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  • 1.  Does anyone use Zapier? Looking at it from a gift and records use case

    Posted 07-31-2024 02:29 PM

    Hi all, in evaluating our workflows across Gift and Records Administration here at William & Mary, I was doing some research and came across an automation product called Zapier.

    Does anyone here have any experience with it? Curious to hear from others on its implementation, workflows you built with it, and your overall experiences with it.

    Any insights would be appreciated!

      



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    Adam Grincius
    Senior Director, Gift Administration
    William & Mary
    aggrincius@wm.edu
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  • 2.  RE: Does anyone use Zapier? Looking at it from a gift and records use case

    Posted 07-31-2024 04:01 PM
    Hi, Adam.

    I am currently using Zapier in conjunction with Airtable and Google. For example, when an email goes to our stewardship grants account an entry is automatically created in Airtable (our project management software) that contains all of the relevant information from the email, including attachments, and assigns the task to our stewardship manager so she can double check the grant stewardship needs.

    It was very easy to set up and has been working flawlessly. I only have a handful of zaps, but there are lots of possibilities!

    Good luck.

    -Liz

    Liz Dixon-Eversole
    pronouns: she/her/hers
    Director of Advancement Operations
    Milton Academy | 170 Centre Street | Milton, MA  02186
    Office: 617-898-2374






    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Does anyone use Zapier? Looking at it from a gift and records use case

    Posted 08-01-2024 09:14 AM
    Hi Adam,

    We have extensive experience with Zapier. The pros: it is relatively easy to use, and simple use-cases can be implemented by non-technical staff. It is generally reliable, too, and at higher tiers of service, it has a passable set of administrative features (permissions, visibility into what people have built, SSO, etc.)

    The cons: it's pretty expensive. We generally use it for prototyping or for low-volume automations only because of that. Once we've prototyped a use-case, the cost-benefit analysis usually calls for building out the ETL using an enterprise-class tool like Azure Data Factory, MuleSoft, Workato, etc. For our higher-ed and enterprise clients, there are often governance challenges to address and overcome, and most IT/IS teams we've worked with strongly prefer not to introduce Zapier into the environment. They often already have some integration middleware they prefer.

    Lastly, we find that the more you use Zapier, the more you need to deal with complex integrations with additional logic, data preparation, etc. Zapier's tools for this are rudimentary and often poorly-documented and poorly-supported. At a certain point, it is just easier to write scripts directly against the API, which leaves us wondering why we need Zapier at all. This isn't a con, more just reinforcing that Zapier is a handyperson's toolkit, and it should not be mistaken for something more powerful than that. 

    Feel free to reach out to me off-list if you'd like to chat some more about this.

    Thank you,
    Isaac Shalev
    Data Strategy Expert
    Sage70, Inc.
    (917) 859-0151
    isaac@sage70.com

    Schedule a 30-minute consultation now:




    Original Message


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