{"id":2375,"date":"2014-06-19T12:09:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T12:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/?p=2375"},"modified":"2014-06-26T05:46:34","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T05:46:34","slug":"automating-facebook-and-other-web-apps-via-zapier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/19\/automating-facebook-and-other-web-apps-via-zapier\/","title":{"rendered":"Automating Facebook and other Web Apps via Zapier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while back someone was looking for a way to post from a macro to a facebook page. A few methods were mentioned. There&#8217;s another one which is easy and reliable and that is to use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zapier.com\/\">Zapier.com<\/a>. I&#8217;ve made a video here to demonstrate how to set it up:<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=600 height=415 frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"\/\/screencast-o-matic.com\/embed?sc=c211XAngJU&#038;w=600&#038;v=3\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But this demonstrates a lot more potential than just posting stuff to Facebook. Facebook is really just an example. Zapier supports a huge array of other web apps, including help desk systems, CRM systems, email, google docs, popular accounting platforms and a lot more besides. The same principle as used in my video above can be used for those too. So if for example you wanted a macro to create an Invoice in Freshbooks. No problem.<\/p>\n<p>So instead of having to automate the front end of these web apps or spend the time or pay a programmer to work with their API directly, Zapier is a simple solution which sits in the middle. They have a free plan too.<\/p>\n<p>It would also be possible to work the other way and get data OUT of web apps. There are a number of ways to do that including writing to a MySQL database (which Macro Scheduler could read) and saving text\/CSV files to a dropbox folder (which Macro Scheduler could read), sending emails (which Macro Scheduler could retrieve) and so forth. Maybe that&#8217;s another video.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure you can come up with some other cool ideas. How about: Running a macro via SMS. <\/p>\n<p>You get a Twilio account with a twilio number. Set up a ZAP which responds to a new SMS sent to your Twilio number and saves a file in a dropbox folder. Have the body of the message saved to the file. You have a macro which is set up on a new file trigger. <\/p>\n<p>So when Macro Schedueler sees a new file in the dropbox folder it runs a macro, which reads the body of the newest file and then parses out the name of the macro it needs to run &#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Now you can run macros remotely on your machine from your mobile phone via SMS \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back someone was looking for a way to post from a macro to a facebook page. A few methods were mentioned. There&#8217;s another one which is easy and reliable and that is to use Zapier.com. I&#8217;ve made a video here to demonstrate how to set it up: But this demonstrates a lot more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2375"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2385,"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2375\/revisions\/2385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mjtnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}