In regards to Zapier.com - Joomla! friendly? Not yet. READ!!

[xcrazymike]

I was browsing the web looking for solutions to be as organized and efficient as possible for a new business I'm planning, when I stumbled upon Zapier.com and it blew me away.

but then I was really depressed. lol.. because I totally just thought I had found the best solution "ever, and it is, but just not for Joomla!, yet.

I suppose what I'm wanting to do is inform the Joomla! community about a product from Zapier.com that would bring all our business needs together..

Syncing data on the web has always been a pain. Either you did it by hand or you buckled down and built it yourself with an API. If you weren't technical you had few places to turn for help.

That's why we built Zapier.

Zapier is for busy people who know their time is better spent selling, marketing, or coding. Instead of wasting valuable time coming up with complicated systems - you can use Zapier to sync the web services you and your team are already using on a daily basis.

That's quoted from Zapiers 'About Us' page. They're talking about API's, linking well established services together - easily.

I honestly wish I had come across this company long ago.

Here's 2 emails I received when inquiring about Joomla! integration from zapier.com

Hey Mike,


We don't have support for Joomla quite yet, but it is on the list for development. We'll be sure to post to our updates blog when we do have support for it though, so stay tuned there for more news. Let us know if you have any other questions!

Hey Michael,

I'm afraid that there's a variety of factors at play, so I don't have a firm timeframe to share for Joomla's readiness. If that's something you(or the Joomla community ) would find great benefit in having right away, check out our developer platform. There anyone can put together an integration to add to Zapier. Happy to help with any other questions, so let us know if we can add more clarity.

The issue is:
I don't think the Joomla! community knows about what zapier can do for us who love to only use Joomla! as their platform for creating exquisite websites!

I'm hoping somehow, perhaps with some friendly Joomla! support we can get these guys to make Joomla! integration a priority. Or someone with some skill put together a solution for us!




I appreciate anyone who reads this and helps spread the word!

Regards,
Mike

[bewebdev]

Mike

Im aware of what zappier is, and im sure some of the community are also aware, can you advise though how you would want this integrated with zappier, as I understand it zappier acts as an automated tool to create new content, tasks etc. A bridge if you like.

Can you confirm what you are looking to achieve? whats your idea? what would you want Joomla to link too?

regards

@bewebdev ^AW

[xcrazymike]

Hey bewebdev,

I stumbled upon zapier.com/zapbook/formstack/joomla/ while searching google for "joomla formstack" and figured I found a solution for a bridge, only to realize they advertise it works but it's not in the works yet.

My goal, I think, was I wanted to use my form data from formstack to apply the filled out fields to joomla, so as to make them 'registered' I suppose.

I wanted to build the form, collect the data, and depending on which form was filled out (registration? etc) it could store the information in joomlas DB

If I'm not making much sense, I apologize as I am tired! Since my 1st post earlier, I had kept brain storming and I think I was starting to realize I may not even need integration if I use other available tools, but I wanted to keep Joomla in the mix and currently I'm looking at using these services to stay in a good flow:

Joomla
Formstack
Fresh Books
Google (business tools)

If you have any suggestions for me, I'd much appreciate your kindness

Regards,
Mike

[bewebdev]

Mike

I havent used formstack as we favour Breezing forms as our form tool of choice for Joomla, it integrates with MailChimp, and Google forms (which may be of use to you).

Anyway we use Joomla day to day, and im always looking for ways to simplify our workflow. I did look at zappier for our business but as it currently only creates new tasks and not update existing ones (which would mean we would have to go into the zapps individually to update them which kind of removes the need for us, in our particular operation, so it wasn't for us, not yet anyway.

Looking at what you are looking to do, it it the ease of creating forms in formstack that made you use that service?, Im just trying to work out why you use the process you do so we can recommend a alternative approach? Like you say there are so many different ways to achieve what you want, then when it comes round to it, some may look simple but not quite what your looking for and some are nearly there and some dont just work yet, in-between all these there is usually a answer, its finding it thats the difficult bit. If you head didn't hurt before it probably does now...

regards

@bewebdev ^AW

[bryanhelmig]

Hello @bewebdev and @xcrazymike! My name is Bryan, I am a co-founder of Zapier and I just happened to catch this thread.

First of all, I'm a huge fan of Joomla! In fact, one of my first forays into the web was via Joomla! on my guitar learning site Between The Licks, I am sure it still exists if you anyone cares to Google it. I believe it was Joomla! 1.5... so a little old school. :-) So a big thanks to the community at large!

Anyways, if you'll humor me while I explain what Zapier does: we help users connect web apps together. We do this via APIs when available, but we also commonly do this at the SQL and plugin level for open source web applications (we're working with a few other open source platforms now as well).

The basic gist is, if there was a Zapier "module" for Joomla!, it would allow anyone to "zap" user registrations, forum posts, comments and any data type from Joomla! into over 150+ different services (think Zoho, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Trello, etc...). We could also go the other way around and send data from those 150+ services into Joomla!.

So, I suppose I'm just here to be open up a channel of communication between us and the Joomla! community. If this is something they would like, we'd love to chat with more folks about the possibility. It would be great to hear what you could use it for!

Reply here, or email us at contact[@]zapier[.]com.