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Wade Foster

Multi-Step Zaps by Zapier — The easiest way to build powerful workflows with your apps

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Wade Foster
Hey Product Hunt! Today we're launching a new version of Zapier the includes Multi-Step Zaps. This has been in development for nearly a year. We've had several thousand people testing in beta and it's been going great so we're releasing to everyone today. A quick example of something you could do is setup a Typeform survey so when a response is received it can trigger a chain of events like: - look up the respondent in Pipedrive CRM and add a note - upload an attached file to Box - log the entry in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, including a link to the new file - if critical feedback is given, open a Zendesk ticket. You can read more about the launch and effort behind this here: https://zapier.com/blog/workflow... I'll be around all day to answer questions if you have them. Wade P.S. You use this to do some cool stuff with Product Hunt too like setting up a Multi-Step Zap to post your PH upvotes to Twitter, Facebook, Slack and LinkedIn all at once.
Jean-Paul Horn
@wadefoster I love Zapier to death and have been (and still) using it over a year extensively (paid account). Would love an extra account step between Basic and Business though (faster polling, more zaps). Huge fan of today's update and the previous folder update. You guys are kicking it!
Jean-Paul Horn
@wadefoster PS Would also love a way to rearrange previous made steps. A few times I got the multi-step order wrong and had to start over.
Wade Foster
@jeanpaulh Ahh. Interesting. That might be easier said than done, but I'll see what we can do there. Definitely would be helpful UX.
Ryan J A Murphy
@jeanpaulh @wadefoster Seconding this, but from the Free to the Basic plan. Maybe this is foolish of me, but the jump from $0/year for what Free offers to $220/year for Basic is way too much for me. I want to give you money for the service, but I can't afford that! (It doesn't help that the CDN dollar is in the gutter..) Use case: I use Zapier for a number of personal recipes. Something like $5/month for 10 zaps and 1000 tasks a month would be realistic for me – and maybe many others looking to use it for "prosumer" purposes. I'm sure your market analysts have priced out these segments and your scheme makes sense... but that doesn't stop me from feeling a little guilty whenever a task runs for free. (Thanks for building Zapier!)
levelsio
I love this. I always tweet and talk about automation apps like Zapier and IFTT everywhere. They're both great, although I use Zapier more as their speed of new features added is faster now. For example, I take pre-orders for my book at https://makebook.io via Typeform, payment goes to Stripe, then Zapier pushes the customer details to MailChimp, and then Zapier sends people the first chapters to their email. Another one, when people sign up to Nomad List, automatically Zapier sends them an introduction via Slack. Also when I receive an invoice by email, Zapier tries to detect it and automatically files it in my bookkeeping spreadsheet on Google Docs. It still takes some manual editing after, but it saves time. I used to code all this stuff myself as little scheduled shell scripts, and I still do, but wherever possible I try to automate it via Zapier. It's not perfect, sometimes Zapier doesn't detect the correct API data for example making it useless, but most of the times it works and then it keeps working. The problem with coding your own scripts around APIs is that APIs keep changing, so sometimes your scripts will just stop working. Zapier checks APIs themselves, so that saves loaaaads of time. I'm a huge believer that the future of startups is less code, and Zapier is a tool that makes that future a little more real.
Wade Foster
@levelsio One cool thing you might like is the new code app. It lets you write a little javascript between steps to manipulate the data from a trigger before posting to an action. It's great for all those times when Zapier doesn't have API data in quite the right format for you.
Alexander Khanukov
@wadefoster @levelsio Ahhh. Like my old Google Scripts still cracking away in the background. Will look into this. Thanks!
Mike Knoop
I spent the last year+ building this alongside @justindeal, @smbriones, and github/stevemolitor and we're very happy to see this finally ship today. Before, Zapier was only 1-to-1 integrations which limited it's power. Multi-Step Zaps open up a huge array of more useful Zaps like... - looking up data inside other apps to use in the workflow - if an item isn't found when looking it up, create it - transforming that data inside of Zapier (like dates, string manipulation) - executing custom javascript code in between steps (can do manipulation, API calls, etc.) This is the biggest change to the product since we launched the company back in 2011. Interested in the build process? Here's a look at how it came together: http://blog.invisionapp.com/rede... I'm excited to answer questions. Especially ones about the build process (like how we ran a 3 month beta). I'll be watching this thread throughout the day! Mike
guillaume cabane
I have been on the beta of Multi-stage zaps for over 6 months, and it's been incredible. It's now become our go-to backend, and that has helped us create growth experiments at a huge pace!
Justin Mares
@guillaumecabane Can you give an example growth experiment you've run through multi-stage? Super curious! Btw, love Mention. Great job with the product!
Bryan Helmig
Zapier co-founder/CTO - crazy excited about this launch - it represents thousands of hours of work and a pretty much complete rebuild of our entire stack. One of my favorite features is new custom Code steps - both Python https://zapier.com/help/code-pyt... and Javascript https://zapier.com/help/code/#ho... are supported. I've been using it to replace dozens of crontabs and others are using it to inject custom scripting into workflows around Github, Bitbucket, Trello, Salesforce, etc. I especially like making Slack bots with it (we've made a few game moderator bots, pretty fun). I'll be around all day - happy to answer any questions. There is some cool tech under the hoods.
Ryan J A Murphy
@bryanhelmig Woo! Python and Javascript. Good choices! Anything else on the horizon?
Bryan Helmig
@ryanjamurphy I know I'd personally like ES6 & ES7 Javascript support - but we'll keep our ears open just in case others have stuff that they want us to include!
Greg Meyer
@wadefoster love this idea and have enjoyed the beta of this feature. Have you thought of creating company-supported "recipes"; i.e. A batch install of a multi-step app that sets up any necessary connections and makes it even easier to set up complex workflow?
Wade Foster
@grmeyer definitely something we're digging into after this launch. we want to explore how people are collaborating with Zaps across teams in work environments to really help nail some of these complex mission critical workflows.
Mike Knoop
@grmeyer yup that's definitely on our minds. Do you have this problem? Would love to hear more: mike@zapier.com
Roland Ligtenberg
Huge Zapier supporter, and at any given time have 100+ running in the background stitching together all of my growth experiments, landing pages, and auto-reporting to Hipchat channels to the rest of the team.
Jason Kotenko
I run the Zapier platform - If you're looking at this and wondering "how do I get MY product working in Zapier?", check out the Zapier Developer Platform: https://zapier.com/developer/ You can add your app and follow a clear path to getting it from a prototype, to an integration that everyone on Zapier can use, in a really short amount of time if your APIs are RESTful and use a standard authentication scheme.
Chad Person
Hat's off for this step forward Zapier team (Wade, Mike, Brian, Justin, Stephanie et al). The integration we did at BowTie.io has added a tremendous amount of value to our no-db static web platform. Multi-step Zaps and search-driven workflows are going be HUGE for our users. Let us know how we can help get the word out further.
James Deer
Woo! I no longer feel my more complicated zaps need to be double checked by a developer :)
Alex Mohseni
Awesome, just what I've been waiting for. Very excited!
Eric Siu
Wow this is huge. Congrats Wade and the Zapier team!
Corley
This is so exciting, @wadefoster! I love Zapier - I cannot wait to explore the new multi-step zaps. I'm resisting the urge to dig in right now as I know I'll end up spending a few hours exploring the different permutations. :-)
Thomas Plaindoux
Zapier have been helping us build lot of our growth stack at Mention. I'm so happy to see the Multi-Step Zaps out of beta! After using it extensively for some months, I can say that Zapier offers you a tool which is only limited by your imagination! There is virtually no limitation and Zapier also offer a fallback solution for tools which are not integrated natively to some of our existing solutions. Congratulation for this release, awesome work!
Jack Smith
awesome and logical. Zapier is massively under-rated imho
Love this. I didn't realise that I was using it in beta. I have set up a lot of zaps and this condenses the workflows a lot.
Brian Kidwell
This is awesome! I have it on my todo list to set up a new zap today and I think is going to make it even easier. Perfect timing 👍 Congrats on the new feature launch!
Alex Shuck
This is awesome - I've had the beta for a few months and it's allowed us to do even more with Zapier than we did before.
Ryan Abrams
I always felt there was a limitation to Zapier because of the inability to use multi-step zaps. This makes Zapier an even more powerful tool. Glad that's been taken care of and look forward to trying it.
Alexander Khanukov
The natural progression of where we thought this product was going is finally here! Thanks Zapier! Really excited about the myriad of combinations now possible as well as the integration with physical, IoT services coming. Would love to see integration(s) with all of the various 'Conversational Commerce' platforms growing daily, maybe as one of the triggers for a set of actions. Thanks again!