How to use the “When I message the bot” feature in Zapier Central (free prompt for reporting)
Zapier Central “when I message the bot” one phrase automation tutorial with a video, free prompt, and images.
Published in
7 min readJun 28, 2024
by It's AI Thomas
Friday, 28 June 2024 (updated 30 June 2024)
In this guide, I will walk you through the process of using the “When I message the bot” feature in Zapier Central, also known as the one phrase automation.
At the end of this tutorial, you will have a fully functional reporting automation that will be triggered when you message the bot with one keyword.
For those who enjoy watching videos rather than reading, I’ve also made a short video explaining and showing you everything that you need to know:
Step 1 — Access Zapier Central
- Visit zapier.com/central.
- Note that Zapier Central is currently in beta and under development, so features may change.
Step 2 — Create a New Bot
- Click on “Try Central Today” and log in.
- After logging into Zapier, you will be redirected to central.zapier.com, which resembles a chatgpt interface.
- Click on “Create a New Bot” to start a new chat or conversation.
Step 3 — Add a Data Source
- Click on “Data Sources” at the bottom of the screen.
- Select “Add a Data Source.”
- Currently, five data sources are available. For this example, select “Google Sheets.”
UPDATE: as of 30th of June 2024, Zapier has added 2 NEW data sources you can connect to Zapier Central bots — Excel and Hubspot. Thus, as of today, you would not need to connect Hubspot with Google Sheets and then with the Zapier Central, but you can now directly connect Hubspot CRM to your Zapier Central as a data source.
- Click on Google Sheets and hit “Add data source”.
- If you have connected apps in your main Zapier account, Zapier Central will recognize your connected Google Sheets account too.
- Choose the spreadsheet you want to use (e.g., “Leads Database”) and click on “Add Data Source.”
Step 4 — Configure Data Source
- After adding the data source, Zapier Central will pull and sync data from your Google Sheet on a regular basis.
- After a few seconds the “syncing” message dissapears which means that the data source is ready to be used.
- Click on the data source.
- You will see a preview of the table and you can also adjust which columns you want to display and use in the source by clicking on the “Fields” icon in the right upper corner.
- By clicking on the blue checkmarks, you can edit the columns directly in Zapier Central, removing or adding fields as needed.
Step 5 — Set Up Automation with Google Sheets in Zapier (skip if you directly use Hubspot as a data source in Zapier Central)
- Use HubSpot as the trigger to pull new leads into your Google Sheet.
- Choose “New Contact” as a trigger.
- Connect your HubSpot account and specify additional properties to retrieve.
- In the Trigger ribbon, choose whether you want to retrieve additional properties (columns) from your Hubspot CRM.
- Test the trigger.
- Use the “Create Spreadsheet Row” action to insert new leads into your Google Sheet.
- Choose the name of the sheet and the name of the worksheet you want to add the lead into.
- Map the dynamic variables from HubSpot to the appropriate columns in your Google Sheet.
- Test the action to verify data insertion.
Step 6 — Create One Phrase Automation
- Click on “Behaviors” and select “Create Behavior.”
- Click on “Add trigger”.
- Click on “When I message the bot”.
- Add a keyphrase (e.g., Leads?) and click on “Add trigger”.
- Add instructions for the bot (e.g., summarizing the number of leads and analyzing growth percentages).
- Here is a free prompt for Zapier Central instructions:
Context: (You are a lead generation specialist. You analyze leads that come to our business. You are well experienced and also gives tips whenever you are asked to summarize leads in the table.)
Details: (Your answers are no longer than 1000 characters long.)
Tone: (Educative.)
When asked, update on the recent changes in the lead table. Write down the number of leads received in total, the number of leads received in the last 1 day, the number of leads received in the last 7 days, and the number of leads received in the last 30 days. Using the "Date" column, calculate DoD % growth, WoW % growth, MoM % growth, and YoY % growth in terms of the number of leads received. What were the top industries received this week? what were the top countries received this week?It’s a little different to write effective instructions for your Zapier Central bot, so if you want to know how to write them and leverage different parameters like prompt engineers do, get my totally FREE no-junk 3P framework here that will save you time and money.
- When you use the “When I message the bot” as a trigger in Zapier Central, you don't have to add any actions for this behavior.
- Click on “Test the trigger” to see whether the bot will succesfully analyze your Google Sheet table.
- Wait until the bot performs the necessary actions based on the instructions given and double check whehter the results are correct.
- The bot in Zapier Central performs the analysis using python.
- You can see the code and more details by clicking on the small arrow next to the blue checkmark.
- Turn the behavior on in the right upper corner.
- From now on, you will be able to message the bot “Leads?” and the bot will respond with a report and analysis, including total leads, growth metrics, and top industries and regions.
- Remember to always check whether the data source is synced with the latest data in the spreadsheet when you want to generate a report once again.
Step 7— Manage Your Bot
- Name your bot (e.g., “Lead Analyzer”) for easy identification.
- Use the activity log to track interactions with the bot.
- Access additional settings by clicking on the three dots to rename, start fresh, or delete your bot.
- That's it. You're done, congrats!
I hope this was helpful, and if it was, please follow and clap for more AI automation tutorials.
You can get my 53+ AI automation templates here.
😉➡️ My resources that will help you save time, money, and headaches: https://bit.ly/itsaithomas
