How to Automate Business Processes with IFTTT?

It’s very important for startup businesses to automate their business processes. Otherwise, you will end up spending more time and money.

For successful business operations, it’s important to invest the time to investigate the common business processes and how to automate them. Once you’re able to analyze and optimize your daily business processes, you are one step closer to increasing the efficiency of your business operations.

The main benefit of business process automation is to speed up process completion. Moreover, you can keep track of your business process and reports. It will give you complete control over your important business process right from day 1.

In addition to this, you can eradicate the chances of human error once your business processes are automated. Once you’re satisfied that your official data and information is processing without any error, you can start thinking about the important processes like reaching out to a maximum number of prospects and convert them into customers.

Moreover, you can decrease the amount of workload which will result in less hiring. Once your business processes are automated, you will need less clerical staff for data-entry work.

So, we agree that there are many benefits to automating your business processes. Therefore, any start-up business must look for the services that can help them automate. There are several applications and services available in the market but IFTTT has no match. IFTTT is leading process automation application designed to benefit start-up businesses. We have gathered a complete review of IFTTT to help you understand this useful application.

IFTTT — Important Application for the Startups

Have you recently started your new business and wish to automate some of the small business tasks that you have to perform every day? If yes, then IFTTT is the most appropriate application. IFTTT is short for “If ‘This’ Then ‘That’,” which is a common command in coding to get the desired end product by assigning triggers. For example, “If I get a notification on Facebook” then “Notify via E-mail.”

It all sounds a bit tricky but once you start using IFTTT, your basic business tasks will easily be automated. IFTTT’s interface is quite user-friendly and allows you to automate business processes by connecting it with other applications and services.

The interesting fact is that you get to use IFTTTT without any cost. All the services and applets you find on the website are absolutely free to use. You won’t find any other powerful and robust application as IFTTT that you can get without spending a single penny.

IFTTT gives room to users so they can develop personalized integrations. The website called them “Recipes” earlier but now they are known as “Applets.” Does your business rely mostly on E-mails? What if you need your email to send a copy of your email attachments to Google Drive? That’s your new recipe/applet, if “I receive a new e-mail” then, “send a copy of the attachment to Google Drive.” It’s that simple! You can create your own home-baked “recipe” and share it with others in the community. Interesting! Isn’t it? Read on.

You can trigger more than one action to your applet after the update IFTTT made in the last quarter of 2016. Though creating “Applets” is limited to the business with products or services.

How IFTTT Works?

To begin with, you need to create a free account on the IFTTT website. It’s a one-step process that requires a valid e-mail address, username to login, and password. Once you submit the sign-up form, it will redirect you to your “Applet” page. You can sign up for the newsletter that will send you a recommended recipe via email every day.

Right after that, you will be redirected to the “Dashboard” where you will learn about IFTTT and how the “applets” work. Keep in mind that “This” stands for a trigger, and “That” stands for an action. You will see a link to the “Applet” section on the Dashboard. On “Applets” page, you will be able to create your custom applets. Moreover, you can benefit from the applets created by other IFTTT users.

With IFTTT, you can automate everything — from web services to smart devices. Let’s look at an example. Say you want to automatically update the photo on Twitter if you upload anything to your Facebook profile.

You can create a customer “applet” that will update your photo on Twitter as soon as something is uploaded on Facebook. From the Dashboard, you need to click on “Create new applet.” It will redirect you to the following page to choose your first channel. A Channel is a web service or a website which will be the trigger. Choose the channel from the list or add it by typing the name on the top.

You want the application to detect your Facebook photo so put “Facebook” as the channel. As soon you select the channel, it will give you some of the pre-programmed triggers. Before you add any trigger, the website will ask you to connect your channel to IFTTT account.

Right after the first channel is linked to your IFTTT, the website will ask you to choose the second channel. According to the example, it will be your Twitter account. Add the channel and link your Twitter account to IFTTT account as well.

Now, you will see a bundle of pre-programmed ingredients that allow you to link-up two channels. You will have to put a trigger on Facebook to stay alerted if there’s any update on the profile picture. Then hit the “+” sign to link the trigger to action. Then choose the action on Twitter to update your profile picture as soon as something is updated on Facebook profile. There you go! Your first “Applet” is ready to use. You can make it available for other IFTTT users. Don’t worry! Others can’t access your personal details but only use the trigger and action.

Must-have Applets for your business startup

There are several applets available on the website that were designed by FTTT itself or existing users. You can search for the applets on the website. Here are some of the must-have applets if you have just started a business.

Automatically Save Every Tweet you post to a Google Spreadsheet

This applet will automatically save all your tweets to a Google Spreadsheet with the capability to choose if you want to save replies and re-tweets. This applet allows you to view all your tweets at-a-glance.

Save your Gmail attachments to DropBox

This is another important pre-programmed applet available on the website through which you can save attachments that you receive in your Gmail to your DropBox folder. You can edit the folder or path where you would like the attachments saved. This app will show all your e-mail attachments in one folder so that you can access them quite conveniently.

Automatically save Gmail attachments to Google Drive

This applet is quite useful for all those businesses that often receive official documents via e-mail attachments. With this applet, all your incoming emails with attachments will be saved to your Google Drive. You can also edit the path or folder on your Google Drive so you get to view your attachments in one place.

Add your iOS Contacts to Google Services Automatically

Let’s suppose you want to create and develop a list of your business contacts on your iOS. This applet will allow you to automatically sync your iOS Contacts to your Google Services. Also, copy all the contacts to Google Services so you get to keep a backup. As a business owner, it’s important to automatically keep your contacts backed up without you having to do it manually.

Sync your Facebook and Twitter profile pictures

It’s important for a business startup to keep their Facebook and Twitter accounts up-to-date. This applet will update your Twitter profile picture once you upload any picture to your official Facebook page. Now you only have to worry about updating the picture on one social platform (Facebook). This applet will automatically put the profile photo on Twitter as well.

Conclusion

IFTTT is highly powerful and innovative application. If you have just started a new business, this tool will help you to automate your time-consuming business processes. IFTTT provides an easy-to-use interface, with the ability to integrate with a number of applications and products. You can even control your office appliances without paying a single penny.

Business automation was never as easy before, thanks to IFTTT. You can browse the website and explore your options to automate your daily business tasks that otherwise can take hours if done manually.

Originally published at Freelancer Bundle.