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- [Don] Hi, this is Don McAllister,
and welcome to another edition of ScreenCastsOnline.
This week I'm going to cover a web service
that I use extensively with ScreenCastsOnline
to both automate procedures and integrate applications,
and that's a service called Zapier.
Zapier uses workflows called Zaps
to provide automation and integration
between many thousands of applications.
You can create Zaps from scratch
or use pre-defined templates to build your Zaps
allowing you to get up to speed very quickly.
Zapier has both a free plan,
allowing you to create up to five Zaps,
as well as monthly and annual plans
to allow for many more Zaps and additional functionality.
With this episode, I'm going to show you some of the
basic functionality you can set up with Zapier
using Zap templates.
I'll also demonstrate building some Zaps from scratch,
and I'll also show you some of the Zaps we use
at ScreenCastsOnline to automate some of our workflow.
The aim of this episode is as always
not to cover the service in depth,
but to give you an introduction
and enough information to get started,
along with hopefully giving you some ideas
on how you might use Zapier integrations at home
or in your business.
So, let's get started with Zapier.
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So this is Zapier.
It's over at Zapier.com.
I have got an account, but I'm going to sign up
for a new account, a demo account,
so I can demonstrate some things to you.
As I mentioned, there is a free account,
and you can use that forever.
You can create up to five Zaps.
But when you do sign up for the free account,
you do get a 14-day free trial
for some of the more advanced features.
Perhaps we might touch on some of those,
but I'll stick probably with
just the basic features for now.
Before I do sign up though with a demo account,
let's take a quick look at the website.
If I just scroll down,
so integrate, automate, and innovate.
So this really is basically aimed at any,
pretty much any web service.
And you'll find that most popular web services
have Zapier integration.
And it just allows you to create triggers in one application
that will then create an action
and then create another action in another application.
So this is just giving you some examples.
So for instance, if I get a new email in Gmail,
I can then copy the attachment from Gmail to Dropbox,
and that in turn, can alert me in Slack
about the new Dropbox file.
There are over 1000 apps.
You can search for the various apps.
But we'll see a matrix of the various apps when we go in.
Anyone can build workflows with a few clicks.
So this is what a typical workflow looks like.
It's very easy, sort of template driven,
very simple to set up.
Although, it is a little bit intimidating to begin with,
which is why you might want to follow the screencast.
And there down at the bottom.
There are built-in apps as well.
So handling mail, and phone calls, and RSS feeds,
these are all built into Zapier.
These are the plans, free forever or premium plans.
Let's go ahead and start a 14-day free trial.
To do that I'll just go back up to the top,
put in my details,
and with my details entered, I will just say Sign Up.
I'm not a robot.
I hate these things,
so let me just go ahead and click on this Captcha.
And we are in.
So I'll save the password.
I see I've got an email.
So I probably need to access the email to confirm.
Company name, we'll go with ScreenCastsOnline.
Of course, you don't need to have a company.
You can use it in a personal basis.
Choose a role.
So Business Owner and Continue.
So this first screen allows you to have a look at
some of the apps that are covered.
So you'll see here there's over 1000 apps.
We can use the search panel at the top.
So if I wanted to find, let's say Podio,
which is one of the other tools I use.
There we go, there's Podio.
I can just select that.
I can clear this from here.
I can scroll as well.
There's a scroll bar down the side.
So I can scroll to see some of them.
Let's just have a look at some of them slowly.
So Instagram, Evernote, Dropbox.
So I'm, a big Dropbox user, so I'll select that.
OmniFocus, I use OmniFocus a lot.
I use MailChimp as well.
There are some premium applications.
For instance, there is integration with PayPal.
And we've also got LinkedIn, Slack.
Let's go ahead with Slack.
You don't have to select five.
You can select as many as you want.
There's just one more I want to do,
which is, there we go, Airtable.
But just go through this list.
Hundreds and hundreds, in fact,
thousands of different applications you can select.
You can select these later on as well.
This is really just for it to generate some
personal recommendations when we go in.
You can also get tips in your inbox.
I'll leave that off for now.
We'll say, finish that up.
And we're now in.
That's just a quick preview
of one of this week's Apple-related tutorials
from ScreenCastsOnline.
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You can stream and download all of our videos
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using the Members Only ScreenCastsOnline Apple TV app.
Membership also includes a complementary subscription
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visit ScreenCastsOnline.com today
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