Integrate Xenforo into Zapier ? (Automatically integrate your web services)

Digital Doctor

Digital Doctor

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Quite the list of web services that it integrates !
https://zapier.com/zapbook/

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I did notice a missing spot between Xero and Yammer.
Must be a software package that starts with X ! (What could go there ? Hmmmm).
 
Would be interesting to see what could be achieved in relation to user database synchronisation between multiple services using a tool such as Zapier.
 
So in layman's terms, what does Zapier do? How would it benefit my forum...or is this something strictly for personal use? I looked at the video but other than seeing that you could do x in one thing and it will do y in another, I didn't see what it really does.

What am I missing?
 
Okay, I just did a little poking on the site itself.

For example, I set up a thing from Twitter (when someone does a mention) it will update the Facebook page. Interesting. I didn't see a lot of apps I use, but this must be cool for someone.
 
Edrondol said:
What am I missing?
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Zapier is an integration service. It is designed to make it easy to hook multiple applications or systems together using configurable logic rather than code. In other words, you don't necessarily need to be a programmer to be able to make the integration happen.

To make this work, each service being integrated needs some code to be able to talk to Zapier's APIs - this is either provided by Zapier, by the service/software vendor, by a third party, or by yourself if you know how.

It's a system-level tool, you the site administrator would set up your applications to communicate via Zapier to enable easier integration between them.

Typical usage scenarios including synchronising user databases between multiple applications (eg CRM system, Bookkeeping system, Helpdesk system), or perhaps sending invoices from your invoicing system to your bookkeeping system, or having your Tweets sent automatically to your Facebook page, etc.

The possibilities are almost endless, it just depends on what integrations are available.

In order for XenForo to talk to other Zapier integrated systems, someone would need to write a XenForo plugin which talks to the Zapier APIs.
 
Sim said:
Zapier is an integration service. It is designed to make it easy to hook multiple applications or systems together using configurable logic rather than code. In other words, you don't necessarily need to be a programmer to be able to make the integration happen.

To make this work, each service being integrated needs some code to be able to talk to Zapier's APIs - this is either provided by Zapier, by the service/software vendor, by a third party, or by yourself if you know how.

It's a system-level tool, you the site administrator would set up your applications to communicate via Zapier to enable easier integration between them.

Typical usage scenarios including synchronising user databases between multiple applications (eg CRM system, Bookkeeping system, Helpdesk system), or perhaps sending invoices from your invoicing system to your bookkeeping system, or having your Tweets sent automatically to your Facebook page, etc.

The possibilities are almost endless, it just depends on what integrations are available.

In order for XenForo to talk to other Zapier integrated systems, someone would need to write a XenForo plugin which talks to the Zapier APIs.
Click to expand...

This is spot on and a great description!
 
Rob said:
A few years down the line..... has anything ever happened in this area since?
I'm seriously looking at Zapier to provide some automated workflow.
Click to expand...

I am wondering if anything has come of this, I cannot find Xenforo in my Zapier account, so I am guessing this hasn't happened?
 
Discourse may be easier to integrate with Zapier because of it's hosted nature ? Discourse is also quite expensive (it costs a friend $1000/month).

RobinHood said:
I love Zapier. Been using it a lot recently to link Survey Monkey, Gmail, Google Sheets, Freshdesk and Mailchimp.
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I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish with all those powerful tools but stating the obvious:
Xenforo - is a forum for non-threaded chit chat. It's not full fledged community software. It's hard to see that changing as it hasn't in the last 7.5 years.
 
Digital Doctor said:
Discourse may be easier to integrate with Zapier because of it's hosted nature ? Discourse is also quite expensive (it costs a friend $1000/month).
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Discourse is $100 a month hosted. But it's also open source and therefore free to download and self host. It's because they have a comprehensive API that they can integrate it with Zapier, so it can create triggers and actions.

Digital Doctor said:
I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish with all those powerful tools but stating the obvious:
Xenforo - is a forum for non-threaded chit chat. It's not full fledged community software. It's hard to see that changing as it hasn't in the last 7.5 years.
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A lot of forums are businesses or a part of a business. Businesses operate these days using a plethora of digital tools, and the better they can all integrate with each other using tools like zapier then the faster they can grow, the cheaper they are to run and the easier they are to scale due to the ability to automate triggers and actions.

Forums are a great way for businesses to engage with their customers on their own terms outside of 'normal' social media channels, Zapier integration would enable customers to tightly integrate their community with their other business tools to add features, manage their community using additional 3rd party tools, and make it easier to make money.

If there was a solid Zapier add on with a load of useful triggers and actions, it would be like adding 1,000 new plugins the to resource manager in one.
 
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We use Zapier massively for my gaming community

We use it:
  • To inform Team Leaders when a staff member posts inactivity on Discord (Using Email Parser + Webhooks)
  • To inform Team Leaders when a member posts a Staff Application (Using Email Parser + Webooks)
  • To automatically post news posts on Discord + Hootsuite for Social Media (RSS + Webhooks + Hootsuite)
  • To inform the Discord community when a new event gets posted (RSS + Webhooks)
  • To inform the Discord community when a new Status incident is posted on Cachet (RSS + Webhooks)
  • Community members can make their suggestions for our community on our Forum which is then posted automatically to Discord (RSS + Webhooks)
So yeah, Zapier is so awesome for us as a gaming community as it just makes our lives so much easier when it comes to Community Management :)

Seriously recommended :)
 
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Digital Doctor said:
How would you use Zapier + Xenforo ? or do your gamers use Discord and not a forum ?
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So we use both, but people do tend to enjoy using Discord more as it's more instant.

As I've said in my post, for most of Zapier + XenForo, I use RSS feeds which Zapier then puts into a Webhook, which then gets posted to Discord :)

We use Zapier also to encourage use of the Forum. For example, to suggest something, our members can't do it in Discord, they have to go onto the forums and post a suggestion, which then gets posted onto Discord automatically

If anyone wants to see how it works on our Systems shoot me a PM and I'll send you the link
 
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That's awesome. The potential could be huge if there was native integration with XF. You could probably do some really neat stuff with the email parser.

It looks like they have 7 different push integrations

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