Automating Your Forms with Zapier

Form builder apps are some of the most versatile tools out there. There’s really no limit to what you can do with forms: generate leads on your website, register attendees for an event, make an easy place for people to contact you, or even build an order form.

However, capturing that information is just a piece of the puzzle. What do you do with all that new data? Traditionally you’d need to export the data out of your form app, and then manually enter it by hand into any of the multitude of apps you use to run your business. But wouldn’t it be great if that data automatically appeared in those other apps you’re using? Enter Zapier.

With Zapier, you can automatically have that data directly entered into other apps you’re using. You could have leads go directly to your CRM or turn contact form entries directly into tickets in your help desk system—and so much more. We asked a few people who are automating their Jotform data with Zapier to share their stories on how they are getting the most out of automating their form entries.

Funnel Contact Information to the Right Tools

When someone fills out a form on your website, the relationship is just beginning. You’ll want to ensure they get into your CRM so you can keep up with their information, and will also want to add them to your email marketing tool for easier communication.

UpgradeUSA helps make critical technology purchases more affordable for small businesses and startups. They receive thousands of unique site visitors every month, all from capital-minded business owners needing everything from laptops to firewalls on easy and affordable payment plans.

“We have begun to use Jotform and its secure tools to link to both their CRM in Zoho, and into Mailchimp,” explains Founder/CEO Jon Weisblatt. “We’ve found point solutions that are best-in-class for our business, but until now, we had no easy or affordable way to connect them. Zapier has made our day-to-day business activities much easier, scalable, and more creative than ever before.”

Send Form Entries Directly to a Calendar

Connecting a calendar to your forms might not be the first thing you think of, but if you work in events or need to book appointments, it’s a simple solution. By adding fields on your form for a date, start, and end time, form submissions can easily be turned into calendar events without you needing to lift a finger.

“Utilizing Jotform’s Form creation capabilities we were able to sync event listings with Google Calendar,” Locksley Waites, Marketing Manager for Events Jamaica tells us. “Zapier enabled us to sync the Event Name, Event Categories, Event Locations, Event Dates, Event Times and Event Details. All event details are displayed on our event calendars automatically, and are organized by event category using filters in the Zap.”

Save Time and Prevent Human Error

It’s no secret that copying form entries and entering them by hand into another app takes precious time—even hours or whole days—away from the other things you need to be doing. By automating that data, you free up your time to worry about more important things for your business. This also ensures no human error when entering entries elsewhere.

“Without the Jotform and Zapier automation, we would have to involve several staff to do multiple tasks and manually enter data, which would take a lot of time and may have mistakes,” says William Schueddig, Marketing Director for PBFY Packaging. “Using Jotform and Zapier together saves us a few hours a week. Our leads get distributed faster, the information is more accurate and my team has a working flow that everyone can understand.”

Automate Order Fulfillment

If you’re using forms to secure orders, there’s likely a lot of moving parts. From receiving the order, to processing the order, down to making sure it is fulfilled, there’s a number of steps and you’ll have to do each one accurately. If you can automate as much of the process as possible, that leaves more time to create your products, and less time bogged down in the minutiae of the order fulfillment process.

“I run a small and independently owned printers in the UK and can now process multiple order much more efficiently,” says George Reeder, founder of My Printing Pal. “It’s fair to say my workflow has been significantly improved.”

“Without getting too technical, my clients can now upload their designs and place order via an online form I’ve created in JotForm. Zapier then saves the file to a specific Dropbox folder, whilst renaming it accordingly too. The file saved in Dropbox is then processed locally and is sent into a relevant hot folder where it’s imposed, ripped, processed and finally printed… essentially my clients artwork is processed and printed automatically without any human intervention, where it is usually a very time consuming process for any commercial printer.

“It may sound simple, but it’s made the world of difference to my business.”

Manage a Team

When more than one person is responsible for managing form submissions, it becomes important to manage and organize that process. Creating tasks from the submissions or using a team collaboration tool with your form allows for the process to be streamlined, and ensures that every single submission will be handled the way it needs to.

“We at StormJewel’s Psychic Readings use Jotform and Zapier to streamline and organize our small psychic email readings organisation,” explains StormJewel. “Every time someone submits a reading request to us via Jotform, we use Zapier to send this submission to Trello. This allows my psychics to easily manage their reading requests and make sure that everything gets done on time and no readings get missed. It also allows me to easily see at any point which readings have been done, which are in the queue, and make sure that the readings have been done on time.

“My psychics love it and so do I. Before using this combination we had to rely solely on the email notifications, or use a shared spreadsheet which people found confusing and nobody liked updating.”

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What Jotform data would you like to automate?