Zap Components
Before you create a Zap, you must understand the business requirements to determine the type of integration required between the platforms. Based on your understanding, you must create Zaps for specific tasks to facilitate the integration.
A Zap includes the following components:
NOTE: CloudBlue Commerce Zap App offers templates with prebuilt triggers, actions, searches, and paths for an integration scenario. Refer to CloudBlue Commerce Integration Details.
Triggers
A trigger helps capture an event that occurs in the source platform. It specifies how a platform user can initiate automated workflows whenever they perform a task in their application,. For example, automated workflows may be initiated in the source application when the user performs tasks, such as, creates new emails, sends new messages, or adds new blog posts and form entries. Each event must have a corresponding trigger configured in the Zap to kick-start the relevant workflow.
For example,
- New Customer: Triggers when a customer is created in CloudBlue Commerce.
- Updated Customer: Triggers when a customer information is updated in CloudBlue Commerce.
Triggers are configured in the source app. To configure a trigger in a Zap, select the source app and specify the event that occurs in that platform. The Zap regularly tracks the application to search for the matching event you specify in the configuration. Whenever that event occurs, the corresponding Zap runs and captures the new or updated data to initiate the workflow.
For more information about configuring triggers, refer to Set up your Zap trigger.
Actions
Actions specify the corresponding tasks to be performed in the target platform when an event occurs in the source platform and the respective trigger sets off.
Alternatively, actions can also be configured to use the filter functionality to search and display only filtered results required by the user. For a single trigger, you can add multiple actions that are displayed in the sequence in which they are added. However, to prevent data loss, the action steps are not allowed to delete data.
For example,
- Create Customer: This action creates a customer account and a user under it with administrator privileges in CloudBlue Commerce.
- Update Customer: This action updates a customer account in CloudBlue Commerce.
Actions are configured in the target app. To configure an action in a Zap, select the target app and specify the action that should occur in that app when a trigger sets off in the source app.
For more information about configuring actions, refer to Set up your Zap action.
Searches
Search action steps enable Zaps to find data in apps based on specific search conditions. After you have added an action, you can further configure the action to specify relevant conditions to run the action. The action is executed only if the specified conditions are fulfilled.
To configure a search action, add a new action, select the Filter option from the list, and then provide the filter setup details. Filter setup includes the following parameters:
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The field name, which specifies the action to be performed when the trigger sets off.
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The condition under which the action is performed, such as (Text) Contains, (Text) Exact matches, (Number) Greater than, and so on.
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The type of values to be considered while searching.
Optionally, you can also map the searches with the create action functionality to add new data in CloudBlue Commerce if the search returns no results. Searches find existing data in the source app and fill in gaps in CloudBlue Commerce if required.
For example,
- Search Customer Record: Searches customer records in CloudBlue Commerce. Allows filtering the records with the account ID and/or the external system ID. If no filter is passed, the last created customer record is returned.
- Search Subscription: Searches subscriptions in CloudBlue Commerce. Allows filtering the records with the CloudBlue Commerce order number and/or the external system order ID. If no filter is passed, the last created subscription record is returned.
In platform integration, search actions provide the following benefits to manage data:
- Prevents users from adding duplicate data, thus reducing the possibility of errors in the workflow.
- Enables users to search for item details that can be further used in the subsequent steps.
- Enables Zaps to search for item details from an app and then use the data in the next steps to further process the workflow.
For more information about configuring search filters, refer to Add conditions to Zaps with filters.
Paths
The Zapier configuration for platform integration depends on your business requirement. At times, configuring simplistic Zaps with a single pair of trigger and action may not fulfil your business needs. Therefore, you must create a more complicated workflow based on specific conditions to execute multiple actions for the corresponding trigger.
Paths are advanced workflows that are created to run different actions based on defined conditions. Paths are created based on the if-then logic, where the required action is only executed if a specific condition is fulfilled in the trigger app. For example, if event A happens in your trigger app, then perform action X, and if event B happens in the trigger app, then perform action Y.
With each path, you must set up relevant rules and specify the actions to be executed when those rules are met. In Zapier, you can add three paths, and three nested paths (that is, paths within a path). Conditional paths can only be added after you have added a trigger to your Zap. Paths must be the final step in your Zap.
Such Zaps, that include multiple actions, conditional paths or searches are termed as Multi-Step Zap.
For more information about configuring paths, refer to Add branching logic to Zaps with paths.