Zapier Central tutorial for beginners (step-by-step with video and images)
Learn how to use Zapier Central, including: behaviours, instant actions, and adding data sources to your bots.
by It's AI Thomas
Friday, 14 June 2024
In this guide, I’ll walk you through using Zapier Central, a powerful new product that Zapier has recently launched.
Zapier Central is a ChatGPT-like experience where you can create your own bots with its actions and behaviours while connecting them to over 6,000+ apps.
I will show you how to create your first Zapier Central bot, add data sources, perform data analysis, build behaviors for automations, and test the workflows.
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:
Feel free to share this tutorial with your colleagues.
Step 1 — Introduction to Zapier Central
Zapier Central is a new product from Zapier, designed to streamline your automation processes with a chatbot-like interface. It supports connections with over 6,000 apps and allows users to start automations directly from a conversational layout.
- To get started, visit
zapier.com/centraland click on "Try Central Today".
- After you sign in with your Zapier account, you will be redirected to the main homepage for Zapier Central.
- You can also go directly to Zapier Central by visiting
central.zapier.com
Step 2 — Creating a New Bot
To use Zapier Central, you will need to create your bot. The bot will be able to answer your questions and, additionally, you can assign it different actions and behaviours, while also connecting it to over 6,000+ apps.
- Click on “New Bot” to create a new chatbot.
- You can rename the bot, start from scratch, or delete it. In this example, we cam rename the bot to “Lead Helper”.
- After that, you can immediately start using the bot, like asking questions and performing research.
- However, the true value is found in adding data sources, behaviors, and instant actions.
Step 3 — Adding Data Sources
After creating your bot, you should consider adding a data source. This means that the Zapier Central bot will have continues access to a spreadsheet, Hubspot CRM, Notion, or your Google Docs. It will be then able to parse the data and answer any questions about your data source.
- Click on “Add Data Source”.
- Currently supports Google Sheets and other options, inlcuding Hubspot CRM, Airtable, Excel, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Notion, and Zapier Tables.
- Let's say you would want to connect your Google Sheets account. Zapier Central will automatically use your connections that you have set up in your main Zapier account.
- Select a specific spreadsheet as a data source.
- Click on the blue button “Add data source”.
- If you want to a) add a new connection, b) refresh the connection, or c) manage new connections, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner.
- The data source syncs continuously to ensure the most recent data is available.
- Once connected, the status will show as “syncing”.
- You can always refresh the connection by clicking on the three dots and selecting “Sync Now”.
Step 4 — Analyzing Data
You can use Zapier Central to analyze your datasets as well.
- Ask questions directly to the bot about the connected data.
- Let's connect another spreadsheet with revenue data.
- The connection can be set up similarly as the leads database. You can connect more data sources to one bot.
- After the connection is set up similarly as we did before with the leads database, let's prompt the bot with:
Context: (You are a data analyst, specializing in revenue analytics.
Worksheet name: (Monthly Reporting Database (Worksheet))
Perform exploratory data analysis on the data in this worksheet.It’s a little different to write effective prompts for your AI automations in Zapier, 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.
- The bot uses SQL and Python to fetch and analyze the data, providing a summary of the specific dataset within seconds.
Step 5 — Creating Behaviors for Automations
The power of Zapier Central is in adding behaviors and instant actions.
- To add a behavior to your bot, click on “Create Behavior”.
- Name your action, and choose your app as a trigger by clicking on the “+Add trigger” button. You will be able to select from over 6,000 apps.
- For example, let's choose “HubSpot” for the trigger and “New Contact” as the event.
- After that, you the connection from your Zapier account will automatically be used.
- Click on “Add trigger”.
- You then can define the instructions for the Zapier Central bot. For example:
Context: (You summarize leads as they come in Hubspot.)
Details: (You write down a maximum of 250 characters.)
Format: (You format the message as a Slack message.)
Style: (You use straight-to-the-point style.)
After you get the lead in Hubspot, you summarize it, and then you send the summary via Slack.
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.
- Define the actions to be performed after the automation is triggered, such as sending a message to a Slack channel with the leads info from Hubspot.
- You can also use the suggestions from Zapier's AI.
- Otherwise, click on “+Add action” and choose “Send Channel Message”.
- The AI will guess all the relevant fields so you don't have to fill them out as you usually do when you create workflows in Zapier.
- In this case, the bot will perform the action whenever you get a new lead in Hubspot.
Thus, with Zapier Central behaviors, you are simply setting up a workflow in a very user-friendly environment without the need to fill out all the fields in the normal Zap (workflow) directly on zapier.com. Additionally, with behaviors, you can also leverage “one-phrase automation”, meaning that you can message the bot with a specific phrase (trigger), and it will automatically perform the next action that you specify. You can watch a video I have made about it here.
- Be creative and play with the bot by adjusting your instructions.
Step 6 — Testing Automations
You can also test whether your behavior in your Zapier Central bot works.
- Use the “Test Behavior” button to check if the automation works correctly.
- After that, monitor the steps performed by the bot, ensuring all actions are executed as intended.
- You might need to confirm whether the bot should proceed with the action.
- You can also click on the “Retest behavior” if you want to repeat the test.
- In our example, the test was successful and the lead data was send from Hubspot to our Slack weekly-reporting channel.
- Remember, that you can manually adjust the channel name if you find that the AI did not guess it right.
- To do so, click on the action you have created.
- After clicking on the action, in the “Channel” field, choose “Set a specific value for this field”.
- Click on the “Update action” blue button.
Lastly, do not forget to turn on your behavior in the right upper corner.
Step 7 — Instant Actions
You can also set up instant actions. Instant actions are simply connections with other apps. While you are chatting with your bot, you can randomly ask it to perform certain task in any app you like.
- Click on the “Actions” button in your chat and click on “Add action”.
- Choose an app you would like to add. For example, by choosing Gmail, you will be able to let your bot create drafts that will appear immediately in your gmail account.
- Choose as many actions by clicking on the checkboxes. For example, we will choose the action “Create Draft” and hit “Save”.
- To use the action, simply click on it and the message bar.
- Zapier Central will auto-populate for you with a starting prompt: “I want to “Create Draft” in Gmail”.
- Add what you want the bot to do. For example, we can say:
I want to "Create Draft" in Gmail. Create an email draft in my gmail account, summarizing the exploratory data analysis in this chat. The email will be send to my co-worker who is a data analyst.
- The bot will then perform the action.
- You can go to your drafts in your Gmail to double check whether it was performed.
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
