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Best answer

Triggering a Zap directly from a Slack Workflow

C
Userlevel 1

So I’m getting moved to Zapier, because automate.io is shutting down.
I’m sure you guys have been getting plenty of questions from people migrating.
I’m getting fairly frustrated because I’m finding the available triggers for apps like Slack and Notion to be fairly limiting.
With automate.io, I was able to start a workflow in slack, and have the slack user enter information that is prompted and then, importantly, on the next step directly push information to a bot (Zap equivalent), which would then carry out the necessary chain of commands. Now on Zapier I’m finding there is no clear way to do this?
I either have to change the trigger to be a new message somewhere, which is:

  1. Pretty clunky and messy, from a UI perspective, for the employees I’m building these apps/workflows for. Can’t use the dropdowns and prompts that slack workflows allows the user to fill.
  2. Significantly more prone to error, as they now have to make sure formatting is correct and the information is entered in the right order. Which is not something you want production employees to be worried about.
  3. Requires retraining our employees to initiate the workflow and enter data in a worse (for lack of better word) manner than before.

Alternatively I have found I can “Push” a message to Zapier, which is not a move that can be automated, so has to be manually done after the message is posted. Which is again counterproductive.
I can see a potential solution where I can use the Slack workflow to generate a message through the prompted form and dump it in a hidden channel, which Zapier then uses as a trigger. My issue with this is our business has a quite a few “self-made” automation tools that we rely on, and every workflow or even every step where I would push info to another app, I now need an extra hidden channel where I dump messages for Zapier to trigger from. Seeing as I have many more automation tools in development, this will just get way too messy and cluttered.
Is there anyone that is having a similar issue with this transition to Zapier, and/or anyone who knows a worthwhile solution to this?
Maybe they will release a new trigger for slack workflows soon?

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Best answer by Danvers 10 May 2022, 13:36

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This post has been closed for comments. Please create a new post if you need help or have a question about this topic.

10 replies

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @ChetanK 

Welcome to the Zapier Community!

Good question.

One possible workaround…

The Zapier Slack app has a feature for Workflow steps.

 

One of the included apps is Airtable: https://zapier.com/apps/airtable/integrations#triggers-and-actions

As part of the Slack Workflow, you could create a new record in an Airtable Base.

That new Airtable record could be used to trigger a Zap.

Would that work for your use case?

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
C
Userlevel 1

Would that work for your use case?
@Troy Tessalone 
Hi!
Thanks for a swift response.
Technically speaking, yes it would. However, as I noted when I saw a similar suggestion on another thread (suggesting the use of a Google Sheet entry to achieve the same), this becomes fairly impractical as it would require the use of a different table/sheet for every step that involves pushing information.
We have some chained workflows that will push information 2-3 times along the cycle of a slack workflow. These would push to different Zaps, ideally. Not every slack workflow does it this much, but making all of my slack tools run this way would require 20-25 different sheets/tables, not accounting for the tools I’m currently building or will build in the future. This is quite frankly unbearable to set up as well as monitor and manage.
In my opinion it would be a lot nicer to just allow users to push information to trigger a Zap directly, instead of providing pre-setup apps to cater to a smaller pool of possibilities. Once the information is pushed to a Zap, the user can just manipulate and push it to any other integration anyways. Forcing the middleman app should not be necessary. Coming from automate.io this just makes way more sense to me, however I’m not familiar with the back-end or development of Zapier so I can’t comment any further.

I have however come up with an alternative, that should work for the time being. And as many automate.io users migrate, you may want to give them a similar idea.
Every Slack workflow I have will now generate a message in a hidden slack channel #dummy.
Each slack step that pushes info will have an assigned 3-4 character “job” code which will precede the message that consists of the data I want to push, separated by some delimiter or formatted accordingly. My Zaps will then trigger off each new message that gets put into #dummy. And every Zap will filter messages for its appropriate Job Code (i.e. Zap 1 will only run with messages prefixed with AB12, Zap 2 only works with CD23, etc...).
This should leave the UI the same for the employees/users, and it should limit the amount of channels or sheets or whatever intermediate I need to create to send information.
The only concern is that there may be conflicts or missed messages if the channel gets more than one message within the update period provided on my account, but testing will tell.
This is a pretty janky solution and I’m not a fan of resorting to something like this, but gotta do what you gotta do to make it work.
Here’s hoping a direct push comes out soon 🤞

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@ChetanK 

Agree that if the Zapier Slack App Workflow More Steps included the ability to set/fire a Webhook that would be ideal.

Then the Zap could be triggered via a Webhook - Catch Hook: https://zapier.com/apps/webhook/help

 

Feature requests and feedback can be submitted via a ticket to Zapier Support to be logged: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

 

NOTE: I do not work for Zapier.

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
C
Userlevel 1

@Troy Tessalone 

Yeah a webhook would work too! Although you don't even need to interface with that, I should be able to point at a zap directly from a Zapier step in the slack workflow. Whether it uses a webhook in the back end to make the push happen is a different story.

That being said I might set up the slack workflow to push to a webhook, that should actually work just as well! Then I'll just trigger a Zap from the same.

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@ChetanK 

Let me know if you figure out how to push a Slack Workflow to a webhook.

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
Danvers
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @ChetanK! Thanks for sharing your workaround and I’m sorry that there isn’t a more direct way of doing this. It would definitely be helpful to send a webhook as part of a Slack Workflow and I’ve passed your feedback on to the team that manages the Slack integration.

 

I’m going to quote your workaround below and mark this as ‘answered’ so other users can easily find your workaround. Thanks for sharing it!

 

From @ChetanK 

I have however come up with an alternative, that should work for the time being. And as many automate.io users migrate, you may want to give them a similar idea.
Every Slack workflow I have will now generate a message in a hidden slack channel #dummy.
Each slack step that pushes info will have an assigned 3-4 character “job” code which will precede the message that consists of the data I want to push, separated by some delimiter or formatted accordingly. My Zaps will then trigger off each new message that gets put into #dummy. And every Zap will filter messages for its appropriate Job Code (i.e. Zap 1 will only run with messages prefixed with AB12, Zap 2 only works with CD23, etc...).
This should leave the UI the same for the employees/users, and it should limit the amount of channels or sheets or whatever intermediate I need to create to send information.
The only concern is that there may be conflicts or missed messages if the channel gets more than one message within the update period provided on my account, but testing will tell.
This is a pretty janky solution and I’m not a fan of resorting to something like this, but gotta do what you gotta do to make it work.
Here’s hoping a direct push comes out soon

C
Userlevel 1

Hi @ChetanK! Thanks for sharing your workaround and I’m sorry that there isn’t a more direct way of doing this. It would definitely be helpful to send a webhook as part of a Slack Workflow and I’ve passed your feedback on to the team that manages the Slack integration.

 

I’m going to quote your workaround below and mark this as ‘answered’ so other users can easily find your workaround. Thanks for sharing it!
​​

@Danvers @Troy Tessalone 
It seems there is nothing within Slack’s workflow tools to set up outgoing webhooks at the moment. This is something I might get at them with as it would be pretty handy. That being said, it seems my workaround is probably best for the time being. For others that stumble upon this I will reiterate, I have still not tested it! We will see how it handles the volume of users, tools and messages (especially when there are multiple within the update time window). I will respond the this thread to report back on that in the near future.

Going back, to the Zapier integration, I would suggest just trying out the tool on automate.io to see what I’m talking about. You can just use a step in the slack workflow to push data to any triggerable bot/zap of your choice. Workflow reaches that step, and that particular automation gets triggered and runs. As far as user experience goes for the person setting up, it circumvents having to deal with anything JSON/HTTP and setting up the webhook in general. I think this, over just the webhook push would be a great feature for Zapier if y’all want to keep things packaged within apps. 

✌✌

nicksimard
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @ChetanK!

It would definitely be amazing to have an easier way to trigger Zaps directly, or at the very least, have outgoing webhooks. I was kind of surprised to see that this is not possible. I guess because we’ve got no limits on our task usage, as Zapier employees, it’s easy to adopt workarounds that involve other apps and/or multiple Zaps.

There’s no denying that adding a “trigger Zap” action into a Slack workflow would be a much better solution!

C
Userlevel 1

...I guess because we’ve got no limits on our task usage, as Zapier employees, it’s easy to adopt workarounds that involve other apps and/or multiple Zaps.

Hi @nicksimard 

That makes sense! However a lot of workarounds with additional apps that could be employed by small to medium businesses will become difficult to set up, monitor and manage at the scales that they might be used. It additionally adds another point of failure and increases the wait time on that workflow to complete. It also adds an additional degree of dependence on the extra platform you are using, especially since they are all cloud services. It makes building sustainable, reliable and scalable solutions that much harder.
I think the limit on task usage for Zapier customers is at least easily worked around by upgrading the membership.
I only feel so strongly about this because in the last year all these DIY automation solutions provided by companies like automate.io, Zapier, IFTTT, etc. have really transformed how we are able to run our business! Its really been a game changer and we’re looking to leverage these capabilities more and more.
I’m sure with features yet to come and cleaner solution will present itself. For now I will just build and test my workaround.

 

nicksimard
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hey @ChetanK!

Totally hear you! That’s definitely one of our focuses for this year and beyond, to make workflows even easier and more convenient than they already are. Automation for SMBs (and individuals) is just getting started. The future is exciting!

If you ever have any workaround ideas or questions, the Zapier Community is a great place to post about it :)

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