Zapier is a task automation tool that helps you integrate two or more applications to perform repetitive tasks, without writing a single line of code.
With Zapier you can perform tasks like automatic conversion of emails into PDF documents, send weekly reminders to your employees; send emails whenever a new task is added in a project management application, and so on.
The basic principle of Zapier is extremely simple: When this happens -> Do That. This is implemented via what is known as a Zap.
What is a Zap?
Zapier automates tasks in the form of a specific workflow called Zap. A Zap has two basic units: Trigger and Action. Trigger as the name suggests, is an event that causes some action. And action is the task performed in response to the trigger.
Consider a scenario where on the arrival of every new email, you want to automate the process of extracting contents of emails and inserting them in an excel sheet. In such a case, the trigger for your zap will be “A new email in your inbox” and the corresponding action will be “Extract email information and insert it into an excel sheet”.
You can integrate as many triggers and events in a chain as you want. For instance, if you want to upload your excel sheet that you created with contents from your email, to a cloud service, you can add another app into your Zap.
Creating a Zap
Now you know what a Zap is, let’s see an example of how you can create a basic Zap with Zapier. You will see how to extract the contents of your email and insert it in a Google sheet using Zapier.
As an example, you will use the following Google sheet to store information extracted from email. The Google sheet stores Sender information, the subject, the text, and the Receiver for every new email in your Gmail account. You can see the corresponding four columns. You can change the column names if you want but remember the column names.
Creating a Trigger
To create a new Trigger, first, you have to create a new Zap. To do so, go to this link, and click the “Create Zap” button as shown in the following screencast.
You should see the screen that shows the following workflow. To create a Trigger, click the Trigger link.
The trigger fires whenever a new email arrives in Gmail. Hence, from the list of applications shown in the following screenshot, you have to select Gmail.
After you select the application for your trigger, you need to select the trigger event. In this example, the trigger event is “New Email”. Select this event from the list of Trigger Event options shown in the following figure.
The next step is to select your Gmail account that will be used to send or receive emails that you want to extract information from.
In the next step, you will be asked to select your label or the folder from which you want to extract your email data e.g. Inbox, Sent, etc. Leave this field as default to select emails from all the folders.
Click the “Continue” button and you will be asked to test your trigger. To do so, click the “Test trigger” button. Look at the following screenshot for reference.
If Zapier is able to access the mails in your account, the message will be displayed that an email is found. You would also be able to see the contents of the last email that you sent or received in your inbox.
Creating An Action
Action is what happens as a response to the trigger. In our case, the action is inserting information extracted through emails into a Google sheet. So, in this case, the application for action will be Google Sheets.
As you did with the trigger, you need to set the event for your action as well. In our case, the event is the addition of a new row in our Google sheet. To do so, select the “Create Spreadsheet Row” option from the dropdown list for Action Event as shown in the following screenshot.
Next, you need to select your Google Sheet account, followed by the name of your Google Sheet, and click the Continue button.
You will see the following screenshot. Here you need to set up the details for the data that you want to store in your Google sheet. The name of the columns from your original Google sheet will be displayed. For each column, you can select an attribute for the email that you extracted when you tested your trigger.
For instance, for the Sender field in your Google Sheet, you can select information from the “From Name” attribute from your email. In the same way, you can select values for the remaining columns in your Google sheet.
Click the “Continue” button.
A dialogue box will appear, click the “Test & Continue” button on the dialogue box. If the action is successful, you will see a dialogue box with the following message.
Now if you go to your Google sheet and open it, you should see the following result. You can see that information has been successfully entered into your Google Account.
Finally, if you are satisfied with the result, you can click the “Turn on Zap ” button to turn your Zap on. Zap. As a result, the data from all your future emails will be extracted and automatically entered in the Google sheet that you specified.
How to Integrate Zapier with Other Apps
Integrating Zapier with other Apps is a very straightforward process. As an example, in this section, you will see how to integrate Zapier with PDF.CO and with Google Sheets.
Integrating Zapier with PDF.CO
PDF.CO is a Web API to create, extract, read and edit PDF, images, barcodes, spreadsheets. You can integrate PDF.co with other apps in order to extract information from PDF documents, insert content from PDF documents to Google sheets, generate barcodes and upload them to cloud platforms, and so on.
To integrate PDF.CO with Zapier, you need to perform the following four easy steps:
- Create a Zapier account and log into your account.
- Select “My Apps” from the top menu and click “Connect a new account”
- Search for PDF.co in the search bar. And click it.
- To connect Zapier with PDF.CO, you will be asked to enter your API key for PDF.co. If you do not already have your API key for PDF.co, you can obtain one by signing up with PDF.CO
And that’s pretty much it. You have successfully integrated Zapier with PDF.co. Now you can perform different types of automation tasks with PDF.co and Zapier. You can create a Zap from scratch as you saw in the previous section, or you can use pre-built Zaps to automate various tasks. To see what you can do with Zapier and PDF.co, check this link.
Integrating Zapier with Google Sheets
The process of integrating Zapier with Google Sheets is very similar to connecting Zapier with PDF.co. However, in this case, you do not require any API key from Google Sheets.
Following are the steps required to connect Zapier with Google Sheets.
- Create a Zapier account and log into your account.
- Select “My Apps” from the top menu and click “Connect a new account”
- Search for Google Sheets in the search bar. And click it.
- To connect Zapier with your Google Sheets account, you will be asked to log in to your Google account and authorize Zapier’s access to your Google Sheets.
Check this link to see some examples of how Zapier’s integration with Google Sheets can help you automate various tasks.
Troubleshooting Zapier Errors
As Zapier accesses data from multiple remote applications, there are some chances of errors particularly if remote servers aren’t accessible or there is some problem in requests to these servers. For every request, application servers return HTTP status code that can be used to get more information about errors. The HTTP status codes that begin with digits 4 or 5 (e.g 404, 504, etc.) correspond to errors. The detailed list of errors is available on Zapier’s official documentation link.
Most of the errors you will see occur either because the Zap fields are not filled correctly or due to your app and account permissions. Make sure that Zapier is able to successfully access your application accounts and you have granted respective permissions to Zapier to access your account.
You will be able to solve most of the errors via help docs for each application in Zapier’s App Directory. To find help for any application, click the Application Icon, then click the “View app profile” button under the app name. On the main page for the App, click the “Help” option to view the detailed help for the application.
Finally, Zapier has a thriving community where you can discuss issues and problems that you face related to Zapier. You can ask questions from community members and can also help other community members by answering their queries.
