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I don’t do this professionally, but an opportunity has arisen. Is there a way to manage someone’s zap’s not being a certified expert without logging into their account (having their authorization, obviously)?


As far as my knowledge goes, if they are at least on team plan they can invite you into team shared folders (might be already on all subscription plans - not sure here). That way you can take care of their zaps that are in the folder. Otherwise, you will need to ask for their credentials.



Hi @Martinewski

Just to add to @Vera's answer - yep, if the client has a Team or Company account they can add you as a user and give you access to shared folders.

Still it's a lot easier - and I think most experts do it this way - to just get their login information and administer directly from their account. If your client is a little worried about giving you their password, you can always use a tool Like LastPass so they can revoke access whenever they want without needing to change the password.



That's a great tip, @AndrewJDavison_Luhhu

Thanks for sharing.



@Martinewski If you have a Team account yourself you can then obviously invite them to your account (and they can leave later if they wish) Probably the best way to go, but Team Accounts arent cheap if you not doing it at scale. Another thing I've done - not ideal, but let the client do a share screen with you on Zoom, and take control of their machine. Finally - if they're using LastPass and you're using LastPass there is a way for them to share login credentials with you without you "seeing" them. I havent tried this yet, but know it is doable.

Ultimately though the customer needs to really trust you, if they don't that can lead to other issues. Sometimes I've been given access to some customers linked apps as well. There is always a workaround if they dont, but when it comes to testing it really speeds up things if you can also log into some of their core apps.




@ChrisP - it is. When the client is setting up the LastPass share, there is an option for them to hide the password for whom it's being shared with.



I too have been given access to some of my clients' core apps and that makes life so much better. I agree that without trust its going to be a bad situation.


I also have some very non-technical clients and so I have them share their passwords via quickforget.com so it's not sent and stored in email forever... but even then I've had some clients mess that up too.


I personally don't like screen sharing/over the shoulder working... I've done it before, but people expect things to be always happening and get upset if I have to search up an error or look up what is the exact coding for {{zap meta human now}} etc. They get bored, I get frustrated, so this is by far the last option for me.


I have found that once I gain access to their Zapier account (either through teams or through login credentials I can use extra (temporary) zaps to ensure the data is getting into the apps correctly... for example if I'm creating a contact in a CRM I can set up another zap to trigger on a new contact and send me an email... eventually I'll delete that temporary zap, but it's a simple way to verify the data when you do not have login access to the other apps, but the accounts are authenticated with Zapier.



Thanks @AndrewJDavison_Luhhu Come to think of it there is a Lastpass Zapier integration. Maybe for us experts they should put a "confidentially share your lastpass password with me" action!

@PaulKortman Agree 100% on the pain of someone looking over your shoulder. As with all things we ourselves have to sometimes test options to see what works best, and the customer is thinking like "why you trying out different things - you meant to be an expert!" 😣 Thanks for the tip of triggering incoming and outgoing zaps from the already authorised apps - that is an excellent work around i had never considered. Beats emailing the customer with "please add a dummy customer to your Quickbooks so I can test and let me know when done"...👍



It's a hard no from me for screenshare... or an increased fee if clients insist - it's like you say @PaulKortman - they look over your shoulder, ask why you need to look stuff up and always seem to drive the the process off track with unrelated questions about Zapier.



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