The XRay.Tech Blog

At XRay.Tech, one of our first goals when working with members is to get their [projects] moving quickly. It’s best for everyone if we can hit the ground running and start building their automations as soon as their membership begins.

To start your XRay membership as efficiently as possible, or to set up a smooth kickoff with just about any automator, you should prepare an outline of the process that you want to automate before your project begins. 

In this post, we’ll explain how you can create a process outline that will enable XRay or any automation specialist to start building an automation from Day One of your engagement. 

Repeatability: a Vital Prerequisite

Before you start on an outline, you need to make sure that the process you want to automate fit one key criterion:

Is your process repeatable?

A repeatable process is one that can be performed largely the same way every time to achieve the same results without sacrificing quality. Of course, with any manual process, there will naturally be some variation each time your team conducts the process, but the overall procedure should mostly be consistent.

Let’s imagine that you want to automate a process for generating weekly sales reports. If your team uses different apps to generate the document, or different formats for the document itself, or saves and shares the document in different places each time, then the process isn’t well-defined enough to be repeatable yet. 

But if your team uses the same apps to generate the same work in the same place every time, then you have a process that’s ready for automation - and ready for an outline. 

Explain the Background of Your Process

Business processes don’t exist in a vacuum. Understanding the context of your process will help automators like XRay to build an automated workflow that integrates seamlessly into your team’s day-to-day work. 

To share background information about your process, briefly describe any details about your company, industry, or team that will help us to understand how the process works and the outcomes it needs to achieve.

The relevant details can vary a lot from company to company, but providing the following information (as applicable) should give an automator most of what they need to know:

• Who owns the process? i.e., who needs to approve any changes or additions to the process?

• Who would be the point(s) of the contact? Ideally, this should include the owner of the process or other decision makers

• What software is involved in this process?

• What teams or departments at your company are involved in this process?

• Are there any industry standards or regulations that automators should be aware of? Does data need to be handled a certain way?

• Are there any other particular requirements or circumstances automators should know about? 

The last question is pretty broad, but just try and think of any unique circumstances that might change how an automation needs to work.  For instance, you might have a remote team with employees spread across the country or the world, and any automation will need to keep them in the loop. Or perhaps your entire process rests on the shoulders of a superstar employee who needs automation to free up time. 

In any case, providing detailed and relevant background information will help us to not only build a good automation, but an automation that really works for your team. 

Outline Your Current Process

Next, it’s time to outline your process as it currently is. The better we understand your current process, the better we’ll be able to find opportunities for additional automation and optimization down the road. 

Your process outline will also act as a useful snapshot for future comparisons. You’ll be able to see how a ten-step procedure transforms into a two-step procedure with several automated steps running in the background, giving you a clear basis to evaluate the automation’s performance and improvements. 

To make your outline, we recommend using flowchart software like Lucidchart, but you can use any app you’re comfortable with. You could also just sketch it out on a piece of paper or on a whiteboard if you'd prefer.

 In your chart, add a shape for each step that makes up the process, and be sure to map it all in chronological order. Each step should include:

• The software involved

• The team members and/or department involved

• Notes for paint points, if any

A simple and elegant way to build your flowchart is to use a “swimlane” diagram. Each lane can represent an app or a department at your company so you can easily demonstrate the flow of data without having to add lots of notes. 

Once your chart is complete, finish documenting your process by making a quick Loom recording. In it, go through each step of the process you’ve charted out and explain what you’re doing. This visual, practical guide will be extremely helpful to the automators looking to optimize your workflow. 

Identify Your Goals

Now that you’ve clearly defined the present state of your process, it’s time to look forward and identify the outcomes that you’re hoping to achieve by automating the workflow.

Naturally, one of the first things that will come to mind will likely be saving time. Automation is a great way to shave minutes off of a tedious task, and you should certainly make a note of the time savings you’re hoping to create - and who you’re hoping to save time for. It’s important to note whether you’re trying to get a task off of your sales manager’s workload, or if you’re trying to free up time for your sales reps.

However, your goals can also extend beyond simply making a process faster. Automation can create more reliable and more consistent output. It can help you to gather data that’s otherwise been invisible. It can help you to handle situations that have been beyond your capacity with your current capacity. 

Think big, and let us know whatever you hope to achieve with the automation. We’ll give you our candid opinion on if it can be accomplished, and if it’s feasible, our automation techs will figure out the details of implementation. All you need to focus on is the outcome that you want to see. 

Build Custom Automations with an XRay Membership

At XRay, we prefer to work with our clients through memberships because we believe the best automations result from close collaboration. Getting to know our members, their processes, and their goals lets us build automated workflows that fit seamlessly into your daily patterns and procedures.

Whether you pursue a membership or not, providing our team with a detailed outline of your process will help us to get your XRay engagement started quickly, efficiently, and correctly. 

If you’d like to learn more about XRay’s method for building automated workflows, or if you’d like to learn a bit about building automations yourself, be sure to check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

No matter what line of work you’re in, you probably deal with lots of automated emails every week. 

Between web app notifications, purchase receipts, or - if you’re an automator-  Zapier error messages, automated emails can quickly fill up your inbox. 

But the automated, templated nature of these emails is actually a useful feature. Because these emails are automated, we can reverse engineer them and pull out pieces of data from their standardized template. 

All we need is the Parser tool by Zapier, a web app that lets you parse templated emails for relevant data.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can take Zapier error messages (or any automated email), parse its contents, and send the pertinent data in Slack where it’s more readily accessible by our whole technician team.

We’ll also show you the fundamentals of how Parser works, so you can get started building your own automations with it. 

Tutorial Steps:

1. Create a mailbox in Parser by Zapier

2. Create an automation to send emails to your new Mailbox

2.1. Trigger: New email matching search

2.2. Action: Send email

3. Create a template in Parser

4. Create an automation to send parsed email data to Slack

4.1. Trigger: New email in Mailbox

4.2. Action: New channel message

5. Refine your mailbox with extra templates

Copy these Zaps:

Click on these links and copy the Zaps to follow along with this tutorial:

• Zap 1 | Send Emails to Parser Mailbox

• Zap 2 | Send Parsed Email Data to Slack

1. Create a mailbox in Parser by Zapier

First, we’re going to create a mailbox in Parser where our emails will be sent for parsing.

Go to parser.zapier.com, sign in with your Zapier account, and connect your Zapier account to Parser when you’re prompted.

Then, click on Create Mailbox. Parser will create a mailbox and an associated email address, which will be a string of random characters ending in @robot.zapier.com. Copy this email address to use later.

2. Create an automation to send emails to your new Mailbox

To start using parser, you need to send an email to the mailbox you just created. You could do so manually, but we’d recommend setting up an automation to send emails instead. That way, any similar emails you get in the future will be sent over to the Mailbox automatically. 

2.1. Trigger: New email matching search

Make a new Zap in Zapier, and choose GMail as the trigger app. Select “New Email Matching Search” as the action. 

In the “Search String” field, use search times to find the recurring emails you’re looking for. Make sure they’re precise enough to exclude everything else.

To find Zapier’s error messages, we’re looking for the text “[ALERT]” in the subject line, and checking for “Zapier” in the sender name.

Test your trigger, and make sure the automation is finding the right emails. Adjust your search parameters if needed, and then continue once everything’s ready.

2.2. Action: Send email

Add a new step to the Zap, with GMail as the app again, and “Send Email” as the action. You’re now going to configure the automation to send an email to the Parser mailbox address you copied earlier.

Fill in the email with the content Zapier pulled from the trigger email: plain body, subject, etc.

Test the step and continue. 

3. Create a template in Parser

Now that you’ve sent an email to your Parser mailbox, it’s time to create a template to start pulling relevant data. 

Navigate to your Parser mailbox to see and review the email. Highlight any portions that you want to turn into variables, and give each variable a simple descriptive name.

We’re highlighting the Zap’s title and the link where we can edit it, and calling them “zaptitle” and “zaplink” respectively. 

Once you’ve identified all the variables you want, click “Save Template”. Now, when new emails arrive in that mailbox, Parser will look for text that matches those patterns.

Optionally, you can change the address of the Parser mailbox now to something a bit easier to remember. If you do, just be sure to update the Zap you made in the previous steps to reflect the change. 

4. Create an automation to send parsed email data to Slack

Now we’re going to build a second Zap that will send the parsed data as a Slack message.

4.1. Trigger: New email in Mailbox

Create a new Zap, and choose “Email Parser by Zapier” as the app, and select “New email”. Pick the mailbox you created previously, and use the email sent over earlier as test data.

4.2. Action: New channel message

Add a step with Slack as the app and “New channel message” as the action. Pick an appropriate channel to send the message in (such as a dedicated automation-updates channel), and write the message template.

To include the variables found by Parser, just search for data starting with “Parse Output”. 

Test the step, and check Slack for a message. 

Now you’re (probably) all set to start redirecting your automated emails into Slack messages with Email Parser. However, if some of the data in your messages doesn’t look quite right, you’ll probably want to continue to our final step.

5. Refine your mailbox with extra templates

At first, Email Parser won’t always find your variables correctly. It might add a few extra characters in some cases, or leave a few out in others.

To fix this, you just need to make “Extra Templates”. Go back to Parser, select your Mailbox, and find an email that wasn’t parsed correctly. Scroll to the bottom of the message, and click on “Edit extra templates” (underneath the “extracted/original/template/output” options).

Highlight the text again, and give it the same variable name. Click on “Save Extra template”, and you’re done. Parser should now be more accurate when finding variables in your emails.

Break Free of Your Inbox

Now you can start building automations with email parser, and spend less time sorting through your inbox. Parser is useful whenever you want to work with pre-formatted emails, and it’s a great tool to have at your disposal as you build low-code automations. 

If you’d like more tutorials and automation tips, be sure to check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Everyone knows that emojis are an easy way to add a bit of fun to any piece of text, but you may be surprised to learn that they can actually serve a useful purpose in automation. 

As an easily-accessible set of icons, emojis are a great way to add symbols and indicators into your automated infrastructure, particularly when the apps you’re using fail to communicate important information on their own. 

In this post, we’ll show you how you can use emojis in your Airtable databases to make sure you fill in the right fields in Zapier and avoid making a mistake that could ruin your automation without ever even logging an error.

How Formula Fields Work in Airtable

Formula fields are a vital part of many automations, as it’s often much easier to use your Airtable database to perform a calculation rather than setting up an entire step for it in Zapier.

For instance, if you’re working with a form that collects users’ first and last names separately, you may want to have a column in your database that concatenates each first and last name to create a full name.

(Note: you could just concatenate the names in Zapier while setting up the action; we’re just using this as an example of a simple formula to illustrate how Zapier handles formula fields)

As you can see in the screenshot above, Airtable clearly indicates that “Full Name” is a formula field with the  𝑓𝑥  symbol. As long as we’re working with the table in Airtable, we’ll know not to try to add data directly to this column.

 But what happens when we try to add a record to this table in Zapier?

In this image, we’re creating an Airtable record from a Google Forms response. As you’ve probably noticed, Zapier doesn’t distinguish our formula field (Full Name) from our other fields in any way, and lets us enter text into the Full Name field.

When we run this Zap, Zapier won’t detect any errors, but Airtable won’t accept any text directly into the formula field, and will instead populate the field itself with the designated formula.

As the screenshot above shows, the record used the formula-calculated name “Don Cameron” rather than the entry we put into Zapier, “Don M. Cameron”. 

While you might be able to remember the purpose and function of each field while you’re building an automation, it might not be so easy when you return to the automation a year later for updates, or hand the automation over to someone else who didn’t design it themselves.

Without clearly indicating where you can enter data and where you can’t, you could end up running your automation with bad data, and Zapier won’t even throw an error to alert you to the problem. But you can avoid this with just a few simple emojis.

Use Emojis to Create Context

At XRay, we have a dictionary of dozens of emojis that we use for automations, documentation, and time tracking, but for the sake of marking your database fields, we only need to look at three emojis for now.

To pull up an emoji keyboard on Mac, just press Ctrl + Cmd + Space. On Windows, press the Windows Key + . (period)

🤖 Robot: Data should be filled by an automation

The 🤖 robot emoji before a field name indicates that it should be filled in with automated data. When you see this emoji in a field in Zapier, it’s OK (and expected) to enter data here.

🚫 Prohibited: Data should not be entered here

The 🚫 prohibited emoji indicates that data shouldn’t be entered here at all while you’re building an automation. Use this emoji for things like formula fields, which will populate themselves.

🙌 Hands: Data should be entered manually

The 🙌 raised hands emoji indicates that you expect someone to fill in the data manually later. Like the 🚫 prohibited emoji, this tells anyone working on your automation that they shouldn’t enter data in this field as part of the automation, but it also signals that you expect the field to be filled in later. For instance, you might use this to mark a “Notes” field, which may be updated as needed by someone on your team.

Here’s what our Airtable database looks like with these three emojis correctly assigned:

And here’s how it will show up in Zapier:

Adding emojis to your database columns takes just a few seconds, but it makes it much easier to build and maintain your automations while avoiding unseen errors. 

There are many other ways to use emojis to enhance your automations, like using them as triggers or tags, but we’ll cover those topics in future blogs and tutorials. 

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For now, you can check out our blog or our YouTube channel for more automation tips and tutorials. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Not all automations are the same. A term like “no-code/low-code” actually covers an extremely wide range of solutions with varying levels of technical complexity. As you might expect, more complex automations will often take longer to build, test, and implement, so it’s important to understand what contributes to an automation’s complexity when you’re working with a company like XRay to automate your workflows.

In this post, we’ll take a look at a few different approaches to automation and explain how they affect build time, test time, and refinement time. 

While we certainly don’t want to push you away from choosing a more complicated solution if that’s what your circumstances truly call for, we do want our members (or anyone considering working with XRay) to understand that choosing a more technologically complex option will cause a longer build time. 

100% No-code: Low Complexity

100% no-code solutions sit at the lowest end of the complexity scale. 

When we say that a solution is “100% no-code”, that means that every automated action is natively supported by an automation platform like Zapier, Integromat, or Unito. Every trigger, action, or sync can be selected and configured from the platform’s UI. 

To find out if your planned automation would be fully no-code or not, just head over to XRay.Tools and search for the apps that you want to automate. For instance, let’s say you want to make an automation that sends a Slack message to your sales team whenever a new email is sent to sales@yourcompany.com. We can search GMail and Slack to see that they’re both supported by Zapier, so we’re off to a good start. 

If we click on each app for more detail, we can see that the GMail trigger we want is there (“New email”), as well as the Slack action (“Send channel message”), so we know that this can be built as 100% no-code solution.

A fully no-code solution will be quick to build, test, and refine, as we can set up actions and reconfigure settings without having to rewrite code. No-code projects will typically be delivered within a span of 2-3 weeks, although more elaborate projects that support larger teams with several different user paths could take longer. 

No-code solutions are a great way to launch and test an idea. You can quickly prove a concept you’ve been considering, and determine where you need to tweak things to make it work better. If you’re new to using automated workflows, no-code is often the best place to start.  

API Calls: Moderate Complexity

Starting from a no-code base, adding in API calls dials up the complexity a bit. 

An API call (API = Application programming interface) is a method of sending a request to an application to get some specific data, or issuing a command to make the application perform a certain action.

Basically, API calls let programmers interact with one application to use some of its data in another application or automation. 

In some cases, you’ll find that the application you want to use is supported on Zapier or Integromat, but that it doesn’t have all the right data and actions for the workflow you wanted to build. This is when we would need to use an API call to enhance the native functionality of the automation platform and get you the data you need. 

An API call generally just consists of a few lines of code, but it still requires some coding experience to set it up correctly and efficiently. If your project involves API calls, it will generally take a bit longer to build and refine, as our techs will need to consult the API documentation for your specific application and study its requirements.  However, testing time will remain fast, as we’d still be running the automation through a convenient platform like Integromat or Zapier. 

Custom Integrations: High Complexity

If the apps you want to automate aren’t supported by Zapier or Integromat at all, or if the available integrations don’t support the actions you wanted to include, we’ll need to build a custom integration for you. 

A custom integration will look and behave like a native integration, but our team of technicians will have to configure all of the triggers, actions, and fields from scratch before we can start using it. Once it’s built, it will only be available to you on your Integromat or Zapier account.

We’ll often need to build custom integrations if your workflow involves a niche application with a relatively small user base, or if the action you want to take isn’t supported by the platform.

For example, we’ve built a custom Zoom integration in the past, because even though the app is supported on Zapier, it doesn’t include an option to delete videos from cloud storage. To enable our clients to do that, we had to build a new Zoom integration. 

Due to its higher complexity, this kind of custom work typically takes significantly longer to build and refine than a no-code automation or a low-code automation with API calls. Since we’d still mostly be working within automation platforms, testing would still remain relatively quick. 

Low-Code Applications: Very High Complexity

In some cases, you may want to go beyond individual process automations and build a full low-code application. 

A low-code application will look and function much like any other application you use every day, but it’s built with specialized low-code tools like Shinyapp or Bubble. 

Compared with automated workflows, low-code applications give you more precise control over what users can (and can’t) do, and gather a wide range of features together into a single place through the app’s UI. 

Even though platforms like Bubble and Shinyapp would let us build an application without needing a software engineer, we’d still need to go through an extensive design process before we would start assembling your app. We’d need to understand the user stories you want to accomplish, the experience you want to create, and the user interface that would support it all. 

A low-code application will take longer to build, test, and refine than all the other project types we’ve discussed in this post, with projects lasting months rather than weeks. With the longer timeframe in mind, we recommend only pursuing a low-code application if you’ve already validated your ideas with a no-code/low-code solution first. 

Building the solution that fits your needs

When you work with XRay, we’ll typically recommend the least complex solution that’s feasible for your circumstances. We can always iterate and add more elaborate features as we go, but getting an initial automation built quickly is usually the best way to start testing your ideas and finding opportunities for improvement. 

Ultimately, your needs could fall into any of these categories, and our team can handle them all. We just want you to be aware that more complex features like custom integrations and applications will take longer to build so that you can plan accordingly.

If you’d like to learn more about XRay and how we help people to reclaim their time with automated workflows, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

At XRay.Tech, our low-code technicians can automate just about any app that you’re likely to use. 

We know it sounds like a bold claim, but it’s actually just a simple result of how modern app development works. Narly every app built or maintained today includes an Application Programming Interface (API), and low-coders like XRay can use those APIs to create automations. 

In this article, we’ll give you a quick introduction to how APIs work, and how they enable automation. While we won’t get too deep into the weeds, this article will cover some technical information.

If you just want the high-level takeaways, the most important things you need to know are:

1. Low-coders like XRay.Tech can automate any app with API
2. The vast majority of apps you use have an API
3. API documentation lets our techs work with any app, even if they’ve never used it before

If you’re interested in learning more about how APIs work behind the scenes to make automation possible, read on!

APIs Connect an App’s Frontend to its Backend

The apps that you use every day consist of a frontend and a backend. The frontend includes the interface of the application that you interact with, while the backend stores most of the app’s data and does the heavy lifting for calculations and operations. 

The frontend of an application is typically designed to be easy to use, and lets you control things by clicking on buttons, selecting options from a menu, and entering text. The backend is normally not visible to you as a user, and instead is accessed through the API. 

An API is a software intermediary that lets different pieces of software communicate with one another. Each time you use the frontend interface to try to perform an action with an app - like posting a picture on social media, or creating an invoice in your accounting software - the app sends that command via the API, which prompts the backend to run the code necessary to complete the action. Then, the results are sent back to the frontend so you can see the new post, the updated invoice, etc. 

Ultimately, an API lets the frontend send commands to the backend of an app in a systematic, documented way that helps to keep the app stable and secure.

Automation Platforms can Also Access APIs

APIs don’t just enable communication between one app’s frontend and backend; they also enable similar communication between totally different apps, which is what makes automation through platforms like Zapier and Integromat possible.

When you make a Zap or an Integromat Scenario, you’re using the API to send commands to the app's backend. The app performs the same actions, like posting to social media or updating an invoice. The only difference is that a low-code platform initiates the commands rather than the app’s own frontend. 

Platforms like Zapier and Integromat have packaged common queries into prebuilt integrations, making it easy to build simple automations for popular applications. For instance, we can use prebuilt integrations to build a quick automation that records every Slack message sent in a certain channel into an Airtable database. As you can see in the screenshot, it’s all built using Zapier’s interface - no code is needed at all for a quick automation like this.

However, low-code platforms can’t include pre-built integrations for everything you might want to automate, and this is where our low-coders can use their technical skills and create custom API queries. 

For example, one of our members needed an automation for time-tracking app Harvest, and Integromat only offered pre-built integrations for “Time and Materials” projects . Since our client needed the automation to work with “Fixed Fee” projects, our techs had to write API queries themselves. 

Building this automation didn’t require our techs to be Harvest experts, because Harvest’s API documentation gave them the information they needed to start writing queries.

Documentation Helps Low-Coders Get up to Speed

In most cases, a low-code tech doesn’t need to have ever used an app before to start automating it, because they can use the API documentation to learn what they need.

API documentation lists all possible queries and commands, and includes information on proper syntax and formatting. Whenever our techs need to build a custom integration for an automation, one of their first steps is to consult the app’s API documentation to get a handle on how everything works. 

So even if someone comes to us with a relatively obscure piece of software that our team hasn’t encountered before, we’ll still be able to automate it by referring to the documentation and meeting with the client to understand their business objectives. 

Start Automating with Your Current Software

If an app has an API, then low-coders like our techs can automate it. If you’re looking at your app stack and wondering about automation possibilities, here’s what you can do:

1. Use our web app XRay.Tools to find pre-built integrations for your apps

Just enter the name of your application into the search field, and the app will find any pre-built integrations that already exist for your software. 

Remember, even if there aren’t any prebuilt integrations, our techs can still build custom ones. Pre-built integrations just make it quicker to get started. 

2. Search for your app’s API docs on their site or through Google

Searching “[app name] api” will typically bring up the app’s publicly available API documentation. If you’re looking to build automations yourself, the documentation will be an invaluable resource. If you plan to hire an automator like XRay, just knowing that the documentation exists is enough to move forward. 

3. Contact XRay if you’re stuck or have any questions about workflow automation

If your software doesn’t have pre-built integrations and you can’t find any information about an API, or if you have any other questions about automation, just reach out to XRay. We’ll be happy to help you figure out what your automation options are. 

If you'd like to learn more about no-code and low-code automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

No-code and low-code platforms like Zapier and Integromat let anyone get started with automation, even if they have no coding skills at all.

With such user-friendly software available to start connecting your apps together, you might be wondering why you need a consultancy like XRay.Tech to help design, build, and maintain your automations. 

An automation expert will help you to:

1. Navigate the gap between no-code and low-code
2. Document your automations and monitor their activity
3. Detect and fix bugs as soon as they occur
   

The Gap Between No-Code and Low-Code

Despite their similar names and frequent grouping, the terms “no-code” and “low-code” actually describe two very different kinds of automation with distinct levels of technical skill required.

By and large, no-code automation in a platform like Zapier truly requires no coding knowledge or experience whatsoever. As long as you have some general technical skills, you’ll have no problem exploring their intuitive UI to start building simple automations. 

However, without any coding knowledge, you’ll be limited to the integrations that Zapier has already built. If they don’t list it in their selection of actions and triggers, you won’t be able to do it with your Zap.

Moving up from no-code to low-code lets you go beyond the pre-built integrations, but it’s not necessarily an easy jump to make. A low-coder can make API calls to build custom integrations, use regular expressions (regex) to select and format precise strings of text, and use JSON to export the automation. 

Skilled low-coders like our XRay techs can work with these tools and systems to build fully custom automations that perform exactly the way you want, so you don’t need to spend your time digging through coding tutorials just to set up an automation.

Keep Track of All Your Automations

As you first build one or two automations to perform some simple tasks at work, it’s easy enough to keep track of them on your own. 

But if you want to build an automated infrastructure that supports your whole team’s workflows, you’ll need a system to keep tabs on the dozens of automations that intersect with your day-to-day work, and a way to give your team the information they need to use each automation. 

One of our top priorities when building automations at XRay is to make sure that each automation operates with total transparency and accessibility.

Whenever we set up an automated infrastructure for one of our clients, we include customized alerts, an activity log, and helpful documentation that makes it easy to stay on top of all of your automations.

Alerts

We set up messaging alerts in software like Slack or Microsoft Teams to announce each action that an automation performs, so your team can then follow up as needed. This prevents redundant work and lets you stay apprised of your automated activity in real time.

Activity Log

To get a big-picture view of how your automations perform in the long run, we set up an activity log that stores records of each automated action to measure time saved and other KPIs. 

Documentation

An automation is only useful if your team knows how to use and trigger it. While good automations should change your workflows as little as possible, there will often be a few changes that your team will need to learn, and you’ll need a way to quickly onboard any new hires.

That’s why we include thorough documentation with each automation that describes how it works and how to use it. That way, your team will know how to take full advantage of the automated tools at their disposal. 

Squash Bugs as Soon as They Emerge

No-code and low-code automation are still rooted in the principles of code, and they rely on other software platforms to run correctly. No matter how well-designed an automation is, it will eventually run into some bugs and errors. 

A software update in one of your apps might change how data is formatted, preventing one of your automations from running correctly. You might encounter a new situation that requires a new path in your automation. 

When something goes wrong, getting to the root of the problem and fixing it can be a frustrating waste of time. After all, you turned to automation to save time, not to spend time fiddling with settings to figure out an error. 

Working with an automation expert like XRay gives you the benefit of our experience managing hundreds of automations. We set up automations to immediately find and report errors, so our techs can diagnose and fix them as quickly as possible.

Build Better, More Reliable Automations with Expert Help

No-code and low-code automation platforms offer a much more accessible approach to enhancing your workflows when compared to software development, and we’d encourage anyone who’s interested to dive into apps like Zapier or Integromat and just try things out. 

However, building automations at scale to support your business is a skill unto itself, and one that takes considerable time to develop. Since the whole point of automation is to create more time for the work that you want to be doing, you need to ask yourself: how much of your own day do you want to spend building and maintaining your automations? 

Working with automation consultancy like XRay will let you get the most out of your automations without investing all of your time into setting them up yourself. 

If you’d like to learn more about XRay's approach to automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. You can also reach out to us at any time to schedule a call.

If you use Google Calendar for your meetings and events, your calendar holds a wealth of information about how you spend your day.

At XRay.Tech, we get a lot of questions about building automations to copy Google Calendar event information into Google Sheets so people can start working with their calendar data. 

In this post, we’ll quickly show you how you could copy each new calendar event into Sheets with Zapier, but we’ll also show you a better way to get the job done.

Airtable may not be as well-known as Google and Microsoft’s suite of office apps, but it’s an extremely versatile and powerful tool for storing and processing data. It also has built-in integrations for Google Calendar that make it a breeze to compile information from all your calendar events. 

Connecting Calendar to Sheets with Zapier

Low-code automation platform Zapier makes it easy to connect Calendar to Sheets in just a couple steps.

First, configure the spreadsheet you want to use with an appropriate column for each piece of data that you’ll be pulling from Google Sheets. You can see that we’ve just made a few columns for event name, start and end time, etc., but you can add as many as you want. 

Then, go into Zapier and make a new Zap. Choose Google Calendar as the app, and “New Event in Calendar” as the trigger. Sign in to your calendar account and pick the exact calendar you want to use. 

Test the trigger, and you should see a recent event from your calendar. Click on “continue” if everything looks right. 

Add a Google Sheets action to your automation, and choose “Create a row”. To easily identify your sheet without having to go through several folders in Zapier, you can just copy the file’s ID - the string of characters between /d/ and /edit/ in the sheet’s URL. 

Then fill each column with the appropriate data from the Calendar event, test the step, and you’re all set. Your Google sheet will now have an entry for your calendar event. 

This isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. There’s no easy way to add historical data about past events, and you’d need to build additional automations to update records in Sheets. 

So let’s take a look at an alternative approach. 

Airtable: a Better Way to Sync Your Google Sheets Data

Airtable is a spreadsheet app with a robust suite of features for filtering, sorting, and syncing your data. It even includes a native integration for Google Calendar.

To start collecting data from your calendar, just make a new table in any base. Click on the “+” button, and scroll down to “More..”. Select Google Calendar, sign in to your account, and choose which calendar you want to sync.

Then pick the date range that you want to sync, the fields that you want to include, and create the table. 

Airtable will instantly fill in your table with all of the events in the specified range. If you make any changes to the events on your calendar, those updates will be reflected in Airtable within about 10 minutes.

You can also click on “sync now” to see recent changes appear immediately, which can be useful while you’re testing things out.

Now that all of your calendar data is in Airtable, you can easily add filters and new views to sort your information however you’d like, or add some functions to automatically calculate where you’re spending your time. 

You could create a view to see all of your meetings with a certain client, or filter out your daily standup meetings, or only display meetings with certain coworkers. All of these choices would change how Airtable displays your data without altering the data itself, so you can always make additional views that include the data you’ve filtered out elsewhere.

You can even add multiple calendars to the same table if you’d like to see your coworkers’ entries alongside your own. Just click on the arrow next to your table’s name and select ‘update sync configuration’.

Click on “add new records”, select Google Calendar, and follow the same steps that you went through before to add other calendars from your account or organization. 

The Right Tool for the Job

Google Sheets has many excellent uses in professional workflows, particularly for power users who know its formulas inside and out. Zapier is also a great tool for building no-code automations to speed up your processes and remove robotic tasks from your day-to-day work. 

But if you’re looking to scrape key data from your Google Calendar meetings and events, Airtable is a much faster and more versatile solution. In just a few seconds, you’ll have a complete record of all your events ready to go. 

With all the tools out there, adopting a new one can sometimes feel like a chore, but it can also unlock new possibilities and make your workflows much more efficient. If you’re looking to build some calendar-based automations, we strongly encourage you to check out Airtable to see what it can do. 

If you’d like more tutorials and software recommendations, take a look at our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

With its versatile layout tools, embedded tables and customizable page attributes, Notion is a great program for building a knowledge base for your company. 

However, adopting an app like Notion into your company’s workflows can be difficult if much of your data is stored in more traditional spreadsheets like Google Sheets - particularly if some of your team members or departments need to keep using GSheets for its robust formulas. 

If you’d like to sync data between Notion and Google Sheets so you can work with both apps, you can set up a Unito flow to do it in just a few minutes. 

Unito is an automation app focused entirely on syncing data sets between different apps. Once you set up a flow, it will automatically keep your records up to date based on the rules you set. 

In this post, we’ll show you how you can start syncing your Google Sheets and Notion records with Unito.

Required Software

To set up this flow in Unito, you’ll need accounts for:

• Unito

• Google Sheets

• Notion

1. Create identical columns for your tables

Before you do anything with Unito, you’ll want to make sure the Sheet and the Notion table that you want to sync both have the same columns. Later on, you’ll have to match each column to its counterpart in the other app, and this will be much quicker if you’re just matching “Name” to “Name” and “Email” to “Email.”

However, the columns don’t have to be in the same order in both apps.

2. Insert additional columns for Unito

Install the Unito Add-on in Google Sheets

To finish preparing your Google Sheet for a Unito sync, click on “Add-ons” in the Sheets toolbar and select “Get Add-ons”. Search for Unito and install their add-on.

To use the add-on, go back to the add-on menu, scroll down to “Unito for Google Sheets”, and select “Get Started with Unito” from its sub-menu.

In the window that pops up, just click the button that says “Insert the two columns in this sheet”. This will automatically create two columns that Unito needs to create a flow with Google Sheets: an ID column, and a Last Modified column.

These columns let Unito keep track of unique records, and let it know when they were last edited.

Add a “Last edited time” column in Notion

Now we just need to add one column to the Notion table. Click on the “+” to add a new column, and select “last edited time” from the list of column types. Give it an appropriate name, and your Notion table will be all set.

3. Build Your Flow in Unito

3.1 Create a new Flow and choose your apps

Your two apps will be Google Sheets and Notion. Sign in to your accounts and pick the two tables that you want to sync.

If you’re using a team account for Notion, note that you can only add one Notion account to Unito per team, so make sure to pick an account with access to all the tables you want to sync. 

3.2 Pick your Flow direction

Flow direction will let you decide how tables get updated when a record is added or changed. With one-directional flows, you can make it so a change in Google Sheets will be reflected in Notion, but changes in Notion won’t be reflected in Google Sheets (or vice versa). 

One-way flows (represented by the single arrows) can be useful if you intend to only make edits to one table, and want the other to exist strictly to display the data. 

In our example, we’ll be using a two-way flow, so changes in either table will be reflected in the other, keeping the two sets of data identical. 

3.3 Review the syncing rules

The rules menu may look a little intimidating at first, but it’s just a way to designate which records will be synced. By default, Unito will pre-populate a set of rules that will sync every new record after or on the current date, but you can add additional criteria to sync a more limited selection. 

For your first-time setup, it’s best to leave the rules as they are. Don’t worry; you can sync historical records once you’ve launched the flow. 

3.4 Match records between the two tables

Match the records between the two tables based on the column titles. As mentioned earlier, having consistent titles between the two tables will make this step easy.

The “Link to row” and “link to record” options aren’t strictly necessary, but can be a useful way to reference your synced data.

Note: if you have a date-time field in Notion, you’ll see both a “Start date” and an “End date” field. You can just use the “Start date” and ignore the “End date”.

3.5 Launch the flow and test a new record

Now, click on “Launch Flow” to make your flow active. After the “initial sync” dialogue concludes, nothing will happen yet, since the Flow is only set up to sync new records.

To test it out, add a new record to each table. Come back in about 10 minutes, and you’ll see that each table has been updated with the record from the other table. If you’d like to test immediately, you can just click on “Sync now” at the top of the page after you add your new records. 

3.6 Sync old records (optional)

To sync all of your existing records between Google Sheets and Notion, you can navigate to the bottom of the Flow’s page and select “include older work items”. Then, click on “Sync now”.

This will start syncing every record between the two tables, which can take a while if you have a lot of data to work with. As each record is synced, you’ll see it appear in the sync history at the bottom of your flow’s page. 

Access identical data in all your apps

Now your Google Sheets to Notion sync is all set, and your team can reference identical, up-to-date data in both apps. 

If you’d like to learn more about low-code automation tools like Unito, Zapier, Integromat and more, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

129 • That's how many apps companies were using on average by 2018, based on data from Okta. We're now using so many tools to get our work done that we have to use other apps and services like Producthunt.com just to comb through them all and find the ones that work best for us.

Finding the right tool for the job isn't a decision to make lightly. The apps that support your day-to-day work can either limit you or enable you to be even more productive. They're part of everything you have to do, from onboarding and training new people to creating content and analyzing performance. Picking the right tools and getting the most out of them will always be high priorities on your to-do list.

In this article, we're going to discuss types of tools, evaluation criteria for selecting tools, and some candid thoughts on the subject. This post is part of a series about how we can reduce duplicate tasks to focus on more meaningful ones, and ultimately become more effective at achieving our business goals using the XRay method. If this is the first time you're hearing about the method, you can read our original post here which gives an overview of the concept.

Tool Types

Tools fall under several categories:

• Time (time tracking or calendars)
• Communication (email, phone, instant messaging, etc.)
• Finances (pay, get paid, keep track)
• Analytics (traffic, SEO, numbers)
• Performance (Creative work, strategy, value generating)

We can use these categories of tools to build a holistic picture of what any given workflow looks like. For example, at Checkmate, we would: 1. Sign a contract using Docusign (Communication), 2. Set up a shared folder structure in Google Drive (Performance), 3. Book onboarding meetings with the client through Google Calendar (Time), and 4. Automatically send an invoice via Quickbooks (Finances). Keep in mind, a brief survey was the trigger for those actions above.

Regardless of the tools we used, tasks like signing a contract, sharing a folder, setting up a meeting with the client, and sending an invoice are all things that are essential towards business operations, but none of those tasks are actually generating mindfully created human value. They are simply setting stage to be able to generate value. Tasks like these are just the work between the work.

Non-Value Creation Tools

These are the tasks that unnecessarily distract you and your staff from doing the things they actually need to do to transform value into revenue. The work between the work is mundane; it's procedural and always seems to be done a little bit differently each time. For the most part, these can be considered Robotic Tasks. They do not generate value by themselves. If you're opening up Calendar, email, or Docusign, those tools themselves are usually used for non value-creation activities (i.e. just keeping someone informed, filing something away, updating a metric). When dealing with these tools to assist with Robotic Tasks, it's best to find tools that are connected to broader automation platforms like Zapier, Make, or Workato. There are a ton of different services out there that offer similar functionality.

Value Creation Tools

For the most part, these are your creative tools. Value Creation tools can be things like using Adobe Creative Cloud to create media, or using G Suite apps to make presentations and strategic documents. The exact software will depend on your industry and department, but no matter what field you're in, there are always software tools that you use to create value. Depending on whether you offer products or services, those may be totally different; in some cases, the same tool might be non-value creating for one firm, and value creating for another. The point is the same. Be aware of what tools create value for you. If you're an accountant, Quickbooks is a value creation tool. If you're an artist, it's not.

Value Creation tools are the tools that you use to do the work you are explicitly paid to do.

For example, at Checkmate, software design was one of our main service offerings. That sort of work gets done in Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, or ProtoPie. It takes thoughtful, creative, and focused time from employees. It wouldn't make logical sense to say a robot could design a UI/UX for a not-yet-designed startup product. This is why that software can be called Value Creation Tools. They let us create value that otherwise wouldn't exist. They deal directly with our real work — the things we were explicitly paid to do.

Value Creation Tools vs. Non-Value Tools

One of these is easily changeable, but the other is not. Non-Value Creation Tools tend to be much easier to replace in the grand scheme of things. It's why companies like Monday.com can blast you with an ad on every YouTube video you watch. The world knows Trello isn't the best tool, but it's good enough to get you in. The question is whether it's good enough to keep you there, or if your operations, templates, assets, and workflows will get too advanced to practically use such a simplified tool. I don't have the answer, but your CEO or COO probably does, or at least an opinion.

Tools are created in the first place to solve a problem. Project Management Sucks? Use Basecamp. Your apps don't talk to each other? Use Zapier. Apple Calendar is just too clunky? Use Woven. Often, you're dealing with scaling problems. You need a tool to do something because it would be harder to do it the 'old way' — the way that worked when your business was smaller. Sure, you could manually send out email campaigns and keep track of the results. Or you could just use Reply.io. Your choice. But the tool should be a reflection of the Business Process that the tool is required for. If a tool isn't required to complete a Business Process in the best way possible, then it deserves the axe 🪓.

Candid Thoughts on Tools

A hammer doesn't make the carpenter. Whatever tools you use, they don't define you as an operator, manager, or do-er. In my experience, it actually doesn't matter what tools you use, so long as the processes you conduct can efficiently create value. That being said, some tools have terrible UX, some tools don't have an API yet, and some tools are inferior to others in certain aspects — all of that is subjective, but of course I have my favorites. Many of them are sprinkled here.

But if you're using Trello and WhatsApp to run your agency right now, more power to you. Once you have 50 people, expect that to be damn near impossible. Don't buy into the sunk cost fallacy; tool selection is something that should be done as needed. Selecting a tool should have a specific purpose and either replace an existing tool or create new value internally or externally. Too often tools are adopted just because they're 'too cool' to ignore, giving the slower adopters of your team whiplash as they try to keep up and learn something new.

Ideally, you should have a process for rolling out new tools to a test group of people before you bring the whole team on board. That way, you can work out any issues or even decide not to use the tool at all without being too disruptive to your business as a whole. This was something learned the hard way.

Action Steps

List all of the tools that your company uses. Yes, all of them. You may have 129 of them (hopefully not, but you might). Think about all the tools needed to create value doing whatever it is you do. List them somewhere, and I assure you - if nothing else, it will help the next person you onboard understand what tool you're going to use to do the next job.

Some of Our Favorite Tools

• LucidChart - Realtime Collaboration, Flow Charting
• Woven - Calendar management
• Slack - Communication that doesn't suck
• Airtable - Organize data, metadata and reusable information
• Figma - Collaborative UI design
• ProtoPie - Extremely High Fidelity Prototyping
• Notion - Knowledge base, document everything
• Dashlane - Password manager, VPN, identity insurance
• Command E - Search your cloud accounts
• Loom - Record screencast videos
• Biscuit - Access web apps FAST
• Apollo - Ideal Customer Profile - List building tool
• Databox - Data visibility layer
• Zapier - Automate connectivity between apps
• Coupler.io - Move data around
• Alfred - Internal productivity tool
• Better Touch Tools - Internal productivity tool
• Bar Tender - Internal productivity tool
• Itsycal - Internal productivity tool
• No Code solutions are also very cool. Here is a huge Trello List - 📣Shout & Thank you to Mariam Hakobyan for putting these lists together.
  
  

Next On Spotlight

Now that we've covered tools, we'll be looking at how your tools connect with your business processes, and how you can reduce the number of Robotic tasks that you and your employees are doing manually.

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Remote work is becoming more prevalent than ever before, and it’s essential that companies of all sizes learn to adapt to the new status quo.

While the global pandemic accelerated the trend towards working remotely, and even turned it into an urgent necessity for many, working and connecting through software won’t be going away any time soon.

The best talent will look for workplaces that let them spend some or all of their time working from home as they seek to cut down on commutes and achieve a better work/life balance. As you look to find ways to accommodate remote work at your business, you should consider how automation can help to support remote work.

Automation makes it easier to work asynchronously, gives your team convenient access to consistently saved resources, and enables everyone to be more productive. 

Promote Asynchronous Work with Automated Check-ins and Notifications

One of the main challenges of having a fully or partially remote team is making sure that everyone stays updated about each other’s progress even when they’re not meeting every day in the office. 

The challenge is compounded if your team is spread across several time zones, as one employee may be working while the rest of their team is clocking out - or about to turn in for the night.

With automation, you can create systems that immediately send Slack notifications, update a centralized database or send emails whenever a certain action is completed. You can configure your automations to send unobtrusive alerts that won’t bother your team when they’re off the clock, but will be immediately visible as soon as they’re online. 

When check-ins and updates are automated, everyone can stay apprised of each others’ progress without having to interrupt their coworkers when they’re focused on an important task, or taking a moment to recharge. 

In a remote workplace, employees will often be on different schedules, due to their time zone, their obligations, or their preference. This makes impromptu check-ins that much more of a hassle, as they might not be available when someone wants an update from them. 

Access and Resources

How many times a day do people on your team ask each other for files and data? 

Whenever someone makes a file, it’s easy for them to save it in the wrong place, or forget where they put it. While setting guidelines and creating a proper file structure will help a lot, human error will always be a factor - unless you automate your processes for saving and sharing files.

With the right automations, you can make it so every sales report, meeting agenda, project proposal and any other important file will be saved in the right spot every time. Links will also be sent right away to any individuals or teams who need access immediately.

These are great benefits for any workplace, but they’re especially helpful for remote and hybrid offices. The last thing your remote workers want is for their day to be filled with constant interruptions as they help co-workers find files, or reach out for help themselves.

With automated workflows, your team knows where to find everything and can focus more on their work. 

More Productive Work

When you automate your team’s robotic work, you enable them to work at the height of their productivity.

Automation removes human error from the equation, making it so your team spends less time doubling back and fixing mistakes. It also reduces the frequent interruptions that arise from sending or receiving simple progress updates, or updating data in multiple pieces of software.

When your team doesn’t have to focus on the tedious robotic work that can be automated, they can devote their full attention to more important tasks. Your sales team can focus on spending time nurturing leads and answering unique questions rather than updating their status in Hubspot or sending out identical emails. Your designers can focus on creating new illustrations and assets rather than uploading and sharing them.

In short, your team can spend more of their time doing what you hired them to do, rather than wasting a large chunk of their time on logistical tasks that don’t leverage their unique and valuable talents. 

Again, this is a benefit for any type of workplace, but remote offices will often find this to be especially helpful. A remote workplace works best when you don’t need to check in constantly with your team, and automated workflows will help them to be more productive without needing additional oversight. 

Hit the Ground Running with Automation and Remote Work

The continued growth of remote work is inevitable. Even when the current pandemic resolves, talented workers will still want the flexibility of working from home some or part of the time.

At XRay, we encourage every services company to embrace remote work, and to try using automation to support it.

If you’d like to learn more about how automation can help your business, or if you’d like to learn some helpful automation tips yourself, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

One of the most important elements of an automation is the trigger event that starts it off. Setting up a good trigger that integrates seamlessly into your workflows will make it easy for you and your team to actually adopt the automation and use it to save time. 

At XRay, we generally break automation triggers down into 5 main categories: survey-based, multi-survey, software-triggered, synchronization, and scheduled automations.

In this post, we’ll give you a quick overview of each of these automation types, and explain when and why they might be useful.

Anatomy of an Automation

Before we dive into each specific type of automation, let’s take a quick look at how all automations are structured in general.

Automations consist of two main elements: 1 Trigger which kicks off the automation, and 1 or more Actions that follow once the Trigger occurs. 

The automation types we’ll be discussing today are defined by the way they’re triggered, because while there’s infinite variety in the actions an automation can perform, there are only a few key ways to start them. 

Survey-based Automations

One of the simplest and most popular triggers, a survey-based automation runs whenever you complete a designated survey. For instance, you might fill out a form with some information about your newly signed client to trigger an onboarding automation. That automation would then create a shared Slack channel, a Google Drive folder setup, send a welcome email, and more - all with the client’s name and project info included. 

Survey-based automations are a great way to avoid repetition. Instead of filling out the same information in a dozen different places, you can just log it once in the survey and let the automation handle the rest. They’re also very flexible, letting you run the automation whenever you want to rather than waiting on certain conditions being fulfilled. 

By the same token, survey automations are easy to keep track of. The person filling out the form will always know when the automation is running, even without consulting the automation history or activity log. 

Multi-survey Automations

As you’ve probably guessed, multi-survey automations are similar to survey automations, but involve multiple surveys instead of just one. With these automations, each related survey will feed data into the same database. Once all of the surveys have been filled out to create a complete record, the automation will trigger and run.

Multi-survey automations are useful when one of your workflows requires information from several different people or departments. For instance, an employee onboarding automation might require information from their new supervisor, management, HR, IT, and accounting.

With a multi-survey automation, each department would fill out their own survey to complete the new employee’s record. Once complete, the automation would trigger, sending the new hire some documentation about their responsibilities, temporary login credentials for key accounts, instructions for setting up payroll, and more.

A multi-survey automation can be a little more complicated to set up, but will often be necessary when there isn’t a single person on your team with all the information needed to complete a given workflow. 

Software-triggered Automations

A software-triggered automation runs whenever a specified action takes place in a specified app. For example, you can set an automation to run whenever you update a lead’s status in Hubspot, or whenever you add a file to a certain folder in Google Drive. The automation will then use data from that app - like the Hubspot lead or the new document - to perform additional actions. 

Unlike survey automations, software-triggered automations are fully passive. You don’t need to perform any extra actions to make them happen; you just conduct your workflows as normal and let the automations run on their own. 

Software-triggered automations are ideal when you’re automating a task that needs to be done the exact same way every time. If you always want to create an Airtable link to every document in your “Projects” folder, or if you always want to send a Slack message to your finance team whenever a lead is marked as “Closed/won”, then automating these actions with software triggers ensures they’ll quickly get done exactly the same way every time.

Because these automations just run in the background, it’s important to configure them with Slack or Microsoft Teams notifications. That way, you can keep track of all their activity even though you’re not triggering them manually. 

Synchronization Automations

Synchronization automations are focused entirely on keeping different databases in sync with each other. When you set up a two-way synchronization between, say, a Google Sheets file and a Notion table, adding a record to either table will create an identical record in the other table. You can also set up one-way syncs, so updates to Notion would be reflected in Google Sheets, but edits in Sheets wouldn’t be reflected in Notion.

With a synchronization automation, you can easily manage large quantities of data spread across different apps without creating redundancies or inconsistencies.

These automations can be especially valuable for larger companies who create and edit thousands of records every day. 

Because synchronization is such a specific niche of automation, it primarily relies on a different set of tools than most other low-code automations. Instead of apps like Zapier and Integromat, synchronizations typically require platforms like Unito or Coupler. 

Scheduled Automations

Scheduled automations use the clock and the calendar as their triggers. Instead of waiting for a particular human input or a specific in-app action, scheduled automations simply run at a designated date and time. You can schedule automations to run every hour, day, week, month or year. 

You might want to send out a team morale survey every Friday at 2:00pm, or create a report at 9:30am each Monday of all the Jira tasks completed by the engineering team over the previous week.

Like software-triggered automations, scheduled automations are fully passive. They’re a great way to use your existing schedule or to start setting a new one, and they can be a useful way to batch work rather than having it trickle in over time. 

Unlike most other automations though, scheduled automations don’t gather much data from their trigger event alone. A software-triggered automation will have access to much of that software’s data, and a survey-based automation will have all the answers to that survey. A scheduled automation will only have the date and time to work with, so you have to make sure to include additional steps to gather necessary information, such as database lookups.

Find triggers that work for your team

Determining how an automation will trigger is one of the most important parts of building an automation. You need to pick a method that suits your workflows and that will make it easy for your team to use the automation. 

Whenever you’re working with an automator like XRay, always consider how you want the automation to start. If you have any questions, always feel free to reach out to us directly. You can also check out our blog or our YouTube channel, or follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

We all want to find ways to make our businesses more productive. Anything that can shave a few minutes off of a frequently repeated process can result in huge savings over the course of months and years. 

When trying to streamline processes to save time and money, many companies will likely consider two common strategies: automation and outsourcing.

In this short post, we want to quickly clarify the strategic difference between automation and outsourcing, and demonstrate why we at XRay are committed to using automation to permanently reduce robotic work.

Control and Refine Your Processes with Automation

First, let’s take a look at automation.

With XRay’s method for building automated workflows, the primary goal that guides our efforts is to amplify human output.

 We want people to do more with their time at work and be less distracted by the tedious tasks that often clutter their days. We believe that copying and pasting or moving data from one app into another is usually a waste of human potential, and that interrupting more valuable work just to write an update on what you’ve already done or download a document is an unnecessary distraction. 

To create more time for mindful work, we focus on collaborating with our clients and members to identify the robotic tasks in their workflows. These are tasks that don’t require any uniquely human characteristics like creativity, analysis, strategy, or thoughtfulness, which means they can be performed by a piece of software without sacrificing any quality. In fact, automation often improves the output of robotic tasks as it creates a perfectly consistent system 

When you work with XRay to automate one of your processes, we’ll help you to take control of that process and gain more visibility into it than ever before. We’ll document the automated workflow, track its activity, and refine it over time. If we find an area for improvement, we’ll gladly make and document the change for our members.

Outsourcing

Now let’s turn our attention to outsourcing.

Like automation, outsourcing will remove tedious tasks from your team’s workload. However, unlike automation, hiring another company to perform your robotic work is ultimately a one-sided and partial solution. 

While outsourcing might appear to solve the problem from your end, it really just shifts the burden over to somebody else. From our perspective, nobody should have to be doing robotic work all day, no matter where they are in the world or how their labor market is priced. 

What’s more, outsourcing the execution of a process typically means that you’re outsourcing control of it as well. You won’t know exactly how your data is moving from Point A to Point B, and your only visibility will come from periodic check-ins and reports. You won’t be able to improve the process or learn from it to refine similar workflows that your team is still conducting, or track the workflow each time it's conducted to gather precise, detailed metrics.

Long-term strategy

Going with either outsourcing or automation is a choice that’s up to each individual business, but we believe that exploring automation will be more rewarding In the long run for most companies. Outsourcing tends to be a race to the bottom, prioritizing cutting costs and replacing people over actually improving a process. 

Automation lets you retain control and visibility into your processes, while leaving much of the execution up to software. Rather than replacing your team, it lets them fulfill their roles better than ever, as they’ll have more time to focus on the challenging and valuable work that you hired them to do in the first place. For instance, instead of spending all of their time responding to the 80% of inquiries that can be handled with templates and automated systems, your sales or support team can concentrate their time on the 20% more difficult and complex questions that require human input and ingenuity. 

If you’d like to learn more about how automation can help your company to save time and increase output, you can check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Feel free to reach out to us at any time with questions, and we’d be happy to help.

What is the value of automation?

The most common answers to that question often focus on strictly saving time. While time savings are indeed one of the benefits of automating your workflows, the advantages go far beyond that. 

Automation creates value not only by saving time, but also by producing more consistent processes and enabling thorough documentation of all of your key business activities. Additionally, it can help your team to get more work done, even if you think you’re already at max capacity. 

Automation Creates More Consistent, Reliable Processes

When you conduct a process manually, it’s inevitable that you’ll see some differences and inconsistencies from task to task. Different people might have their own unique styles that come through in their work; different circumstances might motivate your team to make a peculiar choice on a given assignment; and of course, plain old human error can crop up at any time.

However, when you automate a given process, you ensure that it will be executed the exact same way every time it runs (until you make a change to the automation itself). Low-code platforms like Zapier and Integromat will run each step in sequence without variation, always producing the same results. While a technical error will pop up from time to time, automated error-tracking systems will make it much easier to spot problems and to fix them quickly. 

The consistency of automation removes human error from the equation, and it gives you a better set of data to base your strategic decisions on. Since you know automated tasks are performed the same way every time, you don’t have to wonder if some slight variation in the process might be responsible for different results week to week - and you don’t need to worry about a slow transition to an updated process.

Automation Documentation Turns Your Processes into Assets

While low-code/no-code is more accessible than traditional software development, it’s still useful to follow a lot of the principles that have always guided the software world. With that in mind, we at XRay.Tech consider it a best practice to include thorough documentation with every automated workflow we produce. 

Good documentation lets the reader know what the automation does, when it should be used, and how to use it. Additionally, it should include links or other resources that might be helpful in operating or understanding the automation.

Finally, documentation for automated systems should also describe the manual steps that people have to perform as part of the automation-supported process. All of this information (along with some tags and attributes for organization) comes together to form a Process Page, detailing exactly how a given process at your company works.

When you build up a Process Playbook of dozens of Pages, it becomes a sort of “Business Bible”; a how-to manual for operating your company. This can be an extremely valuable asset for not only training new hires, but also for meeting with potential investors or buyers. 

By building automated workflows and documenting your processes, you can create a tangible asset that represents your company’s operations. It’s an asset that ensures continuity regardless of employee turnover, and makes it easier for investors or buyers to see what you have to offer. 

Documented Automated Workflows Push Your Team’s Capacity Even Further

Automation can do more than clarify and maintain your current processes. By saving time for the people at your company, it can also enable them to be more productive, even if you thought your team was already operating at their maximum capacity. 

Automating robotic tasks helps to create more time for your team in a few different ways. The most obvious time-saving aspect of automation is that it reduces the amount of the time that your team has to devote to copy-and-paste or data entry work. Automation can easily shave off hours each week that was previously spent simply moving information from one app to another.

But this isn’t the only way that automation saves time for the people on your team. It also helps to reduce the distraction and focus loss that comes from switching back and forth between different tasks. 

When your team doesn’t have to worry about a dozen different small tasks throughout the day, they’re not only devoting more time to their core responsibilities; they’re doing so with fewer interruptions, so that they can perform at their best on assignments that require their creativity, analytical skills, strategy, or thoughtfulness. 

As a result, you’ll often find that automation enables your team to do far more than they were previously able to, freeing up their time for more valuable and rewarding work.

Streamline and Improve Your Processes with Automation

Automations are a great way to save time, but their value extends far beyond that for a service company. Automated workflows and their accompanying documentation make your processes more reliable and even turn them into a tangible asset. With automations and a Process Playbook supporting their efforts, your team will have more capacity than ever before.

If you’d like to learn more about how automations can help your business, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

One of the best ways to start unlocking the potential of automation is to start chaining several automated actions together. It’s great to be able to create a slide deck from a template with one form, but it’s even better to make a Google Doc at the same time, doubling your output without doing any extra work.

In this post, we’re going to go a step further and add the final action to the automation that we’ve been building over our last two blogs. With this addition, the automation will draft and send an email with links to the presentation and document that it just created. 

If you missed our last two tutorials, be sure to check those out first to learn how to automatically create a Google Slides presentation and a Google Doc from one simple form. 

Tutorial Steps:

1. Confirm the setup of your Airtable base

2. Add action: Send an email in GMail 

3. Write an email template in Zapier

4. Fill in necessary email fields

5. Add links to your Google Docs and Slides files

6. Test your automation

1. Confirm the setup of your Airtable base

In the last two tutorial blogs, you should have set up an Airtable base with columns that match the variables in your Google Slides and Google Docs templates. You may remember that there was also a “Client Email” that wasn’t used on either of the previous steps.

This final step is where we’ll make use of that email field, so make sure you’ve included it in your Airtable base. If you had to add it in, test your Zapier trigger again to pull in the updated data.  

You’ll also want to enter a real email address that you have access to so that you can see the final product of your automation and make any adjustments you’d like to the email template. 

2. Add action: Send an email in Gmail

Now head over to Zapier and open up the automation you’ve been building throughout these tutorials. Add an action to the end of the Zap, and choose Gmail as your app (or your preferred email provider - but bear in mind that the steps might be a little different than what we’ve outlined here). Sign in to your account, select “Send email” as the action, and continue.

3. Write an email template in Zapier

Next, we’ll draft our email template directly in the “Body” field provided by Zapier. You can write whatever you’d like in this message, and use data from previous steps to create dynamic messages that include the meeting date, the client’s company name, etc.

The main aspect we want to highlight here is how to send links to the presentation and document that you just created. To grab a link for the doc, insert data from the step where the doc was created. In the search bar, type in “alternate link”, and insert the piece of data that says “4. Alternate Link”. This “Alternate link” is the URL where you’ll be able to access the document. Then, do the same thing for your slide deck.

4. Fill in the necessary email fields

Now that the body of your email is all set, you’ll just need to fill out the rest of the fields needed to send an email. Subject, from, and CCs or BCCs you might want to add, and the recipient. In the “to” field, you’ll want to add the data for “Client Email” from the Airtable step. This way, it can send the email to whichever recipient you identified when you filled out the form to trigger the automation. 

Dynamically generated data like this is a fundamental part of what makes automations useful. Simply performing identical steps and producing identical output with an automation only has limited applications, but creating customized documents from templates can be used in a wide range of scenarios.

5. Test the automation 

With all of your email fields filled out, it’s now time to test the automation. You should see a success message telling you that Zapier just sent an email. Check the email address you provided to see the final message, which should look something like this:

And now you’re all set. Your automation will create a Google Doc, a Slides presentation, and an email with links to both all by filling out a simple form. 

Even if you’re not interested in automating your process for meeting agendas, the principles of this automation can apply to all sorts of situations. Consider any templated document that you use regularly, and think about how you can use these steps to automate that process, save time, and avoid errors. 

If you’d like to find more automation tutorials or learn about XRay’s approach to automating workflows, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Creating documents from templates is a useful way to save time, but automating the process can make it even more efficient and reliable. In this post, we’re going to show you how to create a Google doc from a template automatically. 

This is a follow-up to our video about creating Google Slides presentations automatically, so be sure to read that if you missed it. Along with the next blog post, we’ll be building a three-part automation that creates a presentation, a document, and an email all at once. 

With this automation, you’ll be able to make frequently used documents in seconds - like reports, proposals, or, as in our example for this post, meeting agendas. 

1. Create a Google Doc

2. Add {{variables}} to your Doc with curly braces

3. Create an Airtable Base with corresponding columns for each variable

4. Create a Form view and fill it out to create test data

5. Build the automation in Zapier

A. Trigger: New record in View - Airtable

B. Action: Action Create a new Doc from template - Google Docs

C. Match your data to your variables

6. Test your automation

Required Software

To build this automation, you’ll need Google Docs (of course 😁), Zapier, and Airtable. If you’d like, you could substitute Airtable with Google Forms or Typeform, but we recommend using Airtable databases to support your automations. 

1. Create a Google Doc

First, we’ll make a Google Doc much like we made our Slides presentation in the last tutorial. Add all of the content and styling that you want to use in the finished document, and make a note of where the Doc is saved in Drive. You may also want to grab the doc’s ID for a future step. To find your Doc’s ID, look for the long alphanumeric string between /d/ and /edit in the address bar.

You don’t need to save this Doc as a template in Drive. Zapier doesn’t use Google’s template system, and will instead make copies of a regular document. 

2. Add {{variables}} to your Doc with curly braces

Review your document and identify all the data that you want to update whenever you create a new agenda. In our example, we want to update things like the client’s name, the meeting date, our progress notes, etc. 

To create variables that Zapier will recognize and update with the data you provide, just type a simple, descriptive name for the variable and enclose it in {{curly braces}}. For instance, we’ve included variables called {{clientName}} and {{meetingDate}}.

Note: you can’t use hyphens or spaces in your variable names, but you can use capital letters and underscores. 

3. Create an Airtable Base with corresponding columns for each variable

If you’ve already completed Part 1 of this tutorial to make a Slides presentation, then your Airtable base is all set, and you can move on to Step 5. 

If you skipped Part 1, you’ll need to make an Airtable base that includes a column for each of the variables you created in your Google Doc template. For example, you can see that we have a “Client Name” column for the {{clientName}} variable, and a “Meeting Date” column for the {{meetingDate}}. 

4. Create a Form view and fill it out to create test data

In the same base, create a new Form View. To make a new View, click on the “form view” option in the bottom left hand corner of the Airtable UI. This will create a new view in your base that rearranges your columns into a form.

Add any descriptions you’d like to the form, then click on “open form” to fill it out with test data, which you’ll need to build the automation in the next step. Whenever you’re preparing data for an automation, try to make your test data as realistic as possible to get the best results.

5. Build the automation in Zapier

Trigger: New Record in View - Airtable

If you’re following along from Part 1, open up the Google Slides Zap you built and skip to “Action: create a Google Doc from template”.

If you skipped Part 1, make a new Zap. Choose Airtable as the app for your trigger, and set the trigger to “New Record in View”. Choose the base you made earlier, and select the grid view. This means that the automation will trigger whenever a new record is added to your base (i.e., whenever you fill out the form). 

Action: Create a New Google Doc from Template

Add an action to your automation, and select Google Docs as the app. Choose “Create document from template”, and select the document you want to use as a template. You can find it by its name or enter the ID if you’ve copied it. 

Then, match each piece of data you’re pulling in from Airtable to the appropriate Google Docs variable. For example, match the “Meeting Date” data to the {{meetingDate variable}}.

Note: if you want each document created from this template to have a unique name, you should use some of your data from Airtable in the title, such as the date and/or client name.

If Zapier hasn’t found a variable that you think should be there, go back to your doc and make sure that you’ve set them up correctly - no spaces, no hyphens, and enclosed in {{curly braces}}

6. Test your automation

Finally, click on “Test and Continue” to test the automation. If it’s successful, you’ll get a success message with lots of data about the document Zapier just created.

Search in that data for the “alternate link” and paste that into your address bar to access the document. You should see a new doc based on your template, updated with data from Airtable.

Reusing Data to Save More Time

Now, your automation will create two assets from one form, saving you even more time that would otherwise just be spent copying and pasting. 

In our next post, we’ll finish up this automation with an email that will send both of our docs to a client. If you’d like to learn some more automation tips, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Frequently used templates are a great opportunity for automation. Instead of manually entering data into your regular reports or presentations, you could automated that process with a simple form. 

In this post, we'll show you how you can automatically create a Google Slides presentation from a template with a simple Zapier automation. This Zap will let you create any frequently used presentation in seconds, such as reports, kickoff decks, or, as in our example for this post, meeting agendas.

This might not sound like much, but when we combine this automation with other actions like creating a Google doc and an email that sends links to both of our documents, you’ll see how quickly automation can amplify your work. 

But we’ll cover those steps in our next posts. For now, let’s just look at how you can automatically generate Google slides presentations from a template.

Steps:

1. Create a presentation in Google Slides

2. Add {{variables}} to your presentation in curly braces

3. Create an Airtable base with columns that correspond to your variables

4. Create a Form view and fill it out to create test data

5. Build your automation in Zapier

A. Trigger: New record in view (form view)

B. Create a presentation from template

C. Match your data to your variables

6. Test your automation

Required Software

To build this automation, you’ll need Zapier, Google Slides, and Airtable. 

You could build a similar automation using alternative software if you’d prefer, as the same basic concepts will generally apply to other applications. If you’d like to trigger this automation with a survey from Typeform instead of Airtable, that will work just fine.

However, if you want to follow along step by step, we’d recommend using the same programs. 

1. Create a Google Slides presentation to use as a template

Create a new Google Slides deck, and fill it in with all the content and styling that you want to see in the final product. You can also copy and paste an existing Slides presentation that you’re using as a template.

Note that you don’t need to save this slide deck as a template in Google Drive. Zapier can’t access Google’s template system, so the automation will be set up to just create a copy of a regular Slides file updated with custom data. 

2. Use curly braces to add {{variables}} to your presentation

Once your presentation is ready, identify the text that you want to update each time you create and send out the deck, such as  the client’s name, the date of the meeting, your progress updates - anything that needs to be dynamic.

To replace that text with variables that Zapier will recognize, just give your variable a simple name and enclose it in curly braces. For instance, you’d replace the meeting date with something like this:

{{meetingDate}}

You can use underscores or capital letters in your variable names, but it’s best to avoid using spaces. While Zapier can recognize Google Slides variables with spaces, it can’t do the same for Google Docs, so it’s easier to just avoid spaces altogether when working with G Suite. 

In the finished automation, your inserted text will adopt the style, size, and placement of your variables, so make sure that your design and layout is set up the way you want it. 

You can also replace a variable with an image in Google Slides to add some rich visual content. Just because you’re automating this process doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice the quality of your presentations. 

3. Create an Airtable base with corresponding columns for each variable

Next, head into Airtable and create a new base from scratch.

Populate this base with a column that corresponds to each of the variables you just created in your Slides presentation. For instance, you can see that our Airtable base has a field called “Client Name” for the {{clientName}} variable, a “Meeting Date” column for the {{meetingDate}} variable, etc. 

Be sure to set each column to an appropriate type, and make use of Airtable’s functions to perform calculations. For example, we’ve set up a simple function in the “Next Meeting” column to add seven days to the date stored in “Meeting Date”. Adding automated calculations like this makes it even faster to fill out the form and create the deck. 

4. Create a Form view in Airtable

In your Airtable base, use the “views” menu in the bottom left hand corner to create a form view.

This will create an editable form that you can use to add records to your base one field at a time. You can add descriptions to each question or prompt, and then click on “open form” to actually enter a response. 

Fill out the form with test data and submit it. With our presentation, database, and test data all set, it’s time to build the automation in Zapier.

5. Create the automation in Zapier

Trigger: New record in view | Airtable

To start the automation, choose Airtable as your app, and select ‘New record in view’ as your trigger. 

Pick the main grid view and continue.

Action: Create a presentation from template | Google Slides

For the first and only action of this automation (for now), select Google Slides as your app and choose ‘create a presentation from template’ as the action.

Pick the presentation you created in the first step of this tutorial, and match up all of your data from Airtable to the appropriate variables.

If some of your expected variables are missing, go back and make sure you didn’t use any hyphens in the variable names. 

Test your automation. It should create a Google Slides presentation with the data you submitted and the styling laid out in the template. 

A Simple Start for a Helpful Automation

With this automation complete, now you can make your frequently used presentations in seconds. In our next posts, we’ll build on this automation by creating a step for an automatically-generated Google Doc, and an email that sends both assets to our client.

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Get a copy of this Zap from Zapier here.

To learn more about XRay.Tech and how we create more time for mindful work with automations, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

While Zoom’s recording feature is a great way to temporarily save calls, we at XRay wanted to create a more permanent way to archive our meetings for future reference. 

With this simple Zapier automation, you can save your Zoom recordings and share them with anyone without having to take up precious space on your hard drive or pay for a higher-priced tier of Zoom with unlimited cloud storage.

You’ll just need accounts for Zoom, Zapier, Google Drive and YouTube to get started. You can also follow along with our video tutorial.

How to Build the Zap Step-by-Step

1. Record a call in Zoom
2. Create a trigger action: New Recording in Zoom
3. Add an action step: Save File to a Folder in Google Drive
4. Add an action step: Upload to a YouTube Channel

Step 1: Record a Call in Zoom

Before you start building the automation, you’ll need to make sure you have a recorded call to use as test data. If you don’t already have a recording in your Zoom account, make one now.

Step 2: Create a trigger action: New Recording in Zoom

Create a new Zap in Zapier, and choose Zoom as your trigger app. Then, select “New Recording” as the trigger event.

Under “Set up trigger”, choose whether your recordings will be Meetings or Webinars. 

If you record both on Zoom, you’ll need to make two separate Zaps to capture them: one with “Meetings” selected, and one with “Webinars” selected. 

Next, test your trigger. It should find your most recent Zoom recordings, but you may have to click “Load more” to refresh if you’ve just made a new recording that you want to test.

Note: With certain plans, Zoom only holds your cloud recordings for 7 days. 

You’ll see that Zapier’s pulled in all sorts of data from Zoom, but the main thing we’ll be concerned with is the variable called “download_url”. 

Step 3: Add an Action Step - Save File to Google Drive

Before we can upload your file to YouTube, we need to save it to Drive first. This is because YouTube can’t upload a video from a download link, which is all that Zoom gives us to access our recordings.

Add an action step to your Zap, and choose Google Drive as the app. Then, select “Upload File” as your Action Event

Under Action setup, select your Google Drive account (you’ll need to connect it with Zapier if you haven’t already) and choose the folder you want to save your recordings to. 

Then, in the “File” field, use the download URL retrieved in the first step: “1. Video Files Download URL.”

Leave “Convert to Document?” blank, and name your file whatever you want. To give each file a unique name, just select any of the variables that Zapier pulled in: Start Time, Topic, etc.

Lastly, enter “.mp4” as the File Extension to make sure Drive will process the file as a video.

Test this step, then continue if everything worked properly.

Step 4: Add an action step - Upload to a YouTube Channel

Finally, it’s time to actually upload your video to YouTube.

Add another action step, choosing YouTube as your App and Upload Video as your Action Event.

Fill in the title and description fields with whichever variables you’d like. We’ve chosen the recording Topic for the title and the Start Time for the description.

For the “Video” field, select the variable that says “2. File (Exists but not shown)”. This is the video file itself, and that “exists but not shown” message just means that Zapier can’t show a preview of the video file.

Next, select whether you want the video to Public, Private, or Unlisted. You can ignore the Publish At field, and add any tags you want to the video (but there’s no need to add tags if your video isn’t public). Choose whether or not you want to notify your subscribers, and then click “Save and Continue” to test the step.

If you set up the Zap correctly, you should now see the video getting uploaded to YouTube. You can turn your Zap on, and now you’ll be able to save all of your Zoom recordings without having to pay more for Zoom. 

If you’d like to learn more about how automation can support your workflows, be sure to check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Starting your automation with the right trigger is key to building a helpful automation that people will actually use. If triggering an automation is too complex or requires too much effort, you’ll have a hard time getting your team to adopt it.

In this post, we’ll show you how you can trigger an automation with a simple BCC in an email and copy that email into a Slack message. 

To copy this automation and follow along with our quick tutorial, go to the Zap’s public page on Zapier: https://zapier.com/shared/ad8c9ea6d7500e18159fbef41b69d4fd71f1dadf 

Required Software

• Gmail (or another email client)

• Slack (or another messaging app)

• Zapier

Automation Steps

1. Designate an address to BCC

2. Trigger: New Email Matching Search

3. Action: New Channel Message in Slack

Step 1: Designate an address to BCC and Send a Test Email

Before you start building the automation, you should have an email address in mind that you’ll direct the BCC to. 

For our example, we’ll be BCCing content@xray.tech to have any email copied into a Slack message. You may want to create an alias or a group in GMail to do something similar. You can send messages about leads to marketing@yourcompany, or send client updates to clientrelations@yourcompany.

For the purposes of following this tutorial, you can also just use any email address you have access to, but for building an automation you’ll actually use, it’s best to use a contextually appropriate email address. 

Once you’ve picked your address, send a test email with that address BCC’d. 

Step 2: Trigger - New Email Matching Search

Now that you have a test email to work with, go into Zapier and make a new automation.

Choose Gmail as your app, and select “New Email Matching Search”. Sign in to your Gmail account and process to trigger setup.

Then, in the “Search String” field, add a search term to find emails with your designated email address like this (without brackets):

bcc: {your@email.address}

You may want to add additional parameters to make the trigger more precise, such as “in:sent”, which will make it so only messages that you’ve sent can trigger the automation. 

Test your trigger, and make sure it pulls in the test email that you just sent at the start of this tutorial.

Step 2: New Channel Message in Slack

Add a new action to your automation, and choose Slack as the app. Then select “New Channel Message”. Sign in to your Slack account and proceed to the action setup.

Pick the channel that you’d like to send the message to, and draft the message template. Be sure to include dynamic data from Zapier like the email body (1. Body Plain) and the recipient’s email address (1. To Emails). 

Include a link to the Zap so that you can easily access it in case something looks wrong when the message is sent.

Set “Auto-expand links” to “No” if you’d like to keep the message from taking up lots of space, and leave the rest of the settings as they are. 

Test the step, and check Slack for the new message. You should see a message that looks something like this:

And you’re all set. 

Taking the Automation Further

We’ve set up this automation to be as simple as possible just to demonstrate how BCC triggers work. If you want to build a more robust automation, we’d recommend including a lookup table in Airtable to make it so that you can use a single Zap to copy email messages into any Slack channel based on which address is BCC’d. 

You could map messages sent to content@your.company to your #content channel, sales@your.company to sales, etc. 

We’ll post a more advanced version of this automation soon, but for now, you can check out these posts on using Airtable as ODb to get a sense of how it works. 

Seamless Automated Workflows

At XRay, we want to make work easier and more productive for everyone. We love using simple triggers like this because they integrate neatly into anyone’s workflow. You don’t need to know anything complicated or technical to use an automation; just adding a simple BCC to an email is all you need. 

If you’d like to learn more automation tips for beginners or advanced users, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Templates are a wonderful time saver at work, making it quicker and easier to whip up a presentation deck or meeting agenda on the fly. 

Apps like Google Docs and Slides have easy tools for saving any of your documents as a template that you can reuse whenever you’d like, so you don’t have to start from scratch every time. 

But what if we told you there’s an even better way to handle your templates? What if you could automate the entire process of creating docs and presentations from templates, so that all you had to do was fill in a quick form?

It’s true, and the answer is simple: automation. 

Automating your templates with Zapier (and a little help from Airtable) will:

• Make it even faster to create docs from templates
• Reduce the chance for errors
• Keep your team in the loop whenever a new document is created
• Allow anyone on your team to create presentations with minimal design or technical skills

In this post, we’ll show you how you can build a Zap to automatically create a Google Slides presentation from a template. Just follow along, and customize your own presentation however you’d like. 

Everything we show you in this tutorial will also work for Google Docs, so you can make a text document instead if you’d prefer.

What you’ll need for this tutorial:

• Zapier account
• Google account
• Airtable account

Don’t worry; Zapier and Airtable both offer free accounts which will work just fine for creating this automation. 

Step 1: Create Your Presentation

First, you’ll need to make your presentation. For this tutorial, we’ll just make a simple deck with only two slides, but your presentation can be any length that you want. 

• Create the file in a convenient spot in Google Drive. You’ll need to access the file path while building the automation.
• You don’t have to save this as a Template; we’ll actually be copying the file itself, not using Google’s built-in template system.
  

Step 2: Identify and {{Mark}} the Variables

Now, you need to identify the information that will be replaced and filled in each time you use the template. For instance, the client company’s name, your project manager’s name, or the date. These are your variables, and you’ll need to format them a specific way for the automation to work. 

Here, we have our client’s name: “NotRealCo”. We’ll replace that with {{client_name}}

You can call you variables whatever you want, but curly braces are essential. Using them will signal to Zapier that you want to use that bit of text as a variable. 

• Replace each variable with a descriptive term enclosed in two sets of curly braces, like {{client}} or {{starting_date}}

Step 3: Create a Table in Airtable

For this step, we’ll move over to Airtable. Create a new base, and make a new table from scratch within that base. 

In your new table, create a column for each of your variables. You can use emojis to indicate which variables you’ll enter manually and which will be the result of a calculation or formula. You can read more about how to use emojis in Airtable here.

Then, add a final column called “Build Presentation”, and make the field type a checkbox. Once you’ve made your automation, you’ll trigger it by checking this box.

• Create a table in Airtable, with a column for each of your variables

Step 4: Create a New “Builder” View in Airtable

In the same base, create a new Grid view. Click on the “Filters” button to add a new filter: where “Build Presentation” is Checked ✔. Go back to the original grid view, enter some test data into each column, and click on the check mark once it’s all set.

• Create a “Builder” view in the same base, and submit test data from your initial grid view.

Step 5: Set up Your Zap

Now it’s time to bring it all together in Zapier. Create a new Zap, and start with Airtable as your trigger app. Then, choose “New Record in View” as your trigger, and select the base and table, and “Builder” view that you made earlier.

Test your trigger. It should find the data you just added.

For the Zap’s first action, choose Google Slides and select “Create Presentation from Template”. Choose the deck you made as your template.

In the following steps, match each variable to the data pulled in from Airtable. {{date}} should be filled in with Meeting Date, {{pm_name}} should be filled in with Pm Name, etc. 

• Choose the Trigger: Airtable, new record in view
• Create Presentation from template (again, NOT using Google’s template)
• Match each field to your variables
• Test, and you’re done

You can use this form whenever you want to make a presentation. Fast, easy, and anyone can do it. 

Optional Step: Link Your Presentation for Reference

Lastly, you can add one more step to your Zap to update your Airtable database with a link to the newly created presentation. 

Go back into Airtable, and add one more column called “Created Presentation” and make the field type “URL”.

Add another action in Zapier, choose Airtable as the app, and select “Update Record”. Choose your database and view (the original Grid view, not the builder view). To find the record that corresponds with the deck that the Zap just created, click in the “Record” field and select “Custom”. Then, choose “1. Record id” to pull the record’s Airtable ID from Step 1 of your Zap.

Fill in the “Created Presentation” field with the “Alternate Link” from Step 2. This is the presentation’s URL.

Linking it here isn’t strictly necessary, but it’s a great way to keep track of the decks you made from this template.

Save a Little Time to Build Lots of Momentum

Automations like this aren’t going to save you hours every single day, but they will shave minutes off of a robotic task that you might have to do several times a week.

What’s more, using automations for your robotic tasks will help you to maintain focus by reducing context-switching. Instead of going back and forth from one app to another, you can enter everything into one simple form and get a complete presentation in seconds.

Enhancing your workflow with automations, no matter how small, will ultimately help you to work quicker and more effectively.

If you'd like to learn more about no-code workflow automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Routinely used documents are an important part of any company. Sending out contracts, progress reports, and proposals is an essential part of conducting business, particularly for those in the agency world who are constantly pursuing new clients. 

Automating those common, templated documents that you send every week is a great way to start saving time and reducing errors. In this post, we’ll show you how you can build an automation to create and send proposals with just a few clicks. 

Tutorial Steps

1. Create a proposal template in Google Slides and add variables

2. Create an Airtable base with fields for each variable

3. Trigger: New Record in View in Airtable

4. Action: Format

5. Action: Create Google Slides Presentation from Template

6. Action: Upload File in Google Drive

7. Action: Delay

8. Action: Send Email in Gmail

How it Works

With this automation, you’ll be able to create and send a customized proposal to a client just by filling out a quick Airtable form. By using linked records, an extremely useful Airtable feature, you’ll be able to prefill paragraphs of text with just a click. By simply selecting the service or package you want to add to the proposal, Airtable will automatically find the associated description. 

Once the form is filled out, the Zapier automation will make a copy of your template file, replace the variables with your specified text and data, and email a PDF of that file to your specified client email address. 

Copy this Zap:

https://zapier.com/shared/b33e1122a56ef8f679cf610424371e055fd3a66d 

Required Software

For this automation, you’ll need:

• Zapier - to build the automation
• Google Slides - to create the proposal template
• Airtable - to build a database and operate the automation
• Google Drive - to store a PDF export
• GMail (or any email client) - to send an email with a PDF attachment
  

1. Create a proposal template in Google Slides and add variables

First, we need to create a proposal template in Google Slides. While an app like Google Docs might seem like a more appropriate choice, Slides has one key advantage that makes it ideal for this automation: the ability to replace variables with images. 

Create your proposal with all of the content, styling, and images that you want in the final version. You can change the layout of the slide to 8.5” x 11” by navigating to File > Page Setup. 

Then, identify the content that you want to replace or update each time you create and send a proposal - things like the client’s name, an image of their logo, and the description of the services you’re offering. Replace these pieces of text and images with {{variables}} enclosed in curly braces. Avoid using hyphens or spaces in your variable names.

This notation will let Zapier identify those pieces of texts as variables, and it will be able to insert custom data into them.

Once your proposal template is all set, make a note of the save location or the ID in the address bar between /d/ and /edit. Note that you don’t need to save this file as a template in Google Slides. 

2. Create an Airtable base with fields for each variable

Now, open up Airtable and create a new base from scratch. Create a column for each of the variables that you added to your Google Slides proposal template. You can also include a send date and time to schedule exactly when you send the email with your proposal. 

For information like the service title and description, you may want to use a linked record and lookup fields. This will let you add all of your services into a separate table, and simply pick which one you’d like to add to the proposal to have the name and description automatically filled in.

To create a linked table, first make a second table in the same base. Add columns for each piece of information you want to include (in our case, Workflow Name and Workflow Description). 

Then, go back to your other table and add a column. Set the type to “linked record”, and choose your other table from the list. Then, make new columns with the type set to “lookup” for each of the pieces of data you want to pull in from the linked record. 

Finally, create a form view for your base, open the form view, and fill it out with test data.

3. Trigger: New Record in View in Airtable

Now it’s time to build the automation in Zapier. Choose Airtable as your trigger app, and select “New Record in View” as your trigger. Choose the grid view from the table you created in the previous step. 

4. Action: Format

To make our “Send Date” field a bit more readable, we’re going to use a quick “Formatter by Zapier” step to convert it to “August 11” rather than the original long date/time code that we start with. We’ll still use that full date and time later to schedule the email, but this shorter version will look better in our proposal.

5. Action: Create Google Slides Presentation from Template

Choose Google Slides as the app for the next step in the automation, and pick “Create New Presentation from Template”. Find the template file you created earlier, either by using its ID or navigating to its location. 

Then, match your data from Airtable to each of the variable fields that Zapier provides. Test the step and continue.

6. Action: Upload File in Google Drive

Next, you’re going to export a PDF of the Slides presentation and save it in Google Drive. To do this, add another step to the automation with Google Drive as the app, and Upload File as the action. 

Choose a folder where you want to save your proposal PDFs, and then select “Export Links Application/pdf” from your Google Slides data. Select “False” for “Convert to Document”, and give your PDFs a name. 

7. Action: Delay

We’re nearly finished with the automation, but first, we’re going to add a quick delay step so that you can schedule the email in advance. This way, you can create proposals well in advance of sending them. 

Just add a “Delay by Zapier step”, choose “Delay until”, and set your Send Date from Airtable as the time to delay until. 

8. Action: Send Email in Gmail

Finally, we’re going to add a GMail action so you can send your proposal to a client. Pick “Send email” as the action, and fill in the fields with the appropriate data. Be sure to fill the “To” field with the client email that was entered into Airtable, and fill out the body of the email however you want.

Then, under attachments, select “File: Exists but not shown” from the Google Drive step. ‘Exists but not shown’ is just Zapier’s way of saying that it can’t show you a preview of the file.

Test this step, and you should be all set. If you used your own email for the “client email”, you should see a new message arrive in your inbox soon with a PDF attachment.

Turning Templates into Automations

While document templates are already a great step towards saving time and reducing errors, automating those templates takes it a step further. By using an Airtable base with linked records, you can send out an automation prefilled with whatever service and description you want. Since you never have to interact directly with the template, you don’t need to worry about accidentally changing the design or formatting or copying and pasting the wrong data.

If you’d like to learn more about how automation can enhance your workflows, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

As a global pandemic has prompted a dramatic increase in remote work, video meeting apps like Zoom have been a vital tool for staying connected and conducting everything from routine meetings and casual chats to major conferences and events. 

One of the added benefits of using Zoom is the ability to create permanent records of each call. Not only does Zoom offer cloud recordings for all of your calls (if you have a paid plan), but you can also use third-party software to transcribe those calls. Transcriptions are a great way to generate notes, review past meetings, or create content from recorded events. 

In this post, we’ll show you how you can build a simple, 3-step Zapier automation that will save your Zoom recordings to Google Drive, and then send them over to Trint for transcription. 

Automation Steps

1. Trigger: New Recording in Zoom

2. Action: Upload File in Google Drive

3. Action: Upload File in Trint to Create a Transcription

Required Software

For this automation, you’ll need: 

• Zapier

• Zoom

• Google Drive

• Trint

Zoom and Trint will both require paid subscriptions for this automation, as Zoom only offers cloud recording for paid plans and Trint is a subscription-only service. 

1. Trigger: New recording in Zoom

To start off your automation, choose Zoom as your trigger app and select “New Recording” as the trigger. This will make the automation run whenever you have a new Zoom recording, which will be created whenever you end a meeting that you recorded. Using this trigger makes for a very passive, hands-off automation that will run without requiring any additional input from you and your team.

2. Action: Upload File in Google Drive

Now, we need to upload your new Zoom recording to Google Drive. We’re putting the file on Drive for two reasons:

1. Trint needs an actual file to work with, but Zoom’s Zapier trigger only gives you a download URL. Drive can make a copy of the file from the URL, and then pass the file over to Trint.

2. Zoom only offers limited cloud storage for lower pricing tiers, and copying your recordings to Drive can be a more cost-effective way of holding on to your Zoom videos over the long term. 

To create the step, select Google Drive as your app, and pick “Upload File” as your action. Choose a folder to store your videos in, and pick the Download URL that Zapier pulled from Zoom in the trigger step. It should be called “Video Files Download URL”.

Now, give the files a template for their names. You’ll want to use a piece of data from the Trigger step in order to give each file a unique name. For instance, we named our file “Zoom • {1. Start Time} • {1. Topic}”, so each file will have a date/time and topic to differentiate it from the other files.

You can leave the “File Extension” field blank, and test the step. If everything works, it’s time to send the file to Trint.

3. Action: Upload File in Trint to Create a Transcription

To finish this quick automation, we’ll add one more step. Pick Trint as your app, and choose “Upload File” as the action. 

Just like in the previous step, you’ll want to use the data Zapier gives you from the trigger step to give each file in Trint a unique name. In our example, we’ve used Start Time and Topic.

For the “File” field, you need to pick from the data that Zapier pulled in from Google Drive, NOT data from the Zoom trigger step. Specifically, you’ll want to pick the data that’s called “File: (Exists but not shown)”. This not-very-helpful name is just Zapier’s oblique way of saying that it can’t show you a preview of the file, which in this case is a video file. 

Pick your transcription language, and then optionally pick a folder to save your transcription in. You can leave the “metadata” field blank, and test this last step of the automation. Starting the transcription can sometimes take a long time, and Zapier may return a failure for your test and tell you that the app is unresponsive. Don’t worry; just try again, and it should work. 

A successful test will give you a URL where you can see your transcription in progress, although it will likely take some time to complete (particularly for longer videos).

And that’s it! You’ll likely also want to add a Slack notification, or some other heads-up to your team to let everyone know that a transcription has been created and where they can find it. But we’ll cover that and other general best practices in a future blog and video. 

Passively Creating a Content Library 

With this automation running, you’ll create a convenient record of every Zoom meeting, every brainstorming session, every event, and every other type of call that you use Zoom for. This is a great way to build up a library of material to help generate content or just to use for your own reference. 

If you’d like more automation tips or would like to learn about how automated workflows can transform your organization, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

If you’ve been exploring our blog or our video channel, or if you’ve spoken with one of our automation techs, you might be wondering what your options are for actually working with XRay. 

At XRay, we have two main approaches for our automation projects: Blueprint Solutions and Bounties. 

Blueprints and Bounties are two distinct ways to launch an automation project, but they’re both aimed at getting started quickly and setting fair, transparent terms that work for both parties.

XRay’s Blueprints and Bounties might be a little different from what you’re used to, so in this post, we’ll explain how they both work. 

Blueprint Solutions: Pick an Automation from our Library

Our library of Blueprint Solutions is a selection of pre-designed automated workflows that solve common problems and address frequent pain points. 

Every business is unique, but we all have to conduct many of the same workflows, and we have to deal with many of the same frustrations that plague our daily processes and tasks. Things like client and customer onboarding, payroll, lead handling and sales calls, time tracking, and training new team members are tasks that most companies do on a regular basis. Finding ways to streamline and improve these processes can be a great way to save time and set up your team for success more consistently. 

Whenever we build an automated workflow that addresses a common issue, we convert it into a Blueprint Solution: a modular, adaptable version of an automation that defines key steps but allows for customization for each client.

When you pick a blueprint from our library, we’ll configure it and build it for your company within a set timeframe. Most of our solutions take about 4 weeks to finish, but you can see a more specific estimate associated with each blueprint.  

During our kickoff and early calls, we’ll discuss your requirements, customizations, and adjustments for your Blueprint Solution. These decisions might change the completion timeline for your automation, and we’ll let you know as soon as possible if that’s the case. 

As we’re building your automation, we’ll check in regularly on Slack and on our weekly Zoom calls to keep you updated on our progress and get your input for any key decisions we need to make. 

Blueprint Solutions are a great way to quickly get started with automation. Just browse the library for a solution that works for you, and we’ll configure it for your company within about a month. 

Click here to get started with Blueprints.

Bounties: Name Your Price for a Custom Automation

If you can’t find anything in our selection of Blueprints that fits your company’s goals, then you can submit a bounty to tell us exactly what you’d like to build. 

Bounties let you name your own price for a fully custom automation. When you fill out the bounty request form, we’ll ask you to describe what you’d like us to build, and how much you’d be comfortable paying for it. We’ll respond quickly to let you know if we can accept your offer, or let you know if we’d like to propose a counter offer on slightly different terms. 

At XRay, we don’t want to dictate your automation’s value to you. We won’t waste your time with long negotiations if we’re not on the same page, and we’ll avoid hourly engagements that quickly become unaffordable for smaller companies. 

If you’re not sure where to begin with a custom automation project, it’s often best to start small. Instead of trying to think about your entire company at once, just focus on your most overworked team, or even a single individual. Where are they stuck? What’s eating up their time? What do they need to do each day? Answering these questions and automating their activity can be a great way to create more capacity for them. 

To fill out a bounty, just follow this link. Our survey will prompt you for all the information we need to evaluate your request.  

A starting point for automated infrastructure

Whether you choose a blueprint solution or a bounty, any project that you do with XRay will lay the groundwork for a broader automated infrastructure, so if you’d like to continue working with us, we’ll be able to expand that initial automation into something that supports your entire company. 

If you’d like to learn more about how we build automations at XRay, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Because of their names, no-code and low-code automation often get mixed up with software development. 

While no-code/low-code has roots in software development and relies on existing applications to work, the two are ultimately distinct disciplines. As such, you’ll get very different services and results from an automator like XRay when compared to a software development shop.

In this post, we’ll clarify the distinctions between automation and software development so that you can figure which is a better fit for what your business needs. 

Automation Connects the Apps You’re Already Using

No-code/low-code automation uses platforms like Zapier and Integromat to connect the apps that you use every day. They work based on an “if this, then that” flow of triggers and actions.

For each automation, you specify a single trigger event and one or more actions. Whenever the trigger event occurs, the automation will then perform all of the specified actions.

For instance, if you use the popular kanban software Trello and want to automate it with Zapier, you could set your trigger to be “New Card in Trello”. If you want to have the content of each new Trello card sent to you as a direct message in Slack, you could then pick “Send Direct Message in Slack” as an action event.

The organizational context of each automation is extremely important, which is why our techs always strive to understand the processes and objectives of each of our members. For example, our techs always make sure to configure automation triggers so that they only run under exactly the right circumstances. After all, you don’t want to do things like accidentally send emails to clients that are only meant for internal use.

Ultimately, well-designed automations help you to work faster and more consistently by replacing error-prone manual tasks with mechanically identical automated tasks. Implementing automations is a quick process, and XRay can build and refine your first automation within just 45 days.

Software Development Lets You Build a New App (Which Can Also be Automated!)

Where automation platforms connect existing tools, software development lets you build entirely new ones. If you have an idea for a new messaging platform, shopping app, or rideshare system, you’ll need to work with a software developer to make it happen.

Software development is typically a fairly lengthy and expensive process, as specialized engineers architect and write code to create each feature and function. 

XRay.Tech is not a software development agency, and if you plan to make an entirely new app as part of your business, you’ll need to work with a different company. However, we can recommend dev shops that we’ve worked with before.

Additionally, once your app is finished, XRay can automate it with no-code and low-code automations.

Automations Improve Your Business

If you have workflows in place that are getting good results, automations will support your workflows by achieving the same results faster and more consistently. 

Software development on the other hand will create an entirely new program for you to sell or to use internally. It may enhance your current workflows, or it may replace them entirely with a new process. 

If you imagine your current workflow as a bicycle, building an automation is like upgrading your bike with an electric motor. It's a fast and affordable upgrade, you'll still operate your bike in exactly the same way, and it still is capable of largely the same things - it just makes it faster and easier to do them.

By contrast, software development is more like replacing your bike with a custom-built, all-terrain car. The car is undoubtedly a more capable vehicle in many respects, but it's a total overhaul that will take a lot more time and money.

Pick the solution that works for you

If you're getting the results you need with your current workflow, but just need to get them faster, then automation is what you're looking for. If your workflow requires a comprehensive software tool that just doesn't exist yet, then software development may be what you need.

If you're still not sure whether automation is a good fit for your business, reach out to us and we'd be happy to discuss your needs and goals.

If you'd like to learn more about XRay's approach to workflow automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Social media managers like Buffer and Hootsuite make it easy to schedule your company’s social media posts across several different channels, but they can get pricey for a small team trying to build a big presence online. 

If you're already using Airtable and Zapier, building an automation to schedule your social media posts can be a cheaper and more convenient way to manage all of your channels.

In this post and in our video tutorial on YouTube, we’ll show you how you can use Airtable and a Zapier automation to build an automated social media calendar. 

Step 1: Set up an Airtable Base

The first thing you’ll need to do is create a new base and table in Airtable. This is where you’ll write and schedule all of your posts. 

You can add any columns you’d like to log data or organize your database (like the “Status” column in our example below), but the only strictly necessary columns will be:

1. Post body
2. Image (if you want to post images)
3. Post date
4. Ready to Post (checkbox)

You’ll also need a single-select “Platform” column if you want to post to multiple platforms with your calendar. We’ll cover this in more detail later.

Make sure that your post date column is a date/time field, and make sure to upload your images directly to Airtable. Just posting a link to the image may not work correctly.

Once all of your columns are set up, create a new view called “Ready to Post”, and filter the view to only display records with a checked box in the “Ready to Post” column. 

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Once your base is all set up, add a record to use as a test post, and check the “Ready to Post” box. 

Note: Zapier will publish your post to your Facebook page when you test the Zap, so make sure it’s something you really do want to share on your page. 

Step 2: Create a Zap with a “New Record in View” Trigger

Next, switch over to Zapier and create a new Zap. To set up the trigger, choose Airtable as the app and “New Record in View'' as the event. Then, select your new base, the Social Media Calendar table, and the “Ready to Post” view.

Now you need to test your trigger. You might need to refresh the fields to get Zapier to find your record.

Once the test is successful, you should see lots of data from the Airtable record. If everything looks right, click “Continue” and add a new step.

Step 3: Add a Delay Step

The next step in your Zap will use the “Delay by Zapier” app. This step is the key to scheduling your posts whenever you want rather than just publishing them immediately.

Select “Delay until”, and use the posting date pulled in from Airtable in the previous step. When your Zap is on, all of the steps after the delay won’t run until that exact date and time. 

Where Zapier asks “How Should We Handle Dates in the Past?”, it’s generally best to select “Always continue” to ensure that your posts will always get published. 

The only limitation to keep in mind with the delay step is that you can only delay for up to 30 days. If you’re planning your posts over a month in advance, you can check out our post and video for how to circumvent this limit.

Step 4: Post to Facebook (or any Platform)

Now that your post is properly scheduled, it’s time to set up a step in Zapier that will actually publish your post when the time comes.

We’ll show you how it works with Facebook, but you can use just about any social media platform that you want; the steps will be very similar.

Create a new step, and choose “Facebook Pages” as your app to post to your company’s page on Facebook, and select “Create a Page Photo”. You’ll need to sign in with a Facebook account that has access to your company’s page to continue.

Then, just fill out each field with the appropriate data pulled from Airtable (see the screenshot below). 

For the photo field, be sure to use the variable called “1. Attachments File: hydrate”. This is the image itself, rather than a link to the image or other metadata, and it’s what you need to use to post an image.

Now you can test the step to make sure that it’s set up correctly. Just remember, testing the Zap will publish your post to Facebook. 

That’s all you need to get started. If you’d like to use several social media apps with your calendar, you’ll just need one more optional step.

Optional: Set Up Additional Channels

To set up a social media calendar for multiple apps, you’ll first need to jump back into airtable and a new single-select column called “Platform”. Add each platform that you’ll be using as an option.

Rename your Ready to Post view to “Ready to Post - Facebook” and add a new filter to it to only include posts where the Platform = Facebook. 

Then, copy the “Ready to Post - Facebook” view for each additional platform you want to use, and update the name and filter on each copy. For instance, a view for Twitter would look like this:

Finally, you can just make a separate duplicated Zap for each channel, and update the “New Record in View”  trigger step to match each platform. You could also build it as one Zap with multiple paths if you’re comfortable using that feature, but simply creating multiple Zaps will be simpler if you’re less experienced with Zapier. 

Now, you can schedule all of your social media posts in one place without having to use an app like Buffer or Hootsuite.

If you'd like to learn more about no-code automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.