How Zapier Can Automate Your Inbox and Save You Time

How Zapier Can Automate Your Inbox and Save You Time

We’ve already looked at how IFTTT can be used to automate your life, so let’s look at another web application that has impressive powers of automation, these ones generally more suited to workplace functions — including email. I’m talking about Zapier.

Zapier describes itself as a glue that holds more than 1,000 different web applications together. The service creates zaps, which are workflows that connect your apps and allow for the background automation of different tasks. Overall, Zapier also allows for more fine-tuning, really allowing you to automate things in the ways that work best for you, your professional needs, and your workflow.

“Zapier is a really incredible app. It helps you easily connect up the apps you use without needing to write a single line of code,” said Siobhan O’Rorke, marketing manager at Zenkit.

About a thousand apps are currently supported by Zapier, including popular ones like Gmail, MailChimp, and Outlook 365.

This extra functionality does come with a price, one that varies depending on how many zaps you have and how often you deploy them. But when the no-cost IFTTT can’t do what you want, Zapier is worth turning to — especially when you need to automate not a single task but an entire process.

You can use zaps to automate your web-based email in a variety of different, and helpful, ways. Set up one that saves every Gmail attachment you receive in Dropbox, for example. Here are some favorite ways to automate an email with Zapier, from professionals who use the application to do exactly that.

Optimize Your Email Search

Gmail’s built-in search functions are pretty good, but you can use Zapier to amp that up. “When creating a zap, you can ask Zapier to look for emails that match a search or have a certain label applied. This means that you can create a rule to find pretty much any email,” O’Rorke said. Once you’ve found those emails, you can further build out the workflow to actually do something with them. For example, at Zenkit O’Rorke labels bug reports with “Bug” in Gmail, then uses Zapier to find those emails and import them to the development team. Zapier supports Zenkit, so she’s able to do this within her own company’s application.

Another way to use search in your email to stay productive is to set up a zap that will send all emails that match a specific search term — say, everything from your boss — to your Slack channel, O’Rorke said, allowing you to balance between staying on top of important messages  and not getting sucked into your inbox.

Follow Up On Leads

“I love Zapier especially for inbound marketing and lead follow-ups,” said Jonathan Alonso, a marketer with CNCMachines.net. He has a zap set up that alerts him in Slack, on his smartwatch, and on his phone when a new lead fills out the online contact form. Zapier then sends that person an automated follow-up email with the company’s most common FAQs, and a sales representative can follow up with them directly (and quickly), Alonso said.

Back Up Information

Worry about accidentally deleting an important email attachment on your path to Inbox Zero? O’Rorke suggests setting up a zap that will automatically save all email attachments to a cloud service like Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive, creating a backup. Further, build out that zap by having Zapier then send a notification to your Slack that you have a new file to review.

Zapier will suggest many helpful zaps for each application, but you can also completely customize them.

You can, of course, also use Zapier to back up personal emails. “I like to star emails from loved ones and have Zapier send the email text and attachments over to an Evernote notebook. This way, they’re all organized and the images are displayed beautifully,” O’Rorke said.

Work With Your CRM

Zapier works with different CRMs, allowing you to automate between them and your email service. For example, you can have emails sent to your sales account sent right to your CRM if they aren’t already, or use a zap to track those sent to the wrong place via a search that picks them up and pushes them along to the CRM, O’Rorke said.

These are just a few of the zaps that can help optimize your email. Because Zapier is so customizable, the ways you can make it work for your work and personal organizational needs vary as much as those needs may.

Each supported app has a dedicated Zapier page that outlines the ways that the service can work with the application. Integrations with Gmail includes 100 different zaps: save emails that match a particular search term to a Google spreadsheet, for example, or create tasks in Wunderlist from starred emails. With MailChimp, you can create list subscribers from Typeform entries or add your new Google contacts to your MailChimp list. For Office 365, you can create new Trello cards from Outlook emails or add your Office 365 contacts to Google, and functionality for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.com is on the way.

However, the zaps provided for easy addition on the Zapier website are just the tip of the iceberg. Others can be customized once you spend some time familiarizing yourself with Zapier and how it functions. The service offers an extensive array of advice and tutorials online, so start reading and experimenting and soon you can build your own zaps that fit your needs, and automate your inbox, exactly to your specifications.

Windows 10 Features I'm Still Looking For

Over the last three years, Microsoft has invested a lot of time and effort into Windows 10 and over that time they have also chosen to deprecate or remove multiple elements of the OS. You can see a summary of the documented history for the last three feature updates at the links below:

• Windows 10 Creators Update – Version 1703
• Windows 10 Fall Creators Update – Version 1709
• Windows 10 April 2018 Update – Version 1803

For all that’s been added or enhanced in Windows 10, I think there are still some enhancements that are missing from Windows 10 — and some of those elements used to be available to us.

Here is my current list of what I still would like to see added to Windows 10.

Live Tiles on the Desktop

Remember the widgets we used to be able to install on the Windows 7 desktop to provide is live/updated data on various system services? Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to place these Live Tiles on the desktop like those old widgets? Two benefits would be the ability to see at a glance what might be happening with that app displayed on the Live Tile plus it is a handy shortcut for opening the app.

True, in Windows 10, some of that functionality was moved to Live Tiles, but they are hidden behind a start button that then displays the Start Menu and those Live Tiles. At this point, you can now see the latest information from your apps that support the Live Tile on Windows 10.

Windows Update Deferral for Windows 10 Home Users

I like the fact that Microsoft has made updates mandatory in Windows 10. This is good from a safety and security perspective because that system is less likely to be exploited by malware, ransomware or other threats that users could encounter.

However, in Windows 10 Pro, Microsoft has settled down on a system that allows the end user to defer updates for a specific period. For users not attached to any type of domain network, this is seven days. Once that timeframe is over, the Windows 10 Pro users must check for and install any pending Windows Update before entering another update deferment period.

In the past, I have always recommended that if you want the ability to defer updates like this then you should get Windows 10 Pro to get that ability. Well, I think there is some value in introducing a feature like this for Windows 10 Home users. It would give them the ability to keep their system in a status quo situation for this period of time and not be interrupted or concerned with updates. This is handy for attending conferences or other events where you need your system up and running. Then, once that event or trip is over and you are back home, check Windows Update to be fully updated and protected. Then if needed, you can enter another period of deferred updates.

This allows everyone to get the best of both worlds and stay updated against any new and emerging threats. Advanced users would be able to easily use this feature and for most everyday home users they would use the default mandatory update process.

Windows 10 Driver Update Deferrals

In past versions of Windows, many hardware and peripheral drivers were delivered via Windows Update. In Windows 10, that is becoming even more prevalent. As many of you know, driver updates sometimes go awry and can negatively impact a system. My above recommendation about deferring Windows Update would help with this but I think a separate option to specifically defer hardware driver updates could be very useful.

Once again, the target audience is advanced users who understand things like driver updates and know what works for their system or not. If you are on Windows 10 Pro, there are Group Policy options to block updates for certain hardware but that is not available to Windows 10 Home users. So an option similar to the Windows Update deferment above would be very welcomed for many users while those who do not need to worry about it would get their updates like normal.

Parental Controls in Windows Settings

Windows 8/8.1 had a robust set of parental controls built directly into the operating system, but that capability has been moved to the Web under a user’s Microsoft Account for management. There are shortcut links in the current Windows Settings app in Windows 10 but those take you to the web for further action.

While the parental controls on the Microsoft Account website and family options are still very robust, many users miss the options to get an alert and extend a child accounts time online or permission to access a website directly on the device by providing their parental account password.

I believe if these features were directly on the system, many more parents might engage them and use those controls to create a more managed experience for their children. There are many who grant full permission to their children and do not monitor their activity, but many want to assist and help their children learn good computing, web browsing habits and balance this with other activities away from the computer.

Notifications Deconfliction

Over the last couple of years, this has gotten much better, but it still needs work. Deconflicting notifications across multiple devices (i.e. your usual array of desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones) is very necessary to help with notification overload.

Microsoft has provided APIs to developers that can be used to catch-up their app on other instances of Windows 10 as a user moves from one device to another already. Getting there from a cross-platform perspective from say Android or iOS to Windows 10 might be a little more challenging.

Who among you have not been sitting at your Windows 10 computer and have a Skype call or other app pop notifications across all your devices at once. In some instances, a device or two might even continue with the alerts despite dealing with it on another one.

I imagine this would be a tough one to solve because it crosses so many device/software boundaries.

Tablet Mode

Yes, Windows 10 already has a tablet mode. But if you ever used Windows 8/8.1 you know that a better tablet mode existed prior to the Windows 10 implementation. Unfortunately, that was lost as the Windows team attempted to bring back Windows 7 features that were abandoned with the addition of a full-screen Start Menu.

The tablet mode in Windows 10 comes across very much like the touch mode that was first added to Windows 7 several years ago. Larger touch targets in some cases but nothing that really changed or made the device stand out in tablet mode.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been testing a Surface Pro (2017) and while I have a Type Cover for it, I am primarily using it as a tablet along with the Surface Pen. I realized today that I was not switching the device into tablet mode at all – not once in fact – and that says it all about the state of tablet mode on Windows 10.

What needs to happen here is a return to the elements of tablet mode in Windows 8/8.1 that made it work so well. That includes full-screen apps/software by default, a better aligned Start Screen for a tiled layout and not just a full-screen version of your current Start Menu. Right now, tiles get all wonky when moving between the normal Start Menu and what is displayed in tablet mode. Don’t even mention what happens when you rotate to your device – Windows 8/8.1 however, handled these shifts quite gracefully.

This is another one that would require a lot of work, but I sure would like to see it giving some attention. Even incremental improvements would be better than the status quo.

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So what features or enhancements would you like to see in a future feature update for Windows 10? Let me know and we might collate some of them and share the responses in an upcoming newsletter.