Gravity Forms Error "Zap could not be switched"

  • 20 April 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 79 views


I'm not using Salesforce or Google, but the title of this tread is exactly my problem. So, I will just express my experience and frustration here in case anyone else comes here with the same problem.

We are trying to connect a Wordpress plugin called Gravity Forms as the Zap Trigger, and our own private (so far) integration as the Zap Action. Our Action works properly and we have customers using it every day with no problem.

Our own Zap passes all tests on the Trigger side and Action side. When we try to turn it on the on/off switch goes to on, and we get a message pop up on the top of the screen saying it was successfully turned on.

However, we then get an unhelpful email saying “Zap could not be switched on” with the useless suggestion to try again.

When we then look at the Zapier dashboard our Zap is turned off again.

There are no obvious errors messages, logs, or other diagnostic information to help us identity the problem. This community post is the closest thing we’ve gotten to a possible clue, but we had already checked our account connections on both Trigger and Action.

We sent an email requesting help, but have not received any answer.

I’m not expecting free help, and we are pretty good at reading documentation. But, a self-service system like Zapier should at least provide error logs, or some other diagnostic information so we can help ourselves. If they do have such information it must be well hidden because I can’t find it.

If anyone has helpful information about how to diagnose this problem, I would be eternally grateful.


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4 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @Blackpool 

Have you reviewed the available help articles for using Gravity Forms in Zaps?

https://zapier.com/apps/gravity-forms/help

Troy, thanks for the link, but yes. We read all the documentation and help.

We did finally get a response from Zapier support, and they included the error message from some log file. That was exactly the information we needed, and with that we resolved our problem. (More on that below, if you care.)

Two things bother me about all this:

  1. How/why can our Triggers and Actions pass all the “tests” and then the Zap fails to turn on? Seems to indicate the tests need improvement.
  2. Why doesn’t the email telling us it wouldn’t turn on, or the website include the error message? Is there a log of any kind available so we can see those errors? Seems like that should be included in the “Zap history.”

The Zapier support person gave us this error message from their log:

"The API key provided does not have write permissions."

We specifically made the key with only read permission because that was all (we thought) we needed. We are using Gravity Forms only as the Trigger to send form data into a different Action step. The documentation is here:

https://docs.gravityforms.com/rest-api-v2-authentication/#gravity-forms

The documentation pretty clearly says:

"For example, if you select “Read” permission for the API Key, all write requests to the REST API (i.e. edit entry, delete form, etc…) will be rejected "

We are not creating, editing, or deleting forms via Zapier, so for security reasons we set the minimum (read only) permission when creating the keys. But, apparently read/write permission is always required.

I hope this information is useful to someone in the future.

Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@Blackpool 

I agree the error response handling and error logs would be ideal to have, and have previously submitted feature request for these.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hi @Blackpool. I hope it’s alright, I split your feedback into its own separate topic due it relating to a different app. 

I also wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your candid and thorough feedback! I can see you’ve had an opportunity to chat with our support team which is wonderful. One thing I also wanted to be sure to mention is the Gravity Forms app is managed by a team of their own developers. Which is why some of the available resources shared by our team were found directly on the Gravity Forms site. I’ll link those below along with a bit of what was discussed in your ticket just in case  it’s helpful to those who stumble on this topic. 

 

Even to be able to use the Gravity Forms app as a trigger in your Zap, that API key in Gravity Forms would still need to have Read/Write permissions for that authentication and Zap to work. This is talked about more in Gravity Forms own documentation on their Zapier Add-On and using their Gravity Forms integration in Zapier:
 
https://docs.gravityforms.com/setting-up-the-zapier-add-on/#h-create-a-rest-api-key-to-connect-to-zapier

 

Once again, we appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us! Please continue to let us know if you have any questions. We’re always happy to help.