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How to Set Up The Zapier x CC Integrations (+ FAQ)

  • 7 February 2020
  • 29 replies
  • 2500 views

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Our Zapier integration enables you to connect with thousands of other apps like Slack and Jira to build workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and save time.

 

How to set up the Zapier integration

 

If you’re just getting started with Zapier

If you’ve come here directly from the step to authenticate your account in Zapier...

When you create a Zap, you'll be asked to enter your Customer Communities API key.

The authentication modal in Zapier when creating a Zap.

To locate your API Key in your Customer Communities account, please follow these steps:

  1. Log into your CC Control environment
  2. Go to Integrations > Apps via the menu.
  3. Click "Zapier" on the Apps page.
  4. Click "Generate API Key"
  5. Copy the generated API key to your clipboard 
    The Zapier app with your API key can be found on CC’s app page in Control

     

Paste your key back into your Zapier account and then “Continue.”

If all steps were successful, your CC account will now be successfully connected.

 

What can you achieve with the CC x Zapier integration?

Zapier is a great way to boost internal adoption of the community by bringing community activity into the tools and workflows of colleagues at other departments, like Product, Support, Marketing, and Customer Success.

Whilst it’s common as a community manager to spend your day working in the CC platform, your colleagues are spread across other tools. Integrating those tools with CC via Zapier reduces the barrier to entry for colleagues to get value out of the community.

Here are three common use cases that our Zapier app is able to power:

  • Self-service: improve internal collaboration when answering questions / responding to users in the community by enabling your colleagues to read and respond to community posts without leaving Slack.

  • Product feedback: automate the community ideation workflow for your product team by surfacing the right ideas at the right time, whether that’s into Jira, Slack, Productboard, or any other tool!

  • Engagement: help customer success managers keep tabs on their customers by sending Slack messages when one of their customers registers on the community or posts a new question or idea. Enable customer marketing to create automated community email audiences by adding users to mailing lists in tools like Mailchimp when a user registers or posts a topic in a particular category.

What triggers/actions/searches are available in Zapier?

Triggers

  • New Attendee (when a new attendee signs up for an event in the community)

  • New Reply (when a new reply is added to a question, conversation, idea, or article)

  • New Topic (when a new conversation, question, idea, or article is created)

  • New Topic Like (when a new like is added to a question, conversation, idea, or article)

  • New User (when a new user registers on the community)

  • Reported Post (when a post is reported)

  • Updated Idea Status (when the status of an idea is changed by a moderator)

  • Updated Moderator Tags (when the moderator tags of a topic are changed by a moderator)

     

Actions

  • Append Moderator Tags to Topic (append Moderator Tags to Topic [question, conversation, idea, or article])

  • Create Reply (add a reply to a topic [question, conversation, idea, or article])

  • Assign Points (assign points to a user)

  • Add Custom Role to User (add custom role to user)

  • Add Custom Role to User (add a custom role to user)

  • Assign Badge ( assign a budge to a user)

  • API action ( allow to use custom API call)

    Please see our API documentation

Searches

  • Find User (look up a user in the community to get more details about them) 

  • Get Assigned Points of User ( get the assigned points of a user)

  • Find Topic (by moderator tag) (lookup a topic in the community by whether it contains a certain moderator tag)

 

FAQ

What data is available when looking up a user with the ‘Find User’ search/action?

You can access the following data in the trigger payload:

  • Username, email, and user ID
  • Roles (primary + custom)
  • Userid
  • Rank
  • Join date
  • Custom profile fields
  • Basic statistics about the user (total replies (posts), topics, answers). The likes count comes from a legacy data source and is deprecated.

Please note that some data points may be transformed and simplified when running a live Zap. This means that you may see additional data points when testing a Zap. For example, when testing a New Topic trigger, you may see the following data points - ID/Username/Avatar/Rank/mainRole:

Example Test Zap showing ID/Username/Avatar/Rank/mainRole data points

But when you deploy the Zap, you may notice that the Rank and mainRole data points are no longer displaying: 

Example Live Zap showing ID/Username/Avatar data points

This is because the live Zap runs the event payload through a connector that transforms and simplifies the data points. The data is still accurate and the full information can be found on CC and within your other integrated systems.


Why do you only support finding a topic by moderator tag?

  • We currently only support finding a topic by moderator tag at the moment because it helps power some of the key use cases shown above (two-way links between Slack and CC, JIRA and CC, etc.). If you have a use case that requires finding a topic via a different attribute, please let us know in the replies!

Do I have to choose a content type/category when setting up the triggers for new topics/replies/likes?

  • No - these are optional steps that you can use to filter the topics that trigger your Zaps.
  • If you want to trigger Zaps from all content types or content from all categories, simply leave these fields blank when setting up the trigger.

I can’t see certain categories in the filter - why is that?

We only display public categories in the filter drop-downs on content-based triggers. This is because of a limitation where we’re only able to retrieve a list of publicly visible categories. However, content in private categories does still trigger these Zaps - it’s just that the categories don’t appear in the list for filtering.

Can I use Zapier on my staging environment?

  • No - unfortunately Zapier will only work on a production community and not on any staging environments. Attempts to authorise Zapier on staging will yield an authentication error with the API token.

There are limitless possibilities in Zapier. If you need inspiration or some help getting started, check out the Zap templates on our Zapier page.

What can I do with API actions?

  • You are no longer limited by the amounts of inbuilt Zapier events, this means many new functionalities are potentially available. For example:

    • Auto setting of public tags - previously this was only possible to do via moderator tags. e.g content written by users with a certain custom role or from a certain organization can be automatically tagged now.

    • Creation of all content types is now possible - previously only replies to topics could be achieved with Zapier, now you can leverage the API to post entire topics of any content type. e.g content can be kept in sync between different sites, content added to one place can be pushed to the community along with any edits to topics.

    • Deletion of topics and users is now possible via Zapier, e.g responding to GDPR data removal requests or perhaps just keeping content in sync between two different sources (data removed from one platform can trigger the same data to be removed from the community).

    • Showing poll results, you can now get poll results for certain topics and then render this data on another platform.

    • Leaderboard data is now available in Zapier - meaning you can run reports on which users are obtaining the most points over which period. This data can then be used to award prizes automatically e.g badges or perhaps physical prizes.

    • Events now have a lot more possibilities - you can now register users as attendees for specific events automatically, e.g users signing up to either the community or another platform can be automatically opted in for event attendance.

    • User management is much easier now that all of the user API endpoints are available, keeping user bases in synchronization just became a lot easier. Users removed from one platform can now trigger an easy API call to remove the same user's profile from the community. Updates to user information can now also be easily pushed to (or from) the community so that user profiles can stay in synchronization throughout your entire software ecosystem.

  • A huge amount of possibilities have been opened up now that the search API endpoints have been exposed in Zapier. Users can perform federated search of community content much easier now with a Zapier API integration. For example:
    • Queries can be passed to Zapier and results returned back to the origin source for rendering on page.

    • Allows for a single search repository without having to index the community content.

    • Gives you the exact same search results that the community search returns for a more seamless CX.

  • Entire gamification strategies can now be achieved solely in Zapier, some examples include:
    • Awarding points to users who post on another website e.g Reddit and who also have a community account.

    • Getting users who have been awarded a certain amount of points and then triggering another action e.g free conference tickets.

    • Awarding more points to users who have posted in specific categories.

    • Automatically awarding badges to users who have attended a certain event.


29 replies

Does Zapier work with Asana as well? 

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Does Zapier work with Asana as well? 

It does! https://zapier.com/apps/asana/integrations

Curious to know what would you like to achieve with an Asana integration :)

Ah, that's great. Our team has been using Asana for a while now. We use it as our contentcalendar, for our tasks and also to keep track of our backlog and projects. Our organisation however, is about to make a major switch between CMS, and we're all probably gonna use Asana as our CMS as well. Since we are a consumerorganisation the community-team aren't the only active collegues on our community, our researchers and writers are as well for example. Therefore, a lot of our members post topics or messages about our existing content. It costs us a lot of time to remind all of our writers and researchers to respond to these messages. It would be great if we could create a Zap reminds them when there is a new lead within their range, for example. It's still just an idea that came to mind, but I hope this makes any sense.

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Sounds like a good candidate for automation and increasing community accessibility Monique:)! Not super familiar with Asana but the Asana ‘Create Task’ action (triggered by new topic in a certain category on inSided) and the Asana ‘New Story’ trigger (resulting in a new reply on a topic on inSided) seem like the most relevant ones for you. 

Hey @daniel.boon —

Can you share more details about Step 3 in the first Zap, please?

  1. (Optional) Action: Append  Moderator Tag to topic with Slack thread ID in inSided.

Is this a third step using the inSided app? If so, I don’t see an action to append a tag or input the Slack thread ID, but I see the option to create a tag — if that is correct, can you define where to find the Moderator ID & Moderator tag name? Does that create the Slack thread ID?

Thank you! 

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Hi @cherise,

That was a mistake in the documentation - fixed it now. ‘Append’ was indeed referring to ‘Create’ Moderator Tags.

For the moderator id, you can look up any user with admin privileges in Control (e.g. yourself) - from there you can find your moderator id in the URL.

Here’s a screenshot showing how I’ve configured that step (topic ID/content type come from the first step; the moderator tag name variable comes from the step where you send a new channel message in Slack; the ‘slack:...ts’ part around it is so it’s easy to find the Slack thread id later on).


Please let me know if you have any other questions!

If I click here to sign-in to our community:

 

I get this page shown: 

 

>>>>>>>> How do I create an API key?<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

I have of course been here and tried both the secret and client ID - neither works if inserted above as API key. 

 

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In case anyone else has the same question as @perinbox, I answered here: How do I get an API key for Zapier.

Short answer: Go to Integrations > Apps > Zapier to get your API key for Zapier 🙂.

Hey @daniel.boon  - Can I use this feature from the Knowledge Center product too? If there’s any comments under an article published in a specific sub-category, they then get posted out to Slack. 

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Hey @daniel.boon  - Can I use this feature from the Knowledge Center product too? If there’s any comments under an article published in a specific sub-category, they then get posted out to Slack. 

Hey @banthonisz - absolutely you can do this! It’s easy to select specific subcategories when setting up the new reply trigger. If you want to trigger for multiple categories, that might require a bit more Zapier-logic to set up 🙂 (I’d recommend their built-in filter/lookup table apps).

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Question about the Slack / Zapier integration above: 

How do you prevent the “Push replies from Slack thread to the community” step from posting to the community and then looping back to the Slack thread (assuming you also did the “Send a Slack notification in an existing thread when new reply added on the community.” step).

 

Are these not meant to be set-up in the same instance?

 

Thanks!

Mike

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Question about the Slack / Zapier integration above: 

How do you prevent the “Push replies from Slack thread to the community” step from posting to the community and then looping back to the Slack thread (assuming you also did the “Send a Slack notification in an existing thread when new reply added on the community.” step).

 

Are these not meant to be set-up in the same instance?

 

Hey @mstone - when we set up the integration this is not something that we prevent - although it creates a duplicate message in the Slack thread, it also acts as a kind of confirmation that the message you pushed to the community was indeed posted. There is probably a way to prevent it, but I haven’t looked into it.

I’ve noticed that <p> </p> tags come in when the topic description is included in the Slack integration. It’s not a big deal, but this is how it looks:

 

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I’ve noticed that <p> </p> tags come in when the topic description is included in the Slack integration. It’s not a big deal, but this is how it looks:

Hey @jillrossco - thanks for your feedback. This is something we’d like to solve natively in the integration (offering a plain text field by default). However, you can workaround this by using the formatter by Zapier app which has a ‘strip HTML tags’ function 🙂.

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Hi - I registerd for Zapier but don’t see it in my list of Apps in the mod console. Any ideas?

@Kgastaldo you should be seeing Zapier in your list of Apps in control now!

Hey @daniel.boon  - in an earlier answer you said this:

If you want to trigger for multiple categories, that might require a bit more Zapier-logic to set up 🙂 (I’d recommend their built-in filter/lookup table apps).

I’ll admit I’m a Zapier noob, but all I see in the “Setup trigger” is a radio select for the single category to trigger.  I’d like to set up a few categories to go to the same Slack channel, and not burn Zaps per category.  Could you give me a pointer?

I’d also like to do the same for new Questions and Conversations, but I guess this is likely to have the same answer.

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Is it possible to use the integration to trigger posting a topic to a specific subforum when certain conditions are met? (I’m thinking outages)

Cheerios,

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Hey @daniel.boon  - in an earlier answer you said this:

If you want to trigger for multiple categories, that might require a bit more Zapier-logic to set up 🙂 (I’d recommend their built-in filter/lookup table apps).

I’ll admit I’m a Zapier noob, but all I see in the “Setup trigger” is a radio select for the single category to trigger.  I’d like to set up a few categories to go to the same Slack channel, and not burn Zaps per category.  Could you give me a pointer?

I’d also like to do the same for new Questions and Conversations, but I guess this is likely to have the same answer.

Hi @triskaideka - that’s not possible with the category selector for the trigger, but you could use Zapier’s filter app in a step after the trigger to filter only the categories you want and keep everything in a single zap.

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Is it possible to use the integration to trigger posting a topic to a specific subforum when certain conditions are met? (I’m thinking outages)

Cheerios,

Hey @Ditte - it’s not currently possible to create a topic on inSided via Zapier, but the idea sounds like a really good one to automate! What tool would you be using to trigger the Zap?

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Is it possible to use the integration to trigger posting a topic to a specific subforum when certain conditions are met? (I’m thinking outages)

Cheerios,

Hey @Ditte - it’s not currently possible to create a topic on inSided via Zapier, but the idea sounds like a really good one to automate! What tool would you be using to trigger the Zap?

Most likely Slack, but maybe an email could also work… :thinking:

How can we update the Zapier Connector to include the ability to be able to add security roles to a user? I have a list of email domains that should automatically get assigned a role based upon their domain. It seems like we are SOO close… :) 

@daniel.boon any insight how often the connection times out? I created my ZAPs 2 weeks ago and the API connection to inSided already expired. 

Hey there @daniel.boon , I’m hoping to create a Zap that tells one of our Slack channels whenever we post a new article in our Insided community Knowledge Base. The use case is to tell Sales and Customer Success when there is a new article available, since the article is usually answering a question they get frequently from customers or prospects. Currently as a workaround I simply post the link to the article to Slack every time we post a new one, but this takes me some extra time. As of now the Zapier integration with Insided doesn’t offer me the option to send a notification to Slack whenever a new article is posted. Is this functionality coming soon? Thanks! 

 

Hi @daniel.boon 

Currently, our internal teams sign up for/login into Community using our Okta instance. I would like to set up automatic approval and provisioning for employees to save me time from having to go in, approve, and assign them an employee role. Can I setup a Zapier connection to solve for this? If so, do I start with inSided or Okta for the steps?

Any advice is useful here.

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