Zapier is a third-party service that helps you automate your day-to-day tasks and build workflows between apps without needing any additional coding or custom API connections.
After setting up the initial link in Zapier, add “Zaps” to automatically add or update contact records from your external apps.
There is no extra cost for using Zapier, because it uses our standard APIs to let you build your Zap. If you stick with single-step Zaps, you should also be able to use the free version of Zapier to accomplish most automations you’ll want to use on your database.
Actions you can take without a VANID
While most of the actions you can trigger in Zapier require the VANID (or other supported External ID) of the contact record you are trying to search on or update, there are a few actions you can set up as Zaps that will not need the VANID. These are designed to help you do things like process form submissions from your own app or a Google Form where you may not yet know if the person is already in your database.
- Find Person – Find a contact in the current database matching the triggered inputs. If found, this will return a VANID and basic information about the person that you can configure, such as addresses, phones, and emails.
- Create or Update Person – Find a contact in your database or create them if they don’t exist. Use this action to add phones, emails, addresses, activist codes, notes, and email subscriptions in a single action. This will return only a VANID.
- Create or Update Person with a Contribution - Find a contact in your database by providing a name and other contact information, or create a new contact. Once found or created, you can create a contribution for the contact.
- Submit Data to Online Actions – If you have access to Online Actions, you can select any of your pre-configured Signup, Volunteer, Petition, Event Signup, or Story Collection Online Actions forms as a template for submitting new information to your database. This option is useful if you have more information beyond basic contact data you want to add to your database. This action does not return a VANID.
Actions requiring VANID
For automatically updating your contact records, most of the Zaps available will require that you have the VANID (or custom External ID) of the contact record you are wanting to update. For these actions, you can provide the ID as part of the submission from the linked app or you can run a Find Person or Create or Update Person Zap to get the VANID for the record.
Once you have the VANID, you can:
- Add Canvass Responses – Apply multiple Activist Codes, Survey Question Responses, or non-canvassed Contact History to a person in a single step, and include additional canvass context information like input type, contact type, dialed phone number, and date canvassed.
- Add Activist Codes – Add Activist Codes to a person from Add Canvass Responses.
- Add Contact History – Add non-canvassed Contact History from Add Canvass Responses (e.g., Busy, Not Home, etc.).
- Add Contribution – Add a contribution to a person
- Add Survey Responses – Add Survey Responses from Add Canvass Responses.
- Add Note to Person – Add a note to a person, specify the note category, and whether you want to apply Contact History for the note.
- Subscribe Email – Add an email address to a person and choose to apply email interest type Activist Codes.
- Tag a Person – Apply a single Tag to a person.
Create your first zap now using one of our pre-designed templates (EveryAction)
Create your first zap now using one of our pre-designed templates (NGP VAN)
Read more about how to set up and use Zapier