- A trigger - what needs to happen for the zap to start for example, I want to send an email to my Personal Assistant every time I create a filenote. My trigger is New Filenote.
- An action - what needs to be happen after my trigger occurs. In the example, above my action is to send an email of the filenote.
Please ensure you always have only one connection to your Actionstep account. Multiple links to the same Actionstep account may cause authentication issues.
Setting up a trigger
To set up a trigger - go to the trigger step - choose app & event - choose account and then test trigger.
Adding - filters, formats, delays and paths (if you have a higher subscription).
Remember that by clicking on the plus after the trigger you can add filters, formats, delays and paths.
| Type | Description |
| Filter | Will filter the information to obtain what you want for example you may only want your zap to continue if the Matter Type = Conveyancing so you can filter out the results. In the example above we only want the zap to continue if the filenote is not a "System" filenote so we can enter a filter to state that only continue if Source does not equal System. That way the zap only runs if it is a user created file note. |
| Format | Changes the format of the data received into Zapier - for example sometimes if we are obtaining channel messages from web-based software the text has HTML tags in it and is not just plain text. So we can use the format to change the text to plain to remove those tags. |
| Delay | Delays the zap from continuing until a certain amount of time or a date and time of your choosing. |
| Path | With higher subscriptions of Zapier you can add paths so if your zap meets a certain condition you continue down one path however if it meets a different condition it can proceed down a different path. Stops the need for multiple zaps. |
Setting up an Action
There are two different Actionstep types of Actions in Zapier.
1. Finding certain information in Actionstep - using the find function you can find a contact, matter, matter custom field, retrieve a matter custom field value and find a tax code.
2. Creating a certain Action in Actionstep
1. Finding Information about contacts, matters, custom data fields and tax codes.
Your trigger will provide you with data for example, our new file note trigger gives us the following information:-
From the above I can see that the Linked Action ID (ie. the matter the file note belongs to) is Matter: 89 and the filenote has been entered by Jane Smith - who is also the linked participant ID: 28.
In order to find information in relation to the matter - I can do a find matter action and search for the matter ID and this will give me more information about the matter itself that I can use in further actions and this is the same for contacts etc (see GIF below).
In relation to custom data fields these will be explained more in-depth below in the Custom Data section.
2. Setting up an Action (not finding information)
Once you have found all the data you require to complete your action your final step is to set-up your final action.
Remember that you can bring in any data that you have found in any of your tasks. See below an example of formatting the email that will send the filenote.
Working with Custom Data Fields
Custom data fields can be a little tricky to get your head around. There are both matter and participant custom data fields. This page describes how to work with matter custom data fields through Zapier - we do not support participant custom data at the moment.
There are three actions that you’ll likely find most useful, and recommend using them in the order shown below;
1. Find Matter Custom Field
The first action to use is the Find Matter Custom Field action. This allows you to locate and retrieve the unique identifier for a custom data field based on its name. The retrieved unique identifier will be used as input to the Retrieve Matter Custom Field Value action (described below).
STEP 1
Select the Find Matter Custom Field action.
STEP 2
Specify the name of the custom data field you want to retrieve. This is the name of the custom data field in Actionstep.
STEP 3
Execute the action to retrieve the custom data field's unique identifier (highlighted in the red box).
Retrieve Matter Custom Field Value
The next action to use is the Retrieve Matter Custom Field action. This retrieves the current value of a custom data field for a specified Matter.
STEP 1
Select the Retrieve Matter Custom Field action.
STEP 2
Select the unique identifier of the custom data field from step 1 above, and specify the required Matter id.
STEP 3
Execute the action to retrieve the custom data field's current value and unique identifier (highlighted in the red box).
Update Matter Custom Field Value
The final action (which is optional depending upon your requirements) is to update the value of the custom data field for the associated Matter. This takes as inputs the unqiue identifier from the Retrieve Matter Custom Field action and the value you want to store.
STEP 1
Select the Update Matter Custom Field Value action.
STEP 2
Select the unique identifier of the custom data field value from step 1 above, and specify the value you want to store.
STEP 3
Execute the action to update the custom data field's value (highlighted in the red box).
Summary
By using the three Zapier actions described above you can either retrieve the text of a custom data field or update the text of a custom data field.
REMEMBER in order to retrieve the value of a custom data field it must exist even if it is null. This means that if you create a new matter that has custom data fields but those custom data fields have not been saved (even if they are blank) then Zapier can't retrieve the string value as it does not yet exist. To correct this problem add the custom data fields to the start step (or an earlier step to when the zap will take place) so that the user has the option of entering the custom data fields on that step (even if they are left blank) and this means that Zapier will then be able to retrieve the matter custom data.
A video explaining this is below:-
Video on how to work with custom data fields in Zapier
How to find Step ID when wanting to create a zap on a certain step change.
Another tricky piece of data is trying to find the Step Change ID when wanting to filter a zap to only trigger on a certain step change.
Let's say for example, I only want me zap to proceed when my Wills matter is closed.
Then the trigger I want to add is "Matter Step Change" which gives us the following data;-
The Linked Step ID: is telling us which Step the matter has been changed to. So if we want to limited it to a particular step on a particular matter type we need to filter: -
So we only want the zap to continue if the Step ID Exactly matches ?? but how do we know what step ID matches the closed step in the Wills Matter Type.
The easiest way to find this out is to create a Wills Matter and move along the workflow until we get to the step we want to use as the trigger in this example it is the Closed Step.
Then look in your web browser to see the address - the address will give you the information you require:
Action ID is 96 and the Step Number is 1 (DO NOT USE THE NODE ID).
So the linked step_ID I want the trigger the zap is 96--1. In that exact format - remember the two "--".
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