Updates

Hey everyone! Every week I send out a “This Week In Zapier” roundup to my mailing list. In it, I cover what’s new with Zapier, and surface interesting guides, resources and other useful bits for people that want to get the most out of Zapier. This week’s edition has just gone out. You can see it here. Want to join the mailing list. You can do that here. Here’s what I covered this week: Task History Refresh live for all users! To make head-scratching (hopefully) a little less frequent when things go wrong with your zaps, Zapier has done a refresh, making it easier to filter issue types and date ranges. It's also got much easier to see how many tasks your zaps are using each month. Parsing information from emails into Zapier - the options You probably have all sorts of services, sites and apps sending you transactional stuff by email. Wouldn't it be cool if you could get that data into Zapier and trigger a zap? Well, you can. How to Use Bannerbear with Zapier to Auto Generate Instagram Stories Bannerbear is an API for generating images. Pick a template and it will split out images with different texts, colours and background images. One cool thing your business can do with it generates Instagram Story slides whenever you publish something on your blog. Watch the recent AMA with VP of Engineering at Zapier, Doug Gaff Hosted by Plato, Doug talked all about Zapier and what the engineering team have been up to.   What's everyone's favourite CRM? And how are you automating it with Zapier? Capiche is a very cool new Q&A and discussion site for technologists. Recently, we decided to ask people what their favourite CRM is and how they automate it with Zapier. We got some great answers. Find out when your Twitter handle is mentioned Using Google Alerts, an RSS feed and Zapier you can find out any time your Twitter handle gets mentioned in an article. Also works for your name (or your competitor's) or any keyword you might be interested in. The Big List of Zapier Hacks for Marketers Way back in 2015, Buffer wrote a guide with lots of ideas for building stuff with Zapier. It's so good, Google still puts it up top when you go Googling for Zapier help.

Hi Steve from Zapier here.  Today we released a few more small changes to the trigger sample step coming. First, if you try to skip the sample step we explain why that can cause problems:     If you skip the test anyway, we provide a fallback sample so you can still turn on you zap. But we also tell you exactly what you need to do to "un-skip" the test (since typically the fallback sample does not provide everything you need):     These are cosmetic changes in a sense, but we do hope they can help avoid some common sources of confusion. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns! We’re always happy to hear from you. Thanks! Steve

Caleb Gonzalez here from the Premier Support team! We’ve made updates to bring Task History into the modern age. We wanted to update the design of Task History and provide a seamless navigation experience between Usage and Task Log. So, what's new? Splitting Task History into 2 Tabs:   Task History will now have 2 tabs to navigate between: Usage is what we previously referred to as Top Zaps.  Task Log is what is traditionally referred to as Task History. When selecting Task History from the left-hand navigation, it will by default take you to https://zapier.com/app/history/usage. We want to bring Usage front and center to help you decide which Zaps require attention. All other links to Task History will maintain the original URL link and direct you to Task Log: https://zapier.com/app/history. (view larger) Update existing design   We are moving away from an old designs to a new designs. Old Task History: (view larger) New Task History: (view larger) New Task History when selecting tasks: (view larger) You can now see who owns the Zap of the task with their Icon and their name when hovering, and you can see how many tasks were used in that log. Prior you had to click into the Task Details to see the number of Tasks used: (view larger) We also updated a handful of the Icons used to indicate Task states. Note: This update now limits Task Log to 10 tasks per page, from the previous 15 per page.  New Filters and Filter Navigation   Filter by multiple Task statuses. Prior we could only filter by one status at a time: (view larger) Filter by Zap Owner, by Folder, and by App: (view larger) Updated Date Range Filter: (view larger) We’ve also made it so you can easily navigate between Task Log and Usage while maintaining filters: (view larger) We did a lot of QA but we still could have missed some things. Please let us know by contacting Support. As always, your feedback & suggestions help make this work better, so let us know what you think!

Every week, one of our external moderators, @AndrewJDavison_Luhhu, sends out a newsletter of weekly goings-on in the world of Zapier along with guides, resources and other interesting bits. You can check out the latest edition here. Let’s check out this week’s stuff: Twitter shut down SMS notifications. Here's how to keep getting them. Twitter won't be sending out SMS notifications anymore, but if you're from the UK/US you can set up a zap that sends you an SMS.... for your tweets or just about any other reason you think is useful. A beginners guide to Zapier for accountants Accounting, perhaps more than many other industries, involves a *lot* of repetitive work, making it ripe for some zap-based innovation.  This is a great guide to get you started with Zapier (even if you're not an accountant, actually). Zapier just released its Instagram for Business integration Before now, owners of an Instagram for Business account were out of luck when it came to automating their posts. Buffer is a (great) option, but not ideal if you don't want to spend extra on yet another tool. So, the Zapier team came to the rescue… Need to use two variables in your Zapier Filter steps? We've got a hack for you! If you're a regular user of the Zapier Filter step, you'll probably have got frustrated by the fact that you can only compare a variable value to a fixed value. But, what if we told you there was a clever way to make it possible? Can Zapier sync my historical data? (Sort of) This question comes up from clients quite often. If you're building a zap to sync new contacts from one app to another, it would be great if Zapier could do it for the existing ones as well, right? Sadly, Zapier isn't built for that, but there is a way to get it done if you don't mind some extra steps Plant Trees with Offset Earth You really can automate almost anything these days... including planting a tree to help save the planet. A Brief History of No-code The whole #nocode movement may feel like a pan flash of a recent phenomenon, but the idea of being able to make computers do stuff without programming goes all the way back to 1985 and Microsoft Excel. We’d love to hear your thoughts, questions or follow up on any of this week’s content. And if you want to sign up to the newsletter, you can do that here.

Do you have a question you've always wanted to ask our VP of Engineering, Doug Gaff? Join him in an AMA next week with Plato where he'll answer all your burning questions around remote management. Save your Seat today! Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2020 Time: 10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 7 pm CEST   Recording of the AMA    

Join us on Friday, May 1 at 10 a.m. PDT for our next webinar. In this live demo, Business Operations Manager Steeve Vakeeswaran will show you how to get started with Zapier. Join us to learn how to use our automated workflows to cut down on repetitive tasks, so you can focus on work that matters. Join this webinar to:  Understand the power of Zapier's automated workflows (Zaps) Learn how to find Zaps that will ease your workload See how to create Zaps in our live demo Explore the most popular apps we work with, and learn how to connect them with no coding required Register now to join us on May 1. Space is limited! Check out the recording:    

Hi, all! My name is Hoon Park, and I’m a Product Manager that works on some of the apps we maintain on our platform. I’m happy to introduce a new Google Meet integration to make it easier to schedule new meetings and get those all important Google Meet links with a Zap. Google Meet links in Google CalendarThe Google Meet integration creates a video meeting in Google Calendar and automatically adds that meeting link to your event. This can come in handy when your event or meeting is going to be remote and you want your Google Meet link right in your event for all your invitees. Add a “Schedule a Meeting” action in the Zap EditorIf you have any questions on the above or anything else, or if you have any suggestions for other things we could do to make handling your Google Calendar events easier, please don’t hesitate to reply and let us know. Thanks!

On Friday, April 17th 2020, we hosted a live webinar: how to quickly move your in-person classes online. We were joined by one of our customers, CraftJam, who has successfully moved its classes and events online. Here is the recording:    

Hey everyone! Kenyon here from Zapier. We’re very excited to announce some changes we’ve made to the Zap Editor that we hope will make building a Zap even easier! We’re streamlining the trigger sample step so it’s easier to use. You may know this as the ‘Find Data’ page in step 1. There are two main components to this change. Principally, you’ll notice the number of samples displayed has been reduced to one. You will still be able to access other records if you’re looking for something specific, but they’ll be hidden behind a dropdown. We hope this reduces confusion, removing unnecessary choices but allowing them to be accessed if needed.  The second piece of this release is an update to the help text displayed in this area. We now use emojis to indicate success and failure. We’re more clear about where the sample was found, and we use language directly from the app—instead of “sample,” we may note a “lead” or a “contact” was found, making it easier to understand what we’re doing along the way. We’ve heard this step can be a substantial source of confusion, particularly for those new to Zapier. These changes were made in response to that feedback.  You can see these changes on Zapier now! If you have any questions, let us know! Thanks :)

Hi folks!   We’ve been hard at work improving various aspects of the editor, and today we’d like to announce an exciting development we're releasing to our users.   We’re changing the way fields are mapped between steps and have redesigned the fields in the editor. We're hoping to: Put more of a focus on mapping fields from previous steps. Users now see data from previous fields as soon as they focus on a field, instead of that being hidden behind an unlabelled icon. The ability to map fields is more evident and discoverable Search is now visible always, even if you've scrolled the list of fields. The 'custom' option is now more discoverable for dropdown fields. Bring the UI on that page into line with the rest of the more modern design found elsewhere in the editor and around Zapier. Some of you have probably already seen this feature, as we've been releasing it to a small percentage of users already to validate and improve our designs. Over the next few hours, we plan on releasing this to 100% of our users. Here’s a quick before & after of the changes: Before: After:   If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to let us know!   Many thanks,  

Hello everyone!We wanted to notify you of an exciting and upcoming change happening with our Community. In order to provide a better experience to our community members, we’ll be switching the forum platform that we currently host our community site on. You will notice major improvements to the UI/UX when the migration has been completed.Our migration will begin this Wednesday, March 11th at 11am ET and will be completed Friday morning, March 13th. During this time, our community will be READ-ONLY, so while you can consume content, you will not be able to post or interact with content during that time.Here are some additional things to note:You will still be signing into the Community with SSO and your username/avatar will carry overAll points will carry over so you won't loose any progress/reputation for your work.Badges you’ve earned will NOT be carried over. This is because we're in the process of designing our entire badging structure to be more in line with our brand and the behavior we want to encourage in the community. More to come on this at a later time.All discussions, questions, comments will come over and be redirected to, should old links have been sharedPrivate messages (DMs) will not be migrated over. Please save anything you have that you’d like to keep, ASAP.We really appreciate your patience during this time and look forward to providing a new and improved experience for you all! If you have any other questions, please leave them on this thread for us and we’ll do our best to answer as many as possible before the migration begins.Should you have any feedback or notice any issues or bugs on the new platform after the migration has completed, please email them to community@zapier.com so we can look into them.Thanks again, team!Jesse ParkerCommunity Manager 

Hi everyone! I’m Alex and I work on the Communications team at Zapier. I wanted to let you know about an upcoming AMA with Wade Foster. On March 17th at 4pm PST, Wade will be answering all your questions over on Capiche. Subscribe to updates and ask your questions here: https://capiche.com/ama/wade-foster-zapier.Looking forward to reading your questions!

Hi y’all! I’m @calebgonzalez from the Premier Support team. I’m working with our product and engineering teams on our Company accounts, and we’re excited to announce that you can now trial our Company Plan for free!You can sign up for a Company Trial by visiting the Zapier for Companies page and selecting “Start 14-Day Trial”.The trial includes the Company Features:SAML Single Sign OnAccess ControlUnlimited TeamsData RetentionUser ProvisioningAccount CapturePremier SupportThis trial also allows you to try out our other paid features (except Autoreplay if you are on a Free plan). Paid Features:Premium apps, such as PayPal and Facebook Lead AdsMulti-step Zaps, or workflows with 3 or more stepsAdvanced filtering and logic with PathsUnlimited ZapsZaps run every 1 minutes (except Zaps labelled “Instant”)Team Features:Inviting multiple members to join your accountShared and Private Zap foldersShared ConnectionsZap TransferTrial planThe free trial closely resembles our Company plan, with the key difference being the Task Limit: If you are on a Free Plan, you will have 1,000 Tasks.If you are on a Paid plan, you will have the number of Tasks on your current plan.Trial extensionsThe free trial lasts for 14 days. If your trial has ended but you weren’t able to use it during the time period, contact our awesome support team to ask for an extension.If you have any questions, please let me know and I’d be more than happy to help!

👋Hi everyone. My name is Richard Enlow, a designer here at Zapier, with some big news!At Zapier, we're continually looking for ways to give you a peek into how Zapier is working for you. With that in mind, we’ve launched a new Beta feature called Top Zaps. Top Zaps help give you into a window into just how many Tasks your Zaps are using over time. We talked to Zapier customer Andrew who says that he would use Top Zaps as a way to see how many new lead signup workflows Zapier is helping kick off a month. Another Zapier user, Flavio, mentioned that seeing his Top Zaps helps give him peace of mind that the Zaps he created haven’t run amok.How to access Top Zaps:Find a link to Top Zaps from the Task History section of Zapier. After a click, you’ll arrive on the Top Zaps landing page, which will show you a list of your Top Zaps sorted from those automating the most Tasks to the least for the current billing period. If you have more than 100 Zaps, your Top Zaps will be limited to 100 Zaps.What’s next for Top Zaps?We’re looking for ways to make Top Zaps better for you. Soon you’ll be able to See Top Zaps by a specific user, folder, and more. What more, we’re planning on helping you to focus on Zaps that might be problematic by helping you to filter by those with the most issues.We’d love to hear from you. In what ways are you using Top Zaps?

Hey everyone! My name is Emily, and I'm a frontend engineer on the Zap Sharing team here at Zapier.We've just released some updates to the Zap sharing interface that you might find helpful. We now auto-generate a default title and description for you when you share a Zap, so you can get back to automating all the things sooner 😁You're still welcome and encouraged to update this title and/or description, however! Now, you'll just find it behind a 'Add a title and description' button in the main interface. There, you'll also see a preview of what the shared Zap's landing page will look like! Here's the main interface of the Zap sharing modal. You'll notice the 'Add a title and description' button below:Once you click into that section, you'll find the auto-generated title and description, as well as the preview of what the landing page for your shared Zap will look like. You can edit them here if you like, or just click 'save' or 'cancel' to return back to the main screen:We hope this takes the onus off of you, dear creator, to think up a title and description when you're creating your Shared zaps. If you have any feedback, please don't hesitate to let us know, we always love to hear what you think!Happy Zapping!

Hi everyone! My name is Brian Wendt, I'm a frontend engineer on the sharing team here at Zapier.We've released a new feature for Shared Zaps allowing you to share your Zap with someone via email. Check out the screenshots that follow to get an idea of how you can share your Zaps using this new feature.When you share a Zap and have generated your share link, give that "Email" button a click.Put in your pal's email address and your custom message, then hit "Send".Once it's sent you'll see a nice confirmation message.You might consider just emailing the sharing link directly to your pal, but then they'll miss out on this awesome email with a custom message from you, the Shared Zap creator!We hope you'll find this feature useful in spreading the word on the awesome Zaps you're creating! If you have any questions or feedback please do let me know. We've got lots of exciting sharing features in the works and we'd love to hear what you think!Happy sharing!

Hey, y'all! I'm JC, a backend engineer here at Zapier.We've shipped a feature for Shared Zaps that shows an "Update my link" button to make it nice and easy for you, as an author, to make updates - big or small - to your Zap and see those reflected for folks who access your link. Once you've opened up the sharing modal, you can click it, and we'll serve the mostest freshest and awesomest version of your Zap to whoever visits the link. Neat!How does this look, you might ask? Ok, get ready for my 2000+-word essay on.... okay, okay! It's _actually_ just two pictures and a small description, but since pictures are worth a thousand words....When you edit your Shared Zap and click the "Share" button, you'll get a super clear message telling you your Zap's changed, and if you want those changes to be saved, you can just click "Update my link"!Once you do, you'll also get a nice confirmation message and a friendly prompt suggesting you make sure that the title and description still apply.The main benefit here is for you, as a Shared Zap creator, to be able to keep improving your Zaps and making sure that any folks that install them into their accounts will get the latest version. Please do let me know if you have any questions or feedback - we'd love to hear what you think!Go forth and share all the things!

Hi folks, I’m Chris Geoghegan, a Lead Product Manager here at Zapier.I'm excited to tell you about some of the improvements we're making to our navigation! In brief, the navigation will take up a lot less space on desktop devices and will be much easier to use on mobile devices.You can expect to see these changes rolling out in the next couple weeks. Some of you may even see the new navigation now. Here's a preview of what to expect...The primary navigation has been consolidated into a single, vertical menu on the left side of your screen. You can expand and collapse this menu, giving you a lot more space to work. If you belong to multiple accounts, you can switch between those accounts in the upper right corner. Your current task usage is visible directly in the left-hand navigation.Left: default menu view, center: Primary Menu Expanded, right: Account Menu ExpandedWe've significantly reduced the amount of space navigation takes up on your mobile device while also making it easier to use.Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

Hey, Zapier Community -We're pretty excited about this new integration (in beta), and hope you will be, too! You can now use your Google Assistant to kick off Zaps with your voice. Change your Slack status, send tasks to your to-do list, add leads to your CRM: All by telling Google to "Talk to Zapier." Want to get started? Here's what you need to know:How to connect your Google Assistant Account to ZapierLearn about the integrations you can createLooking for inspiration?Make it so: Zaps you can trigger with your voiceHey Google, how can you and Alexa increase productivity at work? - Janine Anderson, managing editor

Hello everyone,We’re excited to announce a new version of our popular Schedule by Zapier integration! As a part of our Zapier Community, you will have early access to the integration before the official launch. We would love to get your feedback and hear your thoughts before making this new version live :) You might be wondering what’s new about this integration - well I’m glad you asked! The new Schedule by Zapier integration is nearly identical to the current integration with one key difference - the triggers use webhooks (instead of relying on polling intervals) so they’ll fire within seconds of the specified time.As you may be aware, the current Schedule by Zapier integration triggers might not run at the exact minute you specify. For instance, if you schedule a Zap to run at 5 PM daily, it will run the first time your Zap polls after 5 PM, which could be anywhere between 5:01 and 5:15 PM depending on your Zap's polling cycle. Thanks to the use of webhooks, this is no longer an issue with the new integration. To start creating Zaps with the new Schedule by Zapier integration, you can accept the invite here: https://zapier.com/developer/public-invite/19111/041ad44be08598ef0b66c940990f3a6d/Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback––we’re always happy to help! Thanks again for being a part of our Zapier Community and looking forward to hearing what you think :) Best,Matt LuksoZapier App Engineer

Hello!I'm the managing editor here at Zapier, and I wanted to invite you to a live Zapier 101 webinar and demo this week. Join us at 10 a.m. PST on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020, to learn how to use Zapier to cut down on repetitive tasks that take up your time so you can spend more time on work that matters. Join this webinar to:Understand the power of Zapier's automated workflows (Zaps)Create your first ZapLearn our core use cases for your industry or roleExplore the most popular apps we work with🙌 Want to join? Here's the link to register: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/3115791912209/WN_ZzbduJeySHa7pq5aOK2fIg

Are you having use cases for workflows that need mobile input from you or your team members?Think approval workflows, kicking-of Zaps via buttons, sharing links or photos from your phone into Zaps.The Zapier for iOS app is going into beta testing!Setup Zap ButtonsYou can configure your own mobile buttons with any number of fields to pass into a Zap. The fields can be of different types like text, numbers, dates, photos, ...It kinda works like Push by Zapier for the browser but with more configuration options and natively on iOS.You can also trigger Zap Buttons by sharing photos or links directly using the iOS share sheet.Receive NotificationsDefine Zaps that send notifications to your phone. They appear both as push messages as well as in an Inbox tab.React to NotificationsYou can define ways to respond to notifications by defining a number of reply fields. Again the fields can be of any type like dates or photos.This is great for approval workflows or anything that happens and needs quick feedback from your phone.Excited to see what you build with this!

Hi All! On Monday, Jan 6th we are kicking off our #21DaysofAutomation challenge on Twitter where we are encouraging our followers to get back time in their daily lives by discovering one thing a day they can automate with Zapier. We want to make it easier for anyone to understand how automation can save them time this year.We encourage users to share their best automations with us using #21DaysofAutomation. We will be re-posting interesting ideas to our followers throughout the month.I'm curious, what was the first Zap you set up? 

Hello everyone!If you're reading this, I'm sure you have seen that we've implemented our new theme to the Zapier Community! Notable changes:Our home page now contains easier navigation for categories and recent discussions belowQuestions with "Accepted" answers are now marked with a green "Solved" labelUpvote buttons, tagging, emojis, post editing tools, and user roles are much more prominently labeledWe hope you enjoy the new UI! If you have any questions or notice any bugs, please do let us know in this thread. Thank you to everyone who gave feedback over the past few months to help us make these improvements happen! 😊

We want to bring you closer to the team at Zapier and as part of that we will facilitate AMA's (Ask Me Anything's) that allow you to put your questions to the folks that work here!Our first AMA is coming up, and it's a big one: CEO and Co-founder of Zapier Wade Foster will be answering your questions on December 4th!How it works Post your questions to Wade as comments in this thread between now and Wednesday, December 4th. Wade will jump in on Wednesday morning (PST) and will spend around an hour answering the questions.The questions can be about absolutely anything: how the company got started, our plans for the future, what it's like being the CEO of a fully remote company, anything! So that we can make the most of this opportunity, have a few requests for you:Please, keep things civil.Read through any comments below to avoid repeating questions.If you like a question that someone has asked, give it a vote!