Question

How to silence a zap for certain time while resuming actions?

4 days ago
16 March 2023
5 replies
27 views

Userlevel 1

Jojin
Beginner
7 replies

Here my zap needs to be silenced for lets say 15mins
The action trigger is “new post in a private channel” for slack.
After the trigger gets initiated, the tricky part is not to get triggered for any messages in slack for the next 15 minutes while at the same time need to run my action steps without any hindrance.
Any possible workaround on this? please let me know

5 replies

Userlevel 7

+11

SamB
Community Manager
1901 replies
3 days ago
16 March 2023

Hey @Jojin! 🙂

Hmm, perhaps you could create a record of the message in a spreadsheet, using an app like Google Sheets for example. In the row for it you could put details for the message and add the words “on hold” in a column called “status” on the spreadsheet for that row. Then you’d use a Filter by Zapier action to check whether the Zap should continue to run or halt any subsequent actions. And you’d have a separate Zap that runs when a new row is added, waits for 15 mins then removes the “on hold” status.

Zap 1 - creates a record of the message in a new row and marks it as “on hold”

Trigger: New Message Posted to Private Channel (Slack)
Action: Lookup Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets) - looks to see if any row has the value of “on hold” in the “status” column. Has the option to create a row for it if it doesn’t find one which is where you’d set the status column for the row to have a value of “on hold”.
Action: Only continue if (Filter by Zapier) - checks that the zap_search_was_found_status field is false (meaning that there’s a new row was just added so it should allow the Zap to carry out subsequent actions)
Action(s): Add any further necessary actions to the Zap after the Filter.

Zap 2 - removes the “on hold” status from the row after 15 mins

Trigger: New Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets) - triggers when a new row is added.
Action: Delay For (Delay by Zapier) - set to wait for 15 mins.
Action: Update Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets) - set to update the row that triggered the Zap and change the value in the status column.

Do you think that approach could work?

Userlevel 1

Jojin
Author
Beginner
7 replies
3 days ago
16 March 2023

Hey @SamB
The method you described is good though. However the tricky part is that it only applies on message from the past as when a message comes up, we set new record if it doesn’t exist and updates on hold in the next row and filters out with if zap search is false, then continue( which means if the message is already sent before, it stops the zap from running any following subsequent actions).

How to make it work so that any newly added message shouldn’t be triggered into the zap1?

Hope you got my idea!