Introducing Multi-Step Zaps: An Easier Way to Build Powerful Workflows

Zapier co-founder here.<p>This is seriously the biggest change to our product since launching the company. We&#x27;ve been working on it for a year (including a beta w&#x2F; several thousand users) and are very excited to finally release it. Before, Zapier only supported 1-to-1 integrations which limited it&#x27;s power. Multi-Step Zaps open up a huge array of new power...<p>- transforming data (like dates, string manipulation)<p>- executing JS code in between steps (can do manipulation, extra API calls, etc.)<p>- looking up data inside other apps<p>- if an item isn&#x27;t found when looking it up, create it<p>More details in our release notes: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zapier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;workflow-automation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zapier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;workflow-automation&#x2F;</a><p>How we built this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.invisionapp.com&#x2F;redesigning-interactive-editor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.invisionapp.com&#x2F;redesigning-interactive-editor&#x2F;</a><p>I know a ton of folks in the HN community use Zapier. Thank you so much for your support. I can&#x27;t wait to see what you build now!

This is HUGE! So excited to see this. I automate huge swaths of my life with Zapier.<p>I have been relying on a little self-hosted web app to &quot;fork&quot; some web hooks and this seems to me to eliminate that need entirely.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;deadlyicon&#x2F;deploy-hook-forker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;deadlyicon&#x2F;deploy-hook-forker</a>

Good stuff - I know this has been in the pipeline for sometime. Excited to see it out in the wild. Congrats to the Zapier team on producing an awesome product - look forward to using multi-step zaps.

I love Zapier, with one exception. For some reason the webhook zap doesn&#x27;t provide the whole post body. Strips the root {} meaning it shows up as text without structure. Very odd choice that I wish they&#x27;d fix. Besides that am big fan

Anyone who uses Zapier for personal workflows - I am curious why use Zapier over IFTTT?<p>Note: this is NOT a challenge to why something like Zapier exists for business, nor a comment directly on the new multi-step Zaps.

I&#x27;m super excited about this. Well done!<p>One of my biggest pain points was the lack of ability to determine if a record already exists before choosing to use an Update or Create action. (You&#x27;d think a service&#x27;s API would treat Update the same as Create if no matching record is found, but that&#x27;s not always the case.) So I&#x27;ve had to err on the side of caution and always use a Create action, thus filling the CRM (or whatever) with many many duplicates.<p>The search feature looks like it will handle this. Will be implementing shortly.

I remember this being something I saw people on hacker news asking about in 2012 :)

If you have multiple zaps that could be one multi-step zap - do you have a way to merge them?

Very cool, congratulations on the launch.<p>I&#x27;d be curious to read a blog post about if&#x2F;how you beta tested this feature and ensured &quot;fit&quot; of the final shipped feature. Did you have an early adopter &#x2F; guinea pig group?<p>If I wanted to make a Zap DAG, would I just arbitrarily linearize it ? i.e. if my deps were,<p><pre><code> A -&gt; B B -&gt; X B -&gt; Y B -&gt; Z X -&gt; C Y -&gt; C Z -&gt; C C -&gt; D </code></pre> one linearization is A -&gt; B -&gt; X -&gt; Z -&gt; Y -&gt; C -&gt; D<p>Do you notice implicit dependencies and do actions in parallel where there is no dependency ? Maybe it doesn&#x27;t matter except for very deep &#x2F; wide zaps.