What Is Zapier And Why Should I Care?

Zapier is an easy to use, third-party integration platform that enables participating web applications to share data with Salsa Engage. (For example, Google, Salesforce, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, Wordpress all have “apps” in the Zapier ecosystem.) Coding is NOT required to set up an integration.

For example, you can...

Set up an integration with Google Sheets so that when a row is added to the sheet, a supporter is created in Engage.
Set up an integration with Survey Monkey so that when a survey is submitted, a supporter is created and some of the survey answers are imported by Engage as supporter custom fields.
Set up an integration with WooCommerce so that when a purchase is made, a supporter and donation record are created in Engage (this can include showing what was purchased in an activity custom field.

You'll set up your integrations in Zapier via an intuitive series of triggers and tasks, where the trigger is an action in the source system that will prompt Zapier to send data to Salsa Engage. A task is an action to take in the destination system. In the above examples, a new survey submission in Survey Monkey would be the trigger and creating the supporter in Engage would be the Task.

Is There a Cost for Using Zapier?

This depends on your needs. Zapier has several plan levels, including a free plan. If your needs can be met by the free plan, then there is no cost to using the service. For pricing information, see the Zapier Plans page.

In the pricing section, you will see the terminology, "Zap" and "Task":

Connecting two apps together is called a Zap. Zapier lives in the middle, monitoring your triggers, and initiating actions in whatever workflow you establish. For example, you can set up an integration between WooCommerce and Engage, so that when an e-commerce purchase is made in WooCommerce, a supporter and donation are created in Engage.
A Task is when data is moved by Zapier from the system of origin and the target system. For example, if I receive five purchases in WooCommerce in a week, it would take up 5 tasks for that data to be moved into Engage.

What Apps Participate With Zapier?

Zapier has over 1,000 apps that participate--including Salsa Engage. Check out Zapier's full list of participating applications.

What Data Can Zapier Send to Engage?

The Zapier/Engage integration continues to evolve. Currently, the following tasks can be performed in Engage:

Action Name	What does it do	Notes
Create or Update Supporter	Adds new Supporters or Updates existing Supporters	Requires mapping Email, Supporter ID, or External ID from the source app to deduplicate correctly
Create or Update Transactions	Adds or Updates Donations	Donations collected elsewhere will come over donations and be reflected in associated metrics in Engage.
Create or Update Donation and Supporter	Combines the first two into one	Can be used by “Free” plans to add Supporters and Donations in a single step.
Add Supporter to Group	Adds a Supporter to a Static Group	Requires Supporter ID from either “Create or Update Supporter” or “Create or Update Donation and Supporter”.

When Zapier sends this data to Engage, Engage will use its normal logic for recognizing if a person is being added or updated. For example, if the supporter email is already in Engage, Engage will update that record. If the supporter email is not already in Engage, a new record will be made.

Note: Currently, Engage only receives data via Zapier.

How Do I Get Started?

Check out our Getting Started in Zapier article.

How Can I Contact Zapier Support?

Zapier does not have a public-facing helpline. For assistance, see the following pages: