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Unable to create a Zap with dynamic entry to my email upon a form is submitted.

I’m knew to zapier. I wanteed to simply set up a zap that would send an email upon form submission. Initially setting it up was easy. My Zap sends an email with each new submission. The problem was when I tried to makes thing dynamic with things like {{ Name }} to put the name of the user into the email. It doesn’t seem to work. It just prints {{ Name }} in the email, which is not what I’m looking for. I’ve searched for all kinds of help but can’t find an explaination of what I’m doing wrong. I’m looking for some suggestions. Thanks so much.

 

12 replies

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @JHL 

Good question.

To help give us more context, please post detailed screenshots with how your Zap steps are configured.

You can map dynamic variables using the ‘Custom’ option.

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
JHL

Thanks for the response Troy.

The trigger is working fine. My only issue is trying to get the email that gets sent to have a response in the questionnaire included. You can see in the screenshoot below that I try and have the email include the responder’s name. I programmed it as {{ Name }} where name is the question in the form. When I receive the email, however, this field is printed out as {{ Name }} rather than the name of the responder entered into the short text response field.

I’m not sure if my working in a free account might be part of the problem? Can you use this type of variable in an email with only a free account?

Thanks for any help you can provide

Screen Shots 

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@JHL 

Use the ‘Custom’ option to map dynamic variables.

 

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
JHL

o.k., thanks so much for the hint. Let me go play with that and see if I can get it to work.

JHL

It took a second to figure out how to create and insert the field, but after that worked like a charm. Thanks Mark. You’ve been so helpful I’m likely to be back! I will work to try and figure out myself first.

JHL

The rest of the story….

Sorry Troy. Not sure where I came up with Mark. But my thanks was directed to you Troy.

The rest of the story...I did what you suggested and it seemed to work great. It passed all tests, including sending an email to the address from the form as well as adding the right name.

However, when I did the ultimate test and submitted a new completed form it did not send an email even though I had published the app and it showed in my dashboard that it was active. I then starting asking a group of friends who said, “Oh, yea, we stopped using Zapier with google sheets and forms. It doesn’t seem to be reliable. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s in Beta. Not sure you agree, but that’s what I heard from my personal, neighborhood forum.

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@JHL 

These Zap apps are NOT in Beta.

  1. GSheets
  2. GForm

 

The reliability of the Zaps is dependent on:

  1. how the Zap steps are configured
  2. how the GSheet that saves the GForms is configured and being used
  3. the data used in the test

 

We would need to see full screenshots with how each Zap step is configured.

 

The Google Sheets trigger is marked "instant" but it still takes a few minutes to trigger

The triggers for Google Sheets are unique among Zapier triggers. When there is a trigger event in the spreadsheet, Zapier gets a notification webhook from Google about this. After that, Zapier sends Google Sheets a request for new data, so it uses both the polling and instant trigger methods. This process takes about 3 minutes overall.

While not being "instant", these triggers are faster than regular polling ones, as they don't depend on the polling interval of the plan your account uses.

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@JHL 

As an alternative, I usually recommend using Airtable instead of GSheets.

  • Airtable has Form Views.
  • Airtable has Automations.
  • Airtable has a native integration with Gmail.
⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
JHL

This post has been edited by a moderator to remove personal information. Please remember that this is a public forum and to remove any sensitive information prior to posting.

As always, thanks for the very speedy reply Troy.

My comment about “Beta” was because when I started this quest a week or so ago and did a search for Zaps one of the GForm Zaps said “(Beta)” on it. It may have been GForm hooked to something other than Gmail. To your point, when I look at the Form-Gmail app today there is no Beta tag.

I will say that back when I was writing code and managing a small group of programers, if the “test” said “works”, but when you tried a live test it didn’t work, we labeled either the testing code or the deployable code to still be in Beta.

Additionally, me local group are young college students who were raised with google and have zapier experience. Perhaps I put too much confidence in them. I will say they are not a patient crowd. For me, it does testify to the point that there are a number of people having issues. 

That said, I’m pondering which screenshoots might be of greatest value. I’ve sent you shots of most of the Action half of the Zap. As noted, the Zap works well when you ‘test it’ by pulling one of the GForm’s existing spreadsheet records in the Response1 sheet. Also, the GForm sent me an email saying a new Form response has been submitted, so I know the GForm trigger for a new response is working.  It’s hard for me to form an hypothesis as to why the Zap doesn’t pick up the newly created row int he GForms response sheet.

Anyway, here is a screenshoot of the Zap’s triger. Triger Screenshot

If there is some specific information you think would help understand what is happening it would help me if you could described the specific additional screenshoot you think would be helpful. Thanks again.

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@JHL

GForms can be linked to GSheets: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2917686?hl=en

If you are using the GForms trigger, you can try to use the GSheets trigger instead.

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
JHL

Hi. This is a little confusing. I have been working on this issue for awhile. There is a lenthy thread under JHL. I’ve created a Zap GForm to Gsheet that works fine when you test it as the last step. It draws the respondents Email from the form and adds the respondents first name to the Gmail text. It works great on any record already in the Gsheet attached to the GForm (Response1 sheet). However, when I submit a form a new row is added to the sheet and GForms notifies me that a new response has been submited. However, the Zap does not fire. All very confusing. I’ve include screenshoots in the lenthy thread posted under JHL in the community. Would love any suggestions anyone might have. Thanks.

 

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi there @JHL! 👋

New form responses should be triggering the Zap so this is very strange indeed! 

It’s not possible to access the screenshot of the trigger set up you shared here previously. Are you able to share the screenshot again by uploading the image file here rather than adding it into a Google Docs file? Please remove/hide any private information from the screenshot before sharing (like names, email addresses etc.). That’ll help us to see if there’s an issue with the setup of the trigger that might be preventing the Zap from triggering as it should for the new form responses.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

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