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Integrating Power Automate with Zapier

Thursday, May 21st, 2020 / by Microsoft Expert

Power Automate and Zapier are both automation platforms.  They can integrate 2 or more applications to drive business automation.  The most common integration is any application and sending an email as a notification.  But what if you have two applications and one is available in Power Automate and the other is available in Zapier?  That’s when integrating Power Automate with Zapier is needed.

Power Automate Integrations

Microsoft Power Automate was previously Microsoft Flow.  It was introduced in early 2016 and renamed to Power Automate in late 2019.  Power Automate integrates with 350+ applications.  Here is a great resource for learning about those applications.  If you look at the list of applications, you might be wondering where most of the more-popular applications are.   Over 80 of the integrations are Microsoft related.  Platforms such as Amazon and Zoho are not in Power Automate.  Most popular accounting, HR and sales platforms like Quickbooks, Typeform as well as Salesforce are not included

Zapier Integrations

Zapier was formally introduced in 2012.  Today it has over 2,000 integrations which can be seen here.  Zapier is almost the inverse of Power Automate.  There are many, many applications in Zapier, but there is a lack of most Office 365 or Microsoft integrations, or they are very basic.  Azure, SQL and SharePoint are not available.

How to Make Power Automate Work with Zapier

There are 5 main components to making Power Automate integrate with Zapier:

  1. Knowing how to parse information in Zapier
  2. Knowing how to parse information in Power Automate
  3. A common, transaction-based application that is common between both
  4. The ability for Power Automate to add items to the common application as well as trigger automation off common events such as add or update.
  5. Having the ability for Zapier to add items to the common application as well as trigger automation off common events such as add or update.

Google Tasks to the rescue!

zapier, google tasks

From Power Automate:

  • Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/googletasks/
  • Triggers: When a Task is Added to a Task List, When a New Task List is Created, When a Task is Completed in a Task List, When a Task is Due in a Task List
  • Actions: Create a Task in a Task List, Create a Task List,
  • Searches: Get a Task From a Task List, List Task Lists, List the Tasks for a Task List

From Zapier:

For side-by-side comparison purposes with normalizing the terminology:

zapier 2

There is not a 1:1 functionality between Power Automate and Zapier but there are 3 common components that allows Google Tasks to run in the background and integrate the two together:

  • Trigger: When a Task is Created
  • Action: Create a Task
  • Search: Get a Task

Google Tasks in Detail

Google Tasks are very basic.  You can add a Title, Due Date, Notes and Subtasks with the same 3 fields.  Google Tasks are free is you have a Gmail account.  Gmail accounts are free as well.  And finally, Google Tasks is a free connector or integration in both Power Automate and Zapier.  In terms of limitations, there do not appear to be any unless you are using 10s of thousands of tasks.  If your processes might use 10s of thousands of tasks, you may want to factor in a process using Power Automate such as:

  • Get All Tasks in a Task List
  • Count the Tasks (using Power Automate variables)
  • If Count >= X, Create a New Task List
  • Point the automation processes to the latest task list (can be stored as a variable elsewhere)

So how do you use something so basic to integrate Power Automate with Zapier?

Integrating Power Automate with Zapier

Before you begin the integration, figure out what you are trying to ultimately do.  This is usually integrating a Microsoft platform or product with another platform or product.  For the below example, we will automate the following: “When a new customer is added in Dynamics 365, subscribe the new customer to a Drip marketing campaign.”

Below is a step-by-step guide to integrate Power Automate with Zapier:

  1. Create a new Gmail account dedicated to the back-end task management. We recommend something like [companyname].tasks@gmail.comgoogle tasks zapier
  2. Save your new Gmail credentials somewhere safe!
  3. For starters, create a new Google task list and name it Tasks. This can be done by clicking on the Tasks icon on the right-hand side.
  4. Launch Power Automate.
  5. Start a new Flow with the automated trigger “Dynamics 365 When a record is created”. **
  6. Sign into your dynamics 365 account to make a connection. It is best practice to have and use a service account for this connection to ensure the user password does not change or the account does not become compromised.
  7. Add a New Step and choose ‘Google Tasks: Create a task in a task list”.
  8. Choose the Task List name from Step 3.
  9. Set the Title to be Name from the Dynamics 365 Record.
  10. Click Save on the Power Automate Flow.
  11. Launch Zapier.
  12. Create a new Zap and choose the Trigger “Google Tasks: When a New Task is Added” and setup the account to match the account in steps 1 through 3.
  13. Add a Step “Drip: Create or Update a Subscriber” using your Drip credentials.
  14. Add a Step “Drip: Subscribe to Campaign” and choose the subscriber that was created in the previous step.

And that’s it!  See the images below for help with some of the steps above.

 

**Step 5: Creating an automated Power Automate trigger for “Dynamics 365: When a record is created”

zapier tasks