Zapier is a workflow automation platform targeted towards everyday consumers and small businesses who want to automate repetitive processes without having to invest in a massive IT infrastructure to do so.

Zapier works by allowing users to connect “Zapier Apps” together with simple or complex workflows. It simplifies this process by using the concept of Triggers and Actions, along with other more advanced features, if necessary. Under the hood, each Zapier App is a simplified implementation of a company’s API within Zapier’s platform. The Zapier platform allows those apps to authenticate users, collect user input, run workflows on demand or on schedule, and provides error handling and logging. This is the part that makes Zapier so appealing to small companies or consumers because without it, building all those platform features to make APIs interact would take way too much time, effort, and money.

Zapier’s platform allows companies to make their application available as Zapier Apps. Humanity is listed among those apps now. If a 3rd party service is supported by Zapier, it will work with Humanity’s Zapier App.

A Zap is Zapier’s name for an automation workflow. An automation workflow consists of one Trigger and one or many Actions. A Zap also keeps a running history of every execution and any errors. Lastly, the Zap also stores special deduplication ids from Triggers to ensure every time a Trigger is activated, the Zap does not act on a record that was already processed previously. This type of behavior only occurs with application Triggers that let Zapier know about duplicate records.

Triggers and Actions can be explained in a simple sentence:

“When this happens, then do this.”

“When a new employee is added in Humanity, then add that employee to an Excel spreadsheet.”

In this example, the Trigger is when a new employee is being added to Humanity. Once this trigger event is detected, the action of adding that employee to a spreadsheet can commence.

Triggers can be behaviour in an application, like new employees being added to Humanity, or a new row being added to a spreadsheet; however, a Trigger can also be a scheduled date and time. For example, 12:00 PM Eastern Time Every Monday.

Actions are CREATE, UDPATE, or DELETE behaviours in an application. Once a Trigger is activated, any actions the user wants to perform will run within the Zap.

The basic setup for creating Zaps is simple. You always start with 1 Trigger and 1 Action. You can configure your Trigger or your Action in any order. Depending which apps, you want to use, you will be prompted to go through that app’s login process. For Humanity, you only need to sign in with your desired username and password.

When setting up your action, you will always have to complete at least the required fields. For example, in the Create/Update Employee action, you will only be required to fill out the Employee ID; however, if you know you’re creating a new employee, you will need to also fill out the First and Last Name, otherwise it will cause an error. The reason the First and Last name fields are not also marked as required is that when you update an employee, those fields are not required. Since this action does both (create and update), we had to use a lower requirement.

Note:

Zapier will recognise if you’re already logged into Humanity when you try to add a new account or when you try to reconnect an already connected account. If you want to add a different account, make sure to log out before attempting to add or reconnect an account in Zapier.

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If you have any further queries, please don't hesitate to reach us at support@humanity.com. Happy Scheduling!