How to use Beamer with Zapier? integration

In Beamer we take integrations seriously. We know that users interact daily with too many apps, so connecting their workflow can save them hours of tedious repetition and hard work. In order to achieve that, Beamer has integrations with Intercom, Segment, Webhooks, WordPress, and with a host of automation tools like Pabbly, Integrately, SyncSpider, and Integromat.

But this post is about Zapier, a tool that allows you to connect Beamer with more than 5,000 apps in a matter of minutes. In this tutorial I’ll explain you what is Zapier, how to connect it with Beamer, and how to create integrations between Beamer and other apps. And we’ll also help you start with some interesting things that Beamer can do with Zapier to connect with apps in a way you may not have imagined.

The most popular combinations of Beamer with other apps on the Zapier platform are:

• Create Twitter posts for new posts in Beamer
• Share new Beamer posts on LinkedIn as updates.
• Create Beamer posts from new WordPress posts.
• Create new Mailchimp campaigns for new Beamer posts.
• Add new Beamer posts to your Buffer queue.
• Create Beamer posts from new tweets in Twitter.
• Post new Beamer posts to your Facebook Page.
• Create Beamer posts from new content on Instagram.
• Create Facebook Page posts of new posts in Beamer.

How to integrate Beamer and more than 5,000 apps?

What is Zapier?

Zapier is an automation tool that connects 5,000+ apps and allows you to set up trigger conditions to generate automated actions in response. Think of Zapier as a machine that follows this instruction “if A happens, then do B”.

Zaps.

An automated workflow that includes a trigger and at least one action in response. This condition/effect automation process is called a “zap” in Zapier’s lingo.

You can create multiple zaps with different apps. To check a full list of your zaps (active or inactive) go to your Zapier account and click on Zaps in the sidebar.

Trigger.

This is the event that needs to take place in order to start the automated process. When you set a trigger you’ll need to:

1. Choose the app you want to connect and the event that will trigger the automation process. Zapier offers more than 5,000 apps to choose from.
2. Choose an account from the selected app if you have multiple accounts.
3. Set up other required trigger information. Some apps and events will ask you for extra details.
4. Test your trigger. Zapier will use either real data or procedurally generated data to test your trigger in order to make sure it can be ready when a trigger happens.

Actions.

This is the action (or actions) that will take place if the selected event is triggered. Generally you’ll only need to use a single action (if A, then B) but there are more complex automation workflows that you can build:

• Multiple chained actions – if A, then B, and then C.
• Use Zapier native Filter action – if A and B, then C.
• Use Zapier native Path action – if A and X, then B, but if A and Y, then C.
• Zapier offers even more complex and premium actions that you can combine.

To set up an action you’ll generally will need to:

1. Choose the app you want to connect and the event that will occur when the trigger happens.
2. Choose an account from the selected app if you have multiple accounts.
3. Set up your action by filling in the details. Depending on the action, different options will be offered.
4. Test your action. Zapier will use either real data or procedurally generated data to test your action. You can skip this step but we recommend that you follow the testing instructions and make sure your zap will work properly.
5. Publish your zap to activate.

How to connect Beamer with Zapier?

Connecting Beamer with Zapier is easy. In this section I’ll teach you how to connect your apps (and Beamer) with Zapier and what Beamer can do through Zapier.

Connect your app with Zapier.

Before you start working with Zapier, make sure you have your apps connected (you can do it later but this will make it easier). If you want to use Beamer with Zapier follow these steps:

1. Go to your Zapier account and click on My Apps and then on + Add connection.
2. Look for the app you want to connect to your Zapier account. For example look for Beamer and click on it when it appears in the dropdown.
   
3. An emerging window will appear. Just allow the connection. This will grant Zapier permission to interact with your connected app.

Repeat this process with each app you want to connect using Zapier. Make sure Beamer is one of those apps, of course!

Depending on the app you try to connect, you’ll be asked for different types of authentication to allow Zapier to access your account (most apps will require you to be logged in but others may also require verification emails, verification codes, API keys, access tokens or other types of authentication).

Beamer triggers.

What triggers can Beamer use in Zapier? There are lots of actions that can be used to start an automated process. Beamer allows the following:

• New Post. This triggers when a new post is created in your Beamer account.
• New Reaction. This triggers when a user leaves a reaction in a Beamer post.
• New Comment. This triggers when a user leaves a comment in a Beamer post. 
• New Feature Request. This triggers whenever a feature request is created. 
• New Feature Request Comment. This triggers when a user leaves a comment in your roadmap or feature requests feed.
• New Feature Request Vote. This triggers when a user votes on a feature request.
• New NPS Response. This triggers when a user leaves a response in your NPS widget.

To use the New Feature Request, New Feature Request Comment and New Feature Request Vote triggers, you’ll need to have the Beamer Feature Request / Roadmap feature enabled. To use the New NPS Response trigger you’ll need to have the Beamer NPS enabled.

Beamer action.

Beamer only has one action: Create Post. This will allow you to automatically create new Beamer posts in response to all sorts of app interactions. That means that Zapier will listen to an interaction in the selected app (like a new video uploaded to a platform, a new campaign in your newsletter or a new post in your blog or social media platform)

You can customize the resulting posts with multiple options:

• Title (required)
• Content (required)
• Category
• Publish Settings (published or draft)
• Link URL
• Link Text
• Link Settings (open in the same or new tab)
• Publication Date
• Expiration Date
• Show in Widget (show or hide)
• Show in Standalone (show or hide)
• Boosted Announcement Settings (Top bar, Popup, Snippet or Tooltip)
• Language
• Segmentation Filter
• Segmentation User ID
• Feedback Settings (enable or disable)
• Reactions Settings (enable or disable)
• Social Share Settings (enable or disable)
• Push Notification Settings (enable or disable)
• Author’s Email Address

Automation examples.

Now that you know how to work with Zapier and what Beamer can do with the automation platform, we can try some interesting examples:

Automated Sharing.

If you have multiple social media platforms you may be tired of scheduling for each of them separately, or even worse, reposting manually one by one. Automated posting means that whenever you publish a new post in your Beamer feed, it will be automatically posted in your other platforms too.

In the following example we’ll create a Twitter tweet whenever we publish a new Beamer post. You can do the same for any social media platform you use (like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram or others).

1. Go to your Zapier dashboard and click on + Create a Zap. This will open the Zapier zap editor.
2. As the trigger, look for Beamer in the search bar and click on it when it appears.
   
3. As the trigger event, select New Post in the dropdown. Then click Continue.
   
4. Choose a Beamer account from the dropdown. You’ll only be able to pick between the accounts you already have connected. You can connect multiple accounts if you have them. There are links in this step to connect them if you haven’t done that already. Click Continue.
5. Test your trigger to make sure it works properly. Click on Test the trigger to allow Zapier to use sample data to test your zap. You can skip this step if you’re feeling lucky but we recommend you test everything before publishing.
6. In the action panel look for Twitter. Select Create Tweet (or the equivalent in other social media platforms).
   
7. Select a Twitter account. Click Continue.
8. Craft a tweet (or post) template using the trigger post data.
   
9. Test your zap again!
   
10. Check your Twitter account to see if the test worked, then delete that test message.
11. If your test is successful go back to Zapier and click Next.
12. Then click on Turn on Zap or Publish Zap to make it official. Your zap will be activated!

You can do the same with other social media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. This way you’ll only need to publish a new post in your Beamer account and wham! Your post will be shared with all your social media platforms automatically. You can also chain multiple platforms in the same zap to save the hassle of going one by one.

Post to Beamer.

In this example we’ll go the other way around. Instead of publishing from Beamer to other apps, we’ll go from an app to Beamer. I’ll use YouTube as an example but you can do the same for any other app that produces content that can be converted into a Beamer post.

1. Go to your Zapier dashboard and click on + Create a Zap. This will open the Zapier zap editor.
2. As the trigger, look for YouTube in the search bar and click on it when it appears.
3. As the trigger event, select New Video in Channel in the dropdown. This means that whenever a new video is uploaded to the selected channel the trigger will activate. You can choose other triggers like (New Video in Playlist, New Video (by username) or New Video by Search). Then click Continue.
   
   
4. Choose a YouTube account from the dropdown and then select a channel.
5. Test your trigger! Follow the testing instructions.
6. In the action panel select Beamer as the app and Create Post as the event.
   
7. Choose a Beamer account.
8. Craft a Beamer post template using the data provided by YouTube. Fill the other fields and options too.
   
9. Test your zap! If your test is successful go back to Zapier and click Next.
10. Click on Turn on Zap or Publish Zap to activate.

This workflow will allow you to share your YouTube videos as Beamer posts automatically, but you can do the same with any content you create on all sorts of platforms.

Beamer and Slack.

Slack is a very popular internal communication tool where teams can meet, chat and organize their work inside the company. You can use Zapier to send updates from Beamer to Slack following the steps of the Automated Sharing section but you can send more than just posts!

In the following example, we’ll use Beamer’s Feature Request / Roadmaps feature to tell our dev team that a user has requested a new feature. That way, the dev team can assess if the suggested feature must be added to the roadmap or not.

1. Go to your Zapier dashboard and click on + Create a Zap.
2. Select Beamer as the trigger app, and New Feature Request in the event dropdown.
   
3. Choose a Beamer account from the dropdown (if you have multiple accounts). Then click Continue.
4. Test your trigger!
5. In the action panel select Slack as the target app.
6. Choose Send Channel Message (or Send Direct Message) from the event dropdown. Then click Continue.
   
7. Select a Slack account and pick a Slack channel.
8. In Message Text, craft your message template. You can use the data provided by Beamer to add dynamic fields that will change depending on the event. You can use the user name, the content of the request and a whole list of other possible inputs.
   For example we will use:
   [User first name] [User last name] (ID[User ID] - [User email]) requested the following feature "[Title]” at [Date]. [Permalink]
   
9. You can choose if the message will be sent by a bot or as you as an user. You can also pick the bot’s identity by choosing a name, a picture and other publishing options like if the message will be a broadcast (this is a Slack term that means that the message alerts everybody in the channel).
10. Test your action by following the testing instructions or skip this step.
11. Click on Publish Zap to publish.
12. From now on, whenever you get a feature request, you’ll get a message like the following in the desired Slack channel:John Doe (ID0000000 - jdoe@getbeamer.com) requested the following feature "Demo post” at 2022-05-01T00:00:00Z. https://app.get…feature-request

In this example, when a user sends a feature request with the form in your Beamer public feature request page (this is ours if you want to know how our feature requests work) your team will get notified.

You can use the same method (app: Slack; action: Send Channel Message / Send Direct Message) to send other alerts triggered by user interactions with beamer, for example:

• Send a Slack message to your user outreach channel if a user leaves a low or high score in your NPS survey – trigger event: ​​New NPS Response.
• Send a Slack message to your marketing channel if a visitor leaves feedback (like comments or reactions) in your Beamer changelog – trigger event: New Comment / New Reaction / New Feature Request Comment.
• Send a Slack direct message to your community manager each time a new Beamer post is published – trigger: New Post.

Beamer and Mailchimp.

Mailchimp is one of the top email marketing tools out there. There are many ways in which you can make Beamer interact with Mailchimp using Zapier:

• You can send a campaign whenever a new Beamer post is published by picking Beamer > New Post as trigger, and MailChimp > Send Campaign as the action.
• You can add subscribers to your Mailchimp account by using email addresses provided by your Beamer users. Pick Beamer > New Comment or Beamer > New NPS Response as trigger, and Mailchimp > Add/Update Subscriber as the action.
• You can add tags to promoters and detractors by using NPS survey scores and sending it to Mailchimp like in the next example.

To add a tag to a detractor or promoter in Mailchimp (tags help you organize and target users):

1. Go to your Zapier dashboard and click on + Create a Zap.
2. Select Beamer as the trigger app, and New NPS response as the event.
3. Choose a Beamer account and click Continue.
   
4. Test your trigger! It’s important to know that the trigger works.
5. Pick Filter by Zapier as the action app. Then click Continue.
6. Setup your filter. For example, pick the Score value and the (Number) Greater than operator. Pick a number to make the cut. This will check if the trigger is activated and only continue if the NPS score provided by the user is in a desired range. Remember that Beamer NPS can work with 1 to 10, 1 to 5 or emoji-based scores.
   
7. Click on the (add_circle) button to create an additional action that will occur only if the filter’s conditions are met.
8. Select Mailchimp as your app and Add subscriber to tag as the event. Click Continue.
9. Choose your Mailchimp account.
10. Add a tag like “promoter”, “detractor” or “loyal user” and use the email provided by Beamer NPS as the address.
11. Finish your zap.
12. Each time a user sends an NPS score in the range, it will be added to the selected tag in your Mailchimp account.
13. You can create a separate zap for different tags based on the NPS survey score or use the Path action in the middle of your trigger and action to create multiple paths.
    

Beamer and WordPress.

Beamer has a long history with WordPress. One of our first integrations was our WordPress official plugin that will easily help you to install Beamer in your WordPress site in just a few clicks. But even though the plugin already includes Beamer API compatibility that allows you to publish your WordPress posts directly to your Beamer feed, maybe you are already using Zapier, you don’t want to care about API keys, or you want to share your posts the other way around (you know, Beamer to WordPress).

If you want to share your WordPress posts in Beamer automatically, just choose as trigger WordPress > New Post, and as action Beamer > Create Post.

And if you want to go the other way and share your Beamer updates as WordPress posts, pick Beamer > New Post as trigger, and WordPress > Create Post as the action.

Troubleshooting.

Zapier provides multiple chances to test your zaps and make sure that they’ll work just as you envisioned, but sometimes things can go wrong. If you have any issues, make sure to take into account the following tips:

How to know if my zaps are working?

To make sure that your zap is active:

1. Go to your Zapier dashboard and click on Zaps.
2. Make sure the switches on the right of each zap are turned on, in the right position and colored green (a tooltip with the phrase “Zap is enabled” should appear when you hover over them.
3. If the switch is not on, click on it to activate.

How to turn off a zap?

To stop a zap from working you can:

1. Go to your Zapier dashboard and click on Zaps.
2. Find the zap you want to deactivate.
3. Click on the switch at the right of the zap.
4. The switch should now be turned off (on the left position and colored gray).
5. Your zap is off and will stop working.
6. If you want to delete a zap, just click on the more_horiz icon on the right and select the Delete (delete) option. You can also edit zaps instead of deleting them if what you’re looking for is to tweak the triggers or results.

Why do I have an API error?

Beamer is authenticated with Zapier with OAuth so you’ll don’t need to bother with API keys. Just connect your Beamer app with Zapier following the steps on this tutorial and voilà! But if while you test your zaps you get API errors, make sure you have the proper permissions enabled in your Beamer account.

To check that:

1. Go to your Beamer dashboard.
2. Then go to Settings (settings) and then API (cloud).
3. Look for the Zapier API key and click on the edit icon (edit) to look at the permissions.
   
   
4. Make sure the permissions that you need are enabled. For example, to interact with NPS you’ll need the NPS permissions enabled.
5. Make sure to save your changes.