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We have been using Zapier for the past year now and have about 100 zaps defined using about 20 different apps. In that time, I have had to reconnect a variety of apps about a dozen times. The Google apps tend to be the biggest culprits.

For no reason and out of the blue, I will get an email message from Zapier saying that I have to reconnect an app. Reconnection is pretty simple and has never been an issue, but it raises concerns about zap reliability. If I somehow missed the email message from Zapier, or it is routed to spam by mistake, or I am out of the office for a few days with no connection, we could have a situation where an app disconnects and critical business zaps stop working.

Why do apps randomly disconnect at all?

And how can I automate the process of reconnecting them again to avoid interruption of zap processes?

 

Try to use the Zapier Manager app to get notifications for New Zap Error and/or Zap Turned Off which could then be configured to send you notifications via SMS, etc.

It’s tricky to give a definitive answer on this, @RonW, because a number of things can cause the connection between an app and Zapier to break. The most common reason is that something has changed in the security or permission settings for the app; this might happen not only when you or someone in your team changes something, but also if something happens in the back end of the app.

 

In terms of monitoring the connection, Zapier will only know there’s an issue when it tries to use the connection. In the same way that if a phone line goes down you wont know until you try to call the number, the Zap doesn’t know that the connection isn’t there until it tries to use it. 

 

@Troy Tessalone  makes a great point that the Zapier Manager app can help you monitor Zaps. As well as setting up a Zap to text you if one of your other Zap’s turns off, you could also set it up so that it emails your colleagues. 

 

Finally, if you find that one particular Zap or app is disconnecting a lot, please get in touch with the Support Team and they can dig into the cause of that with you. The best way to do that is with the Get Help form: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

 

Thank you for the suggestions. I will definitely set up the Zap Manager to provide additional notifications when a zap is turned off.

It is that this is happening at all that is more of a concern. As an example, yesterday, all of our Google apps had to be reconnected. However, we have not made any changes whatsoever to any of our Google settings. Just happened with no provocation. As I recall, this is about the third time we have seen this with Google in the past year, and in all that time, we have not made any changes to our Google account that I am aware of.

Google is not the only one. I have seen this happen with other apps, such as QuickBooks, and I believe once with DocuPilot.

I know that there can be any number of things that may cause this, but the problem raises the issue of reliability. Now that we have become dependant on Zapier for many of our key business processes, we need to know that we can depend on those processes running reliably.

It is not an overly serious problem yet, but it does raise some red flags telling me that we need to develop some formal processes for quickly dealing with this problem when it does occur. At the same time, I would hope that Zapier is also looking at ways to improve app connection reliability.

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