Managing Your Zaps

In this chapter, we will discuss the best ways to manage and maintain data in your Zapier account. As you build more Zaps, keeping them all organized will become more of a priority for preserving structure. We will, therefore, start this chapter by explaining how to keep your workflows organized in the Zap management area by using the best naming conventions and by using folders. We will then discuss how to manage individual Zaps and utilize the Zap Settings area. Next, we will help you to understand Zap statuses and then cover how best to manage your connected apps. Finally, we will discuss how to share your workflows with other Zapier users.

We will cover the following key topics in this chapter:

• Keeping your Zaps organized
• How to manage your Zaps
• Understanding Zap statuses
• Managing your connected apps
• Sharing your Zaps and folders

Once you have worked through each of these topics, you will know how to keep your workflows organized...

Technical requirements

To work through the content and exercises in this chapter, you will need access to a Zapier account. The Zapier Free plan will be adequate to work through most of the content in this chapter. For some of the instructions in the Sharing your Zaps and folders section, you will need access to a Zapier account on a Team or Company plan.

Keeping your Zaps organized

In Chapter 3, Building Your First Automated Workflow (Zap), we worked through the steps required to create your first workflow automation. As you repeat that process, you will build more Zaps to automate your other business processes. It will eventually become more of a priority to ensure that you have created a system for organizing your workflows. It is, therefore, a good practice to understand how best to keep your Zaps organized and start this process when you only have a few workflows built.

These are a couple of steps you can take to help you to keep your Zaps organized:

• Labeling your Zaps adequately
• Using folders and sub-folders in the Zap management area

Let’s discuss each of them.

Labeling your Zaps adequately

From an organizational perspective, you should name your Zaps with sufficient information to ensure a title is descriptive enough to understand what the Zap does. Labeling your Zaps in the right way will...

How to manage your Zaps

The central panel in the Zap management area shows a list of your Zaps, from either a folder you have selected or as a result of using the search bar. The view defaults to the Home folder when you first navigate to the Zap management area. You can manage your Zaps from the central panel, and this displays the folder title as a header, a top navigation bar, and a list of your Zaps.

Each Zap is presented in a clearly defined section, and clicking on the link in the Zap name will take you directly into the Zap editor where you can edit that specific Zap. You will also find a checkbox on the left-hand side of each Zap box. You can use the checkbox to select one or more Zaps to manage using the options in the top navigation bar. Individual Zaps can be managed by doing the following:

• Using the top navigation bar
• Using the options within specific Zap rows
• Removing them from the Trash folder
• Utilizing the Zap Settings tab from within the Zap editor...

Understanding Zap statuses

Understanding what the different statuses are and when you are likely to see your Zaps in those statuses is also a useful tool in the management of your Zaps. When you view your Zaps in the Zap management area, they will be displayed with one of the following statuses:

• On: As we discussed in Chapter 3, Building Your First Automated Workflow (Zap), once you have built and tested your Zap, you must publish your Zap and turn it On for it to work with live data from your trigger app. Once a Zap is turned On, Zapier will look for new data in the trigger app to then kick off the workflow and perform the action steps.
• Off: If your Zap is turned Off, Zapier will not actively look for new data in the trigger app. Zapier may automatically turn a Zap that you have On to the Off status for the following reasons:
  • Your Zapier pricing plan is downgraded to the Free plan from a paid plan, and therefore you lose access to paid plan features such as multi-step Zaps...

Managing your connected apps

Once you have connected your apps to Zapier, it’s useful to know how to manage the connections. This can all be done from the Apps module. You can navigate to this module by clicking on the My Apps icon link in the left sidebar or navigating to https://zapier.com/app/connections.

From within your personal account in the Apps module, you will be able to see a list of your connected apps under the All apps tab, how many connections have been added, and how many Zaps they are involved in. You will also see a tab called Custom integrations that will list any custom integrations with non-public apps involved in your account.

If you are using a Team or Company plan, your connections will be separated into two sections, as follows:

• My apps: Only you can use these accounts. You can, however, choose to share your app connections with your team.
• Shared with me: These are accounts that are owned by others in the team but have been made available...

Sharing your Zaps and folders

Working through your processes and then creating your Zaps will require some initial time investment. However, once you harness the power of using workflow automation tools such as Zapier, you’ll begin to benefit from the time-saving and productivity gains of automating your workflows. You may want others to benefit from the time you have invested in building your workflows and, therefore, Zapier offers you some options to be able to share your workflows with others. This is especially useful if you work with a team of people with whom you can collaborate to automate company processes by building and maintaining your Zaps together.

You can share your Zapier workflows in two ways:

• Sharing copies of your Zaps with other Zapier users outside your company
• Sharing your Zaps and folders with other team members, if you subscribe to a Team or Company plan

First, we will have a look at sharing copies of your Zaps with other Zapier users...

Summary

In this chapter, we began by describing how to keep your workflows organized in the Zap management area by adequately naming them and using folders to sort them. We then discussed how to manage individual Zaps and covered the different Zap statuses. We explored managing your connected apps, and lastly, we discussed how to share your Zaps with your team and other Zapier users.

You now know about the best ways to manage and maintain your Zaps and app connections in your Zapier account, how to keep your workflows organized, as well as how to share them with your team or other Zapier users outside of your company.

In the next chapter, we will discuss how to best use Zap history information, and we will cover typical Zap behavior and the best ways to handle and troubleshoot errors. We will help you to manage Zap alerts by adjusting your account settings and by setting up a Zap with the Zapier Manager built-in app. We will also discuss the various channels of support available...

Questions

1. Name two ways that you can keep your Zaps well organized in your Zapier account.
2. Where can you add further details or notes about a Zap?
3. Which Zaps cannot be shared with external accounts?