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Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

zapier.com

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Re: Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

#4
post #3

Can you provide a bit more explanation on to set up something like this? Is it a Zapier feature? The article just lists 5 faves and skips the "turning Gtalk into" part.

Sure, I can elaborate. The article assumed a little bit of familiarity with Zapier. The basic mechanics are creating a new Zap on Zapier (which is a pair of one trigger and one action).

For the trigger, choose "GTalk" and "New Message". Specifically, the Zap will trigger whenever you send a message to our always-on bot.

You can pick any action that suites you, see the article for ideas.

We'll automatically perform the action whenever the trigger occurs.

There is a lot of flexibility in the system but that's the 500 foot view.

Re: Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

#5
post #3

Can you provide a bit more explanation on to set up something like this? Is it a Zapier feature? The article just lists 5 faves and skips the "turning Gtalk into" part.

Sure, I can elaborate. The article assumed a little bit of familiarity with Zapier. The basic mechanics are creating a new Zap on Zapier (which is a pair of one trigger and one action). For the trigger, choose "GTalk" and "New Message". Specifically, the Zap will trigger whenever you send a message to our always-on bot. You can pick any action that suites you, see the article for ideas. We'll automatically perform th…

That's really cool -- certainly very nifty for Zapier users.

The title, though, implies a service (or hack) that isn't dependent on any other system -- maybe it might be better titled "Turn Gtalk into a Command Line for the Web using Zapier" or something?

Re: Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

#6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I can elaborate. The article assumed a little bit of familiarity with Zapier. The basic mechanics are creating a new Zap on Zapier (which is a pair of one trigger and one action). For the trigger, choose "GTalk" and "New Message". Specifically, the Zap will trigger whenever you send a message to our always-on bot. You can pick any action that suites you, see the article for ideas. We'll automatically perform th…

That's really cool -- certainly very nifty for Zapier users. The title, though, implies a service (or hack) that isn't dependent on any other system -- maybe it might be better titled "Turn Gtalk into a Command Line for the Web using Zapier" or something?

Good call! I've updated it.

Re: Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

#8
Brian, whenever we bill the monthly subscription fee to our users for our saas app, we send them an email with their username and the amount. I get a copy of each such email in my gmail inbox. Is there a way I can use Zapier to parse the amounts into a google spreadsheet so I know the total amount billed for the day? (Currently I have to do this manually by opening each email and copying the username and amount inot a google spreadsheet).

I should have our dev build this report, but don't get me started on that rant :-)

Re: Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

#9
post #8

Brian, whenever we bill the monthly subscription fee to our users for our saas app, we send them an email with their username and the amount. I get a copy of each such email in my gmail inbox. Is there a way I can use Zapier to parse the amounts into a google spreadsheet so I know the total amount billed for the day? (Currently I have to do this manually by opening each email and copying the username and amount inot…

Interesting use case!

Unfortunately we don't have that clever of a parser. We've definitely talked about it but aren't 100% sold on any sort of internal implementation.

We've thought about a "reverse template" where you would mark blocks of text as "variables" across a few examples and we'd parse it out. Not sure if that is feasible though...

Any HN'ers done this before and have ideas or tips?

Re: Turn Gtalk Into A Command Line for the Web With Zapier

#10
post #8

Brian, whenever we bill the monthly subscription fee to our users for our saas app, we send them an email with their username and the amount. I get a copy of each such email in my gmail inbox. Is there a way I can use Zapier to parse the amounts into a google spreadsheet so I know the total amount billed for the day? (Currently I have to do this manually by opening each email and copying the username and amount inot…

You can use something like Google Apps Script to plug data into a google spreadsheet (http://developers.google.com/apps-script/storing_data_spread...), but the big problem you're going to have, as Bryan mentioned, is getting the data out of your email.

It really would be easier if you just had the creator of the email not BCC you on the subscription fee and just had them cobble together a daily sheet for you. Doesn't need to be anything fancy, just a CSV would do nicely.

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