A Zap is one sentence: when this happens, do that. The first half is a trigger, the second half one or more actions. You can build one inside your memberarea or on zapier.com, and both produce the same Zap in the same Zapier account.
Building inside your memberarea
Open Settings, then Integrations, and press Create Zaps at the top of the page. The page that opens is called Zapier. Its box Your workflows holds Zapier's own builder: ready-made templates, a search box for apps, and a button to start from scratch. The first time you open it, Zapier asks for its own login.
Everything you build here lands in your Zapier account and can be edited later from either side.
On a domain of your own the builder cannot be embedded, and the page says so with a blue note and an Open in Zapier button instead. Zapier only allows the embed on memberarea.io addresses. The workflows are the same either way. On the Starter plan a purple note takes the builder's place and offers Change plan.
Building on zapier.com
Search for MemberArea in the Zapier app directory, or go straight to Create and pick MemberArea as the trigger app. The steps below are identical.
Starting from a template
A template is a Zap with the trigger and the action already chosen. Pick one, connect the two accounts, map or check the fields and turn it on. The MemberArea templates cover Google Sheets, Gmail, Slack, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Typeform and Google Calendar. Most come with the fields mapped; the two Google Sheets templates and the Typeform one leave the mapping to you, because the columns of your sheet or the questions of your form decide it.
They are also a quick way to learn the shape of a Zap: open one, look at what it maps into which field, then change it to suit you. The article on Zapier templates describes all ten, and example Zaps walks through four common ones.
Building one from scratch
- Pick the trigger. Choose MemberArea and the event that starts the Zap, for example New Member or New Ticket.
- Choose the connection. Your workspace appears by name. See connecting Zapier if there is nothing to choose yet.
- Test the trigger. Zapier shows the fields you can use further down. For New Member, Member Logged In, New Contact, New Ticket and New Community Post it pulls your latest real records. Most other triggers show an example record with the same fields instead, so the values are not yours. The tests of the order, subscription and commission triggers end with a permission error in the current version of the app; the troubleshooting article explains it.
- Add the action. Pick the app that should do something and the event it should run, then map the fields. Anything from the trigger can be dropped into any field.
- Test the action. This one is not a rehearsal, see the warning below.
- Turn the Zap on. Nothing runs while it is off.
Testing an action really performs it. A test of Create Member creates a member, a test of Add Tag to Member tags someone for real. Use an address of your own for the test and delete the record afterwards, or skip the test where Zapier lets you.
Turning it on, and what happens then
Most MemberArea triggers are instant. When you turn the Zap on, Zapier quietly subscribes to the event here, and from then on your memberarea pushes each occurrence to Zapier within seconds. Turning the Zap off cancels the subscription, so nothing is delivered in the meantime and nothing is caught up afterwards.
A few triggers poll instead, meaning Zapier asks every few minutes whether something new exists: New Tag and New Group.
Watching it work
Every run appears in Zapier under Zap history, with the data that came in, the data that went out and the reason for anything that failed. When something looks wrong, start there. The article on fixing problems covers the messages you are most likely to meet.