Make API easier to integrate with Zapier

I’ve recently discovered a site called Zapier.com - I think you guys should take a look.

Zapier is really great at making API usage more readily available to those of us that are less technically knowledgeable by utilising API hooks.

For example, once the integration is setup in Zapier, things such as creating new client records from new Gmail contacts with a specific tag would be possible.

Other cloud accounting solutions already have integrations on here. Is there any chance that you will be hopping on this bandwagon? I think it would be a really good move that would hugely increase the possibilities of automation.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Sounds interesting and I did take a brief look at Zapier some time ago. I wasn’t sure if we can deploy our API on Zapier or it’s something that they need to do to integrate our API into their software. Either way I will take a closer look shortly.

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Anything to make life a bit simpler! :smile:

I had a quick look at the technical spec and on the face of it, it looks very useful! I’ve logged it in our development plan to revisit so we’ll definitely explore this in more detail.

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There’s a huge number of permutations on Zapier, in terms of what you can do. I think we’d need a little more direction on what QF users would want from this integration.

Zapier is built on triggers and events. So you perform one action in software x and this fires a trigger that creates, deletes or updates something in software y.

The ability to create new client/supplier records. The source shouldn’t be all that relevant, but for me I would want to be able to add a record when I tag a new contact in my Google Contacts as a client or supplier.

The ability to create invoices would also be very useful. I have software that I use to create client orders and being able to transfer this to Quickfile rather enter the information twice would be extremely useful.

I don’t see much need for deletion. I hate exporting and importing CSV’s to keep data up to date and this would greatly enhance my user experience.

Other ideas include ability to use invoice due dates to trigger an email or calendar reminder to chase clients for payment. Useful if you don’t login to use Quickfile on a daily basis.

I use a few different Google products i.e. GMail, Calendar etc so these were also my initial thoughts. I keep all my contacts in GMail and sync with my phone, I just wonder how that would work with QuickFile as the majority aren’t clients? If there’s some filter in Google that would work a treat!

I definitely think we need to explore this further, we’ll try to revisit this in the next few weeks, time permitting.

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In Zapier the Google Contacts API would allow a custom filter to only trigger when a particular label is assigned to the contact (at least that is how I would use it)

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Also, there are so many other platforms using Zapier that it means that once setup, there will be other CRMs that can hook into Quickfile, not just Google products.

Another +1 for this feature! We’d have loads of uses for automation here: One of them would definitely be invoice creation from Salesforce. I’m sure lots of people would use it for the same thing - there are loads of different CRMs on Zapier.

I think integrating with Zapier really would help - it would suddenly give Quickfile integrations with many, many different products. I would guess that a lot of your customers are also the sort of people who’d struggle to write anything custom on the API front for this.

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A choice of CRM would be good. However, there is one in the progress of being built specifically for the QuickFile system

Interesting. Which system? Salesforce?

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It’s a new system that we’re currently developing.

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Oh right - wow! Big goal. But I’d be interested to hear about its progress.

Has there been any progress on this topic recently?

Having this integration would make it possible for me to build an integrated business toolchain with QuickFile.

There has been a new web hook feature released which would basically allow you to do what zapier does - “when something happens, do this”

You do however need a power user subscription for this. Have you looked into this at all?

We’ve a hit a bit of a brick wall with Zapier for now.

In order to integrate with Zapier we would need to change our whole API authentication mechanism, most likely to switch to OAuth 2.0. Given the work involved in updating the authentication mechanism and simultaneously supporting older integrations… it’s unfortunately no longer viable for us in the near future.

Also Zapier isn’t free so we would need to pass these costs on, finding a way to do that is a separate challenge.

As @Parker1090 mentions we have recently developed our own WebHook features to allow developers to sync QuickFile activities with their own hosted applications.

@Glenn Matt from Zapier here. You can actually add your app to Zapier using static webhooks, as documented here: https://zapier.com/developer/documentation/static-webhooks-example-app/. Or, in the mean time, individual users can use Zapier’s webhooks integration to work with QuickFile on their own.

Be sure to let us know if your team decides to integrate further with Zapier and needs any help!

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Thanks @maguay, we will certainly take a another look at this and make a decision shortly on the best way forward. We are still very keen to have a working integration with Zapier, I think we just need to roll up our sleeves and try a few things out.

I hope you don’t mind if I PM you with the odd query that our devs may have going forward?

@Glenn Awesome great to hear that—and feel free to get in touch anytime!

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