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Zap’s turning off too easily...version control?

  • 3 December 2019
  • 11 replies
  • 1889 views

I’ve had an issue with many clients in the past where users making very minor changes to zaps and forget to turn them back on (sometimes they didn’t even make a change but clicked into a field to check something). Is there a way to protect this from happening?

Other systems I’ve used in the past have a concept of “versions” and you make a new “version” leaving the old one activated until you’re ready to turn on the new version.

With web hook zaps this can be really frustrating as I then need to go to the web team to get the data that was missed while it was off.


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11 replies

AndrewJDavison_Luhhu
Userlevel 7
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Hi @ZacharyStevens

Tell me about it! I believe version control has been requested more than a few times before - if you email contact@zapier.com you'll add your vote to seeing it happen.


We're Zapier Certified Experts - we help businesses do cool stuff with automation | www.luhhu.com
ChrisP
Userlevel 7
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@ZacharyStevens Create a zap with Zapier Manager as the trigger. Trigger : zap turned off.

Then create a 20 minute delay (I'll tell you why below), and after the delay use Zapier Manager again to go find the same zap and if its still in Off state (use filter for this) -> send you notification.

The reason for the delay is that whenever you edit a zap it turns off so you will be swamped with false positive notifications. Generally I've found that I complete any edit within twenty minutes so if I've edited a zap and turned it back on then the notification wont trigger.

Also - a hack I use for version control is to make a copy of the zap before ever editing it. Not ideal but a workaround for the moment.



AndrewJDavison_Luhhu
Userlevel 7
Badge +10

@ChrisP - Solid idea, that!

RE: copying the zap - you've just got to remember that if it's webhook triggered, the copied zap will have a new URL.


We're Zapier Certified Experts - we help businesses do cool stuff with automation | www.luhhu.com
ChrisP
Userlevel 7
Badge

@AndrewJDavison_Luhhu True that - probably not a good solution for webhook zaps. Making copies of zaps is definitely not optimal - you also have to be aware of the task history associated with a zap. The task history is not copied across so it can get messy.


AndrewJDavison_Luhhu
Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Speaking of which - it would be lovely if Zapier gave us the option to use the same webhook to trigger multiple zaps. Integromat do that and it's useful in some situations.

cc @Danvers (can you escalate feature requests directly from the forum for us these days?)


We're Zapier Certified Experts - we help businesses do cool stuff with automation | www.luhhu.com
Danvers
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

On the whole feature requests are best sent to support, but I can capture them from the community so I'll make sure that these are recorded for you 🙂


AndrewJDavison_Luhhu
Userlevel 7
Badge +10

@Danvers - not to sound lazy, but it's a few extra steps to draft off an email to support - especially with the need to summarise the idea.

Perhaps some sort of forum bot might work? If we tag posts with a #suggestion hashtag for example, those posts get moved into a moderation queue, and from there you can easily capture the valid ones?


We're Zapier Certified Experts - we help businesses do cool stuff with automation | www.luhhu.com
Danvers
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@AndrewJDavison_Luhhu I'm happy to pass on feedback/feature requests that come up as part of other discussion in the community. It's more that if you have a request, it's best to take that to the support team as opposed to posting a new discussion/comment in the community. I hope that clears things up, let me know if you have any questions!


ZacharyStevens
Userlevel 1

@Danvers I thought one of the purposes of this community is to take some of the load off the support queues?

I was posting here to be helpful to others in the community, to see if anyone has workarounds, and to try and help cut down on your support queues.


AndrewJDavison_Luhhu
Userlevel 7
Badge +10

@Danvers - got it 😃


We're Zapier Certified Experts - we help businesses do cool stuff with automation | www.luhhu.com
Danvers
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@ZacharyStevens You absolutely did the right thing in asking for a workaround in the community, thank you!

I was more specifically responding to @AndrewJDavison_Luhhu's comment about feature requests. I'm always happy to pass on feature requests that come up as part of other conversations, like this one. We only ask that if someone has a specific request that they go to straight to the support team, in this case you were looking for a way around something so that's not a problem at all, in fact I'm really grateful to you for reaching out here!

I hope that makes sense, please do let me know if you have any other questions!



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