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Shopify New Blog Entry - Delay Zap until entry is public

  • 2 May 2023
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  • Anonymous
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I have created a zap that will run once I have created a blog entry in my Shopify account. This zap creates a Facebook post and creates and sends a Mailchimp Campaign for the blog post. 

I create my blog content in advance and utilize Shopify’s “Visibility Date” to set the date and time the post is public. Obviously, we don’t want email campaigns and Facebook posts being sent prior to this date and time. 

I had tried to implement a Delay in the zap with a set date and time and then setting that to the “Published date” in the data from Shopify. This works great when you are publishing a post right when you click create. However, when you set a visibility date, the published date field is empty and the zap fails. Unfortunately, the data sent from Shopify does not appear to include a visibility date either. 

Does anyone have any insight into how I may still make this one work?

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Best answer by Danvers 2 May 2023, 12:57

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Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @ThatTechBro!

It sounds like you’re using the Shopify New Blog Entry trigger, is that right?

I can see that we have a feature request for Shopify to add the visibility date to the New Blog Entry trigger. I've added your email address as another vote for this addition - we use these feature lists to prioritise updates to the integrations which we maintain. I don't have an ETA of when or if this will happen, but we will definitely email you if we add it in the future. :)

In the meantime, there might be a workaround. You can create an RSS feed for your blog and use that to trigger your Zap. 

Here are the instructions from Shopify on how to add an RSS feed for your blog (from this help guide)

Shopify automatically produces an RSS feed for every blog that you create, so customers can subscribe to it and receive notifications when you publish a new post. The feed URL is the URL of the blog page with .atom appended. For example, http://store.myshopify.com/blogs/blogname.atom. Customers who want to subscribe to your blog can paste the feed URL into a feed reader.

You can include your feed URL in a blog post to invite customers to subscribe to your blog.

Steps:

  • From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Blog Posts.
  • Click the name of the blog post where you want to add the feed name for the blog.
  • In the Content field, enter text with the feed name, for example Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed using http://store.myshopify.com/blogs/blogname.atom.
  • Click Save.

 

When you’ve set up an RSS for the blog, you can use the Zapier RSS trigger New Item in Feed. I haven’t tried this myself, so you’ll need to check that the Shopify blog only adds visible posts to the feed. 

If you give it a go, please let me know how it goes and let us know if you have any questions!

Hey @Danvers

Thank you for the reply and the recommendation! I have set it up and it appears that it will be working. The only downfall I have noticed so far is that I loose the ability to pull the header image from the post and utilize it in the emails and posts.

Suppose it’s better than nothing though! Thank you again!

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hey there @ThatTechBro,

Awesome! We’re glad to know that your Zap is now working by using the workaround.

If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to post them in the Community. We’re always happy to help! 🤗

Hi there, I’ll echo the original post on this thread.  We publish 1 blog post weekly to our Shopify store and usually write it over the course of a day or two in draft/hidden mode. When switching the status in Shopify from “Hidden” to “Visibility Date” of “now” (i.e., make the post live), it does not prompt the Shopify New Blog Entry trigger to start the Zap and publish to social media. 

We’ll skip the RSS workaround for now as it’s important to us that each Featured Image display with the social media post.

Can I also be emailed when the feature is added? Thank you!

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hi @CJ_DTX,

I have added you to our feature request list for this. Although we don't have an exact timeline for when this feature will be available, we'll definitely send you an email as soon as it is.

Thanks! 😊

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