Supporting Popular API Integrations Such as Zapier and PieSync

NURV

NURV

Active member
It really is a surprise to me that XenForo has so little API integrations in 2020 (Don't get me wrong, I'm a XenForo admin with over 1M posts on my forum and love the software).

As the owner of a digital marketing agency, however, I use APIs all the time to connect different pieces of software together and feel this is a major opportunity that XenForo could be capitalizing on, but isn't. Most of the big platforms out there fully integrate with things like Slack, Zapier, PieSync, CRMs, Email Marketing Platforms, etc. I'd love to see more talking back and forth between XenForo and other leading platforms out there.

Are there any plans to include anything like this in future versions? Zapier, in particular, would be a huge plus since that opens the door to so many other services.

Thanks!
 
Upvote 95
IPS is still behind in terms of many things, but lately (past 2-3 years), they are overtaking slowly.

invisioncommunity.com

4.5: Zapier Brings Integration with Over 2,000 Web Apps

Zapier is a service that allows you to connect over 2,000 web apps. In Invision Community 4.5 we are launching a beta service of Zapier integration for Invision Community in the Cloud. What does Zapier do? Zapier acts as a bridge between Invision Community and other apps, such as Google Docs, Twi...
invisioncommunity.com invisioncommunity.com

This is their newest update and to be honest, I dreamed of this for XF for I don't know how long. You'll probably find posts of me from 5 years ago or more about this. This is such a huge step in the right direction. We lost the fight against social media. So if the users don't come up to us, we need to go to them. How? Integrating crucial and popular apps with our boards.... We need to be connected to them, such as with this.
 
sbj said:
IPS is still behind in terms of many things, but lately (past 2-3 years), they are overtaking slowly.

invisioncommunity.com

4.5: Zapier Brings Integration with Over 2,000 Web Apps

Zapier is a service that allows you to connect over 2,000 web apps. In Invision Community 4.5 we are launching a beta service of Zapier integration for Invision Community in the Cloud. What does Zapier do? Zapier acts as a bridge between Invision Community and other apps, such as Google Docs, Twi...
invisioncommunity.com invisioncommunity.com

This is their newest update and to be honest, I dreamed of this for XF for I don't know how long. You'll probably find posts of me from 5 years ago or more about this. This is such a huge step in the right direction. We lost the fight against social media. So if the users don't come up to us, we need to go to them. How? Integrating crucial and popular apps with our boards.... We need to be connected to them, such as with this.
Click to expand...

Oh wow! Did not see that one coming. Between that and the apps, IPS are really opening up the options as a platform.

I was looking into setting up a forum for a personal trainer the other day and Zapier would have been great is it could have provided super simple integrated registrations and memberships with dedicated gym membership and booking software
 
RobinHood said:
Oh wow! Did not see that one coming. Between that and the apps, IPS are really opening up the options as a platform.

I was looking into setting up a forum for a personal trainer the other day and Zapier would have been great is it could have provided super simple integrated registrations and memberships with dedicated gym membership and booking software
Click to expand...
Yeah, it is such a huge thing to have if it works like they are saying it will work.

In April 25 of 2019, I said this for the "Event Calendar" suggestion:

sbj said:
I changed my stance on this a little bit. At this point and day we are reaching 2020 soon, we shouldn't encapsulate forums from the outside world.

What I mean is, Facebook Events and Google Calendar are too big to ignore.

If XF (or anyone else) should ever consider making a calendar, it MUST be tightly integrated to those two platforms. Like the "share" feature, we need to be able to share events/calendar dates to those platforms (automatically) and/or can get entries from those platforms to our forums. All synced up.

They won the war, we need to make sure to stay relevant by using the features all masses use.

We always could open a thread, put in the info we have in to the thread and voila, we have our events/calendar. Threads are basically already events/calendar. The official addon (or a 3rd-party one) must go way beyond this.
Click to expand...

And look what IPS can do:

1586210775493.webp


This is what I was talking about... There are huge popular apps. Why fight the enemy when we can join the enemy and be better than before?
Why encapsulate us from modern growth when we can use it for our benefit? Why re-invent something, when there is a billion dollar company who does it already? I don't mean we should outsource everything to them, but we need tight integrations like this. We need to be a part of the modern world.

Probably the good news here is, if IPS can do it, so can XF I guess.
 
This is valuable discussion guys, but I fear it may get lost as soon as 2.2 is out of the door and we move on to 2.3.

In the interest of this discussion not going too off-track and us not missing good ideas for the future, I recommend having this discussion about an integration with Zapier or similar in a proper suggestion thread.

Ironically, Zapier was suggested recently so there is already a good place to have this discussion.

xenforo.com

Supporting Popular API Integrations Such as Zapier and PieSync

It really is a surprise to me that XenForo has so little API integrations in 2020 (Don't get me wrong, I'm a XenForo admin with over 1M posts on my forum and love the software). As the owner of a digital marketing agency, however, I use APIs all the time to connect different pieces of software...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

Did you want me to move the recent Zapier related posts into that thread?
 
sbj said:
IPS is still behind in terms of many things, but lately (past 2-3 years), they are overtaking slowly.

invisioncommunity.com

4.5: Zapier Brings Integration with Over 2,000 Web Apps

Zapier is a service that allows you to connect over 2,000 web apps. In Invision Community 4.5 we are launching a beta service of Zapier integration for Invision Community in the Cloud. What does Zapier do? Zapier acts as a bridge between Invision Community and other apps, such as Google Docs, Twi...
invisioncommunity.com invisioncommunity.com

This is their newest update and to be honest, I dreamed of this for XF for I don't know how long. You'll probably find posts of me from 5 years ago or more about this. This is such a huge step in the right direction. We lost the fight against social media. So if the users don't come up to us, we need to go to them. How? Integrating crucial and popular apps with our boards.... We need to be connected to them, such as with this.
Click to expand...
My god, I just read that and it sounds amazing! The things Zap does makes life A LOT easier for us as admins. I'm 100% behind this!
 
This would be useful to connect xenforo to email marketing solutions, bookkeeping, spreadsheets, social media, calendars, task managers, github, etc.
 
Biarritz64 said:
you can use zapier with xenforo using the rss feed with no prob.

i use it for social network (facebook twitter)
Click to expand...

Does it enable you to integrate newly signed up members into a mailing provider like Mailchimp, for example? I would figure that a RSS integration merely allows for automation of content sharing.
 
Back
Top Bottom