Warm greetings to all! Today, we’re excited to share a comprehensive tutorial that will guide you through the process of tapping into the robust capabilities of the Zapier platform, using it in combination with your Vertext Labs chatbots. This will enable you to link and automate your chatbots to nearly any service on the web.

Start by setting up a Zapier account. It’s incredibly straightforward—simply click here. If you do not have an account, protip: you can swiftly create one using your existing Google, Facebook or Microsoft account.

Once your account is set, access your dashboard and click the big orange button labeled “Create”; then select “Zaps”. It will lead you to a screen, as shown in the image attached. Here, select “Trigger”; in the search bar input “Vertext Labs”, and select the option with our logo.

Subsequently, click on the trigger you’ve just added. A panel will then open on the right-hand side of the screen. On this panel, under the “App & event” section, set the event to “Contact Update” before pressing “Continue”.

Moving on, it’s time to connect your Vertext Labs account. Login with your username and password. Don’t forget to hit “Continue” after you’re done.

In the “trigger” section, you can now choose which chatbot should receive contact update events. If you’ve not yet created a chatbot, click here to quickly create one. Afterward, just click “Refresh Results” on the drop-down menu, then select your newly created chatbot before moving on.

To test the Zapier integration, you’re given the option to select one of your existing contacts. If no contacts exist, simply send a text “Hi” to one of your accounts linked to your chatbot. Afterward, click “Find new records”, select your name from the list and hit “Continue”.

The next step is the fun part – connecting to Google Sheets. Establish a connection with an already created Google Sheet to place data. Don’t have one? No worries! Just follow these quick steps to prepare one:

1. Open a new tab in your browser, and type: “https://sheets.new“.
2. Google Sheets will open a new, blank sheet for you.
3. Rename it to something memorable, perhaps “Zapier Test”.
4. Toggle back to your Zapier tab in the browser.

Once done, proceed to create the Zapier action. Here’s how:

1. Select “Create Spreadsheet Row” under the event option, and hit “Continue”. Connect your Google Sheets account, then log in and grant Zapier access. Click “Continue”.
2. Next, under ‘Drive’, select the default option ‘My Google Drive’, and under ‘Spreadsheet’, pick your Google Sheet (in this case, ‘Zapier Test’). The ‘Worksheet’ is likely set to ‘Sheet1’, unless renamed earlier.
3. In the fields provided, map each column in your Google Sheet to the related output fields. These are fields such as ID, Name, Email, Phone Number, First Interaction, and Last Interaction. Please ensure the mapped data aligns with your Google Sheets fields.

Click on ‘Test & Review’. This will trigger Zapier to simulate a run, creating a row in your Google Sheets and presenting you with the result. If all went well, you’ll see a success message and you can check your Google Sheets for validation.

To wrap up, activate your Zap to begin automating the process. As a result, whenever a contact is updated on the chosen chatbot, Zapier will generate a new row with the given details in your selected Google Sheets. While this may not seem like much on its own, the beauty of it becomes apparent when you add more steps to match and update fields across the sheets.

We hope this has set you off to a great start in using Zapier with Vertext Labs chatbots. Happy automating!