Zapier
Automate Your Work
We all use online services all of the time. We check our email in Gmail, before catching up with our friends on Facebook. We thrash out ideas with our colleagues on HipChat, whilst playing around with our Trello boards.
But what if you could bring them all together? What if there was a service that lets you link the web services you use everyday, in new and amazing ways. And what if you didn’t need to know/write a line of code?
That’s the promise of Zapier, a product I’ve been using since discovering it earlier this year.
Zaps, Triggers and Actions
Zapier works around the concept of Zaps. Think of them as recipes; instructions that Zapier follows to give you the outcome you want.
These recipes are made up of Triggers and Actions, the 240 (and counting) services that Zapier supports. It’s as simple as selecting the Trigger service, and what you want to use as the trigger, and then selecting the Action service, and what it is to do.
Example:
In this Zap, Trello is the Trigger and HipChat is the Action. Everytime a card is added, removed, or changed in Trello, Zapier will tell HipChat to let everyone know this change has taken place.
Looking for something different? How about:
In this Zap, each new file added to your DropBox will be uploaded to SkyDrive, keeping it doubly safe. For those files you just can’t live without.
The combinations are limitless
With each Trigger and Action for each Service giving you access to a variety of options, the combinations you can come up with are limitless. The Zapbook can give you inspiration for all of the services available, if you’re running dry on ideas.
Want to try Zapier? Sign up at http://zpr.io/Pq3v and we both get an extra 100 free tasks each and every month.
Sam is a freelance writer and user support obsessive. He’s worked with a range of brands to convey their message and deliver a great experience. He occasionally writes about Tech and Web services.
