I’ve been using Zapier for several years now and the biggest limitation and frustration is error handling. I have many Zaps where I have steps that don’t need to be successful in order for the rest of the Zap to work. Sometimes it’s updating an optional property on a record, or looking up a record that doesn’t need to exist but that if it does I want to do some additional processing.
Is there a way to tell Zapier to just ignore an error in a particular step? For example, I have a Zap where I’m processing form input that may or may not contain a mobile number (it’s an optional field). I update a HubSpot contact record with the phone number from the form, which is sometimes empty. There’s no way I can find in Zapier to say “If the field isn’t empty, update the HubSpot contact record”. So, I just run the update contact step regardless, but it throws an error if you pass it no data for the field to be updated.
I would love a checkbox on Zapier steps that says, simply “Ignore errors on this step”. Or, even better, an If/Then option that allows you to say “Run this step only if this condition is met, otherwise skip this step.” Filters don’t work for this since they stop the entire Zap rather than just skipping one step. Paths don’t work either since you can’t “return” to the “main path” after executing one step. You’d need to duplicate the entire rest of the Zap in both paths.
I’ve seen a proposed workaround using paths where the “successful” path calls a webhook which launches another Zap, which continues processing what you want to do, but now you’re managing multiple Zaps just to do a single task. And passing data between Zaps is a real PITA (you need to use Zapier Storage).
Why, oh why can’t Zapier just give us standard branching capabilities like every other programming language and automation tool? Why is the only option for a filter to stop the whole Zap, rather than just skipping a step?
(Sorry, just realized I posted this in “Show and Tell” instead of “Troubleshooting” but the forum doesn’t let you change that after the fact… )
