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I love Zapier and we use it more and more for various bits of glue, but I haven’t found a robust development workflow for it. As soon as you begin editing a Zap

I love Zapier and we use it more and more for various bits of glue, but I haven’t found a robust development workflow for it. As soon as you begin editing a Zap, it turns off, which is a sort of “code it live on prod” I haven’t done since early PHP days :) We don’t use it for truly production-critical things, but at some point integrations like this for CRM, support systems, etc need to be working and can’t just turn off for 30 minutes as we hand-copy a new idea into it. How to have a “test endpoint” for a given Zap, or to promote/copy a change from one Zap to another — has anyone worked out a best practice for this?

cheez 8y ago
Can't you duplicate the zap, edit the dupe, then replace the original?
- aaronharnly 8y ago
  Sort of, but things like webhooks aren’t straightforward, and if you want to (for example) receive or send events with a test area of your third party sites, there’s not a clean way to toggle those.
  - agosnell 8y ago
    (Note: I work at Zapier.) Thanks for the kind words, aaronharnly! You're right, we don't have a generalized way to do that sort of thing right now, but if you're triggering from a webhook, one option might be something like: - duplicate your prod zap - adjust the url to send a webhook to both your prod zap, and your (duplicate) dev zap (with just a single request): https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-webhooks-at-once https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-webhoo... - once your changes are ready, "promote" it by turning the new zap on, and the old one off There could be other workarounds for doing similar things, kinda depends on the overall structure of that particular Zap. Feel free to give us a shout anytime, and we could take a closer look at your specific setup! https://zapier.com/app/contact-us https://zapier.com/app/contact-us
    - aaronharnly 8y ago
      Thank you!
robbiemitchell 8y ago
A draft/publish workflow for updating existing zaps would be amazing, particularly for those that use webhooks (easily half of my zaps). Or something more specific, like using a single webhook to trigger more than one zap.

cheez 8y ago

Can't you duplicate the zap, edit the dupe, then replace the original?

aaronharnly 8y ago
Sort of, but things like webhooks aren’t straightforward, and if you want to (for example) receive or send events with a test area of your third party sites, there’s not a clean way to toggle those.
- agosnell 8y ago
  (Note: I work at Zapier.) Thanks for the kind words, aaronharnly! You're right, we don't have a generalized way to do that sort of thing right now, but if you're triggering from a webhook, one option might be something like: - duplicate your prod zap - adjust the url to send a webhook to both your prod zap, and your (duplicate) dev zap (with just a single request): https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-webhooks-at-once https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-webhoo... - once your changes are ready, "promote" it by turning the new zap on, and the old one off There could be other workarounds for doing similar things, kinda depends on the overall structure of that particular Zap. Feel free to give us a shout anytime, and we could take a closer look at your specific setup! https://zapier.com/app/contact-us https://zapier.com/app/contact-us
  - aaronharnly 8y ago
    Thank you!

robbiemitchell 8y ago

A draft/publish workflow for updating existing zaps would be amazing, particularly for those that use webhooks (easily half of my zaps). Or something more specific, like using a single webhook to trigger more than one zap.