to create a digest? One of the best perks of using our digest app is that you reduce the number of messages you get about your triggers. For example, you get over 100 leads every day. While you want to know about each of these leads, if you have to look at 100 Slack messages or SMS messages every time they arrive, you’re not going to get anything else done. With the Digest app, you can add all 100 into one place and then send yourself the list at the end of your day when you have time to deal with them.I recently wrote about one of my favourite workflows using Digest for our blog. In this workflow, I collect a list
The ChallengeThe Zoom integration for Zapier does not have a New Meeting Registrant trigger, which lots of people would love to see. We have a open feature request for it, so if you’d like to be added to that please let us know in the comments below.One ApproachZoom can send a notification email when someone registers for a meeting, and we can use that email to trigger a Zap (either directly using the email app or by auto-forwarding it to something like Email by Zapier in order to trigger instantly).NOTE: Yes, there are ways to parse the data using something like an email parser, a code step, multiple Formatter steps, or RegEx (maybe someone will comment on this post with that info), but since getting the data into Google Sheets is often a final destination for users, I opted to go that route. Some Zoom CaveatsThis requires a licensed Zoom account, meaning that free Zoom users aren’t able to set up those notification emails. The meeting you are enabling registration for cannot use your
IntroductionHi there, this is Erin Oz from the Zapier Support Team with a tip for updating columns in monday.com.Background InfoHave you ever wanted to do a mail merge for a small batch of emails, but you’d like the option to customize the message before sending? For example, let’s say you need to send 100 thank you emails to donors. You don’t want to send the same stock message to every donor, but you also don’t want to spend hours creating email drafts manually. Let’s use a Zap!ExampleLet’s say you have donation records that show your donor’s name, donation amount, and the program they’ve donated to. Create a Google Sheet spreadsheet with two worksheet tabs. Name one tab “Trigger Sheet” - this is the sheet you will select in the Zap. Name the second tab “Contacts List” - this worksheet will be the “holding tank” for your data. Your Zap will fire when a new spreadsheet row is added, so we’ll want the existing data to be close at hand to copy/paste once the Zap is set up. (view la
One of the most overwhelming parts of using Zapier is figuring out where to start. Which apps should you use? How do you know what triggers and actions are available for those apps? There’s so much choice!A great place for inspiration is our automation inspiration example Zaps. Here you’ll find a wide range of Zaps to suit your every need — whether you need help with managing projects, your social media, your emails, your calendar, and anything else you might think of.But if you’re coming to Zapier with your workflows already mapped in your mind, you don’t need inspiration, you need to know what’s possible. The good news is that you’ll find everything you need over in our App Directory (or our Zapbook as it’s affectionately known around these parts).The DirectoryLet’s start with the directory home page. Here you’ll see the list of all 2000+ apps Zapier integrates with, broken into categories:You can dig in to each of those categories to find the apps that do what you need. You can also
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
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
Looping + Storage The Trigger Data The Actions Step 1 - Looping by Zapier Step 2 - Paths A and B Path A Criteria Path A1 - Find Person in Pipedrive Path A2 - Storage Push Value Onto List Path B Criteria Path B1 - Delay for 1 Minute Path B2 - Storage Get Values from List Path B3 - Filter Path B4 - Post Message in Slack Path B5 - Storage Remove Value Running a Live Test SummaryThe majority of Search steps in Zapier work on a 1-to-1 basis.For example - if we want to Find a Person in Pipedrive by email - we have to put in one (and only one) email address. But what if we need to look up 2 email addresses in Pipedrive?One option is just to add a second Find Person action - and look up one email address per action.That’s a reasonable solution if we always know exactly how many email addresses we’ll need to search.However - if this number will vary - this can get complex.Looping + StorageZapier has 2 built-in tools that can help us do multiple searches for a variable number of items.Looping
Amongst the 3,000+ apps in the Zapier ecosystem are a couple of dozen built-in apps that let you do more with your workflows. Think of them as automation booster packs, enabling you — amongst other things — to schedule and filter your zaps, format data flowing through them, and pull in data from all sorts of sources that might not have their own Zapier integrations. Whether you’re new to Zapier, or an old hat, there are bound to be some interesting use cases you’ve not thought of. So, on that note, here are 6 useful workflows you can build with Zapier’s built-in apps:Get a daily digest of posts from your favourite blog (used: RSS & Digest)RSS might feel like ancient technology these days, but its sheer simplicity and usefulness has kept it relevant, even in 2021.Zapier has an RSS app, so you can trigger a Zap any time a new item is posted to a feed. Combine with the Zapier Digest app, which allows you to batch multiple pieces of data for later use, and you can build yourself a ver
