This is seriously the biggest change to our product since launching the company. We've been working on it for a year (including a beta w/ several thousand users) and are very excited to finally release it. Before, Zapier only supported 1-to-1 integrations which limited it's power. Multi-Step Zaps open up a huge array of new power...
- transforming data (like dates, string manipulation)
- executing JS code in between steps (can do manipulation, extra API calls, etc.)
- looking up data inside other apps
- if an item isn't found when looking it up, create it
More details in our release notes: https://zapier.com/blog/workflow-automation/
How we built this: http://blog.invisionapp.com/redesigning-interactive-editor/
I know a ton of folks in the HN community use Zapier. Thank you so much for your support. I can't wait to see what you build now!
To call this out specifically - I think HN might appreciate the Code steps you can add to your workflow - we support both Python [0] and Javascript [1] today.
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.
1. Concerning privacy, for API's that don't offer webhooks for instance, does Zapier poll the API and then store some of our data in order to confirm that new records are indeed new? 2. Concerning robustness, what insurance is there against any failure that the zap will catch up with its triggers?
We don't currently use Zapier for anything mission critical and I'm hesitant to recommend it, but it would be pretty cool if we could use it for making zaps that contain more sensitive data and are more critical.
The privacy policy states: "Your user-facing Task History is stored for the life of your account so that you can monitor Zapier activity and replay failures." [1] I was hoping for a bit more of a technical explanation, though, and could only find pricing FAQ's.
I have been relying on a little self-hosted web app to "fork" some web hooks and this seems to me to eliminate that need entirely.
Note: this is NOT a challenge to why something like Zapier exists for business, nor a comment directly on the new multi-step Zaps.
Zapier is more like a glue between two building blocks, it doesnt have to include the relationship to you, just between two building blocks. That simple shift in the way zapier is solving automation make it incredibly powerful.
One of my biggest pain points was the lack of ability to determine if a record already exists before choosing to use an Update or Create action. (You'd think a service's API would treat Update the same as Create if no matching record is found, but that's not always the case.) So I've had to err on the side of caution and always use a Create action, thus filling the CRM (or whatever) with many many duplicates.
The search feature looks like it will handle this. Will be implementing shortly.
Now that we officially support Search actions, we can do a lot more cool things.
I'd be curious to read a blog post about if/how you beta tested this feature and ensured "fit" of the final shipped feature. Did you have an early adopter / guinea pig group?
If I wanted to make a Zap DAG, would I just arbitrarily linearize it ? i.e. if my deps were,
A -> B
B -> X
B -> Y
B -> Z
X -> C
Y -> C
Z -> C
C -> D
Do you notice implicit dependencies and do actions in parallel where there is no dependency ? Maybe it doesn't matter except for very deep / wide zaps.