Zapier Integration

What is Zapier?

Zapier is a no-code tool that lets you connect apps together to automate tasks. You can use Zapier to connect HourStack to over 3,000 other apps and put your repetitive tasks on autopilot!

For example, you might want to keep your projects and labels in sync between Asana or Todoist, and HourStack. Or maybe you’d like to create a task in HourStack every time a new ticket comes into your HubSpot account so you can track time against it for billing purposes.

Zapier can handle anything from the simple examples above to very complex multi-step processes such as adding the logged time from each completed task in HourStack to a Google Sheet, which then can be used to generate invoices in Quickbooks to automate the billing of your clients each month. You can even set up a Zap for sending invoices.

Learn more about Zapier in our integration directory and through our listing on Zapier.

What is a Zap?

You’ve probably already put it together, but a Zap is an automated workflow that has one trigger and one or more actions. Simply design your Zap, test it, then put it live and then enjoy the time savings of the automation you’ve just built.

The HourStack Zapier integration has a significant number of triggers and actions available that will give you extensive control over your HourStack workspace. Let’s take a look at triggers and actions in more detail.

Zapier Triggers

Triggers are events that start Zaps. You can also use data from a trigger in additional actions within your Zap. For example, you might want to set up a Zap to create an event in Google Calendar whenever a task is created in HourStack. In this Zap, the trigger is “Task Created” in HourStack and the action is creating an event in Google Calendar with the data from the HourStack trigger.

The HourStack Zapier integration offers a wide selection of triggers so you can monitor activity within your workspace to kick off Zaps.

HourStack Zapier Triggers

Zapier Actions

After a trigger kicks a Zap off, you’ll want to add one or more actions to complete your workflow. If your trigger was from another app, here is a list of the actions you can take in HourStack. You’ll often want to incorporate the data from a trigger into your action. For example, if you want to create a project in HourStack every time a project is created in Monday, then the trigger from Monday will start the Zap when a new project is created and you’ll use that project’s name and color to create a new project in HourStack via the “Create Project” action.

HourStack Zapier Actions

Searches are a type of action available and can be very useful, especially if you use integrations with HourStack to create tasks from source tasks in other platforms. When you drag and drop a source task from one of our integrations we store the source provider and the source task ID.

For example, the source provider might be asana, and the source task ID 1201880501713838. If you want to sync data from that original source task to the task in HourStack, either one way or two way, you’ll need to have an identifier to work with as the task name is not necessarily unique.

So your Zap might look like:

• Trigger: Task updated in Asana.
• Action: Find task by source in HourStack using the provider asana and task ID from the trigger. This will return the task ID in HourStack.
• Action: Update the task using the ID from the previous action and the task data from the trigger.

You can do that same process in reverse and now you have a 2-way sync. Right now we only store the source provider and ID for tasks, but we’ll be adding the same functionality and Zapier searches for clients, projects, labels, and teams in the near future so you can enable 2-way sync for all of the primary resources we support.

You also have the option of creating the resource if a search does not return a result.

HourStack Zapier Searches

Advanced Features of Zapier

Zapier is an impressive platform and is extremely flexible and powerful once you learn a few tips and tricks. They have extensive documentation which we encourage you to check out, but a few quick tips on advanced features you might find useful with HourStack:

• Multi-step Zaps: For more complex workflows you’ll end up with multiple steps. Those steps might be multiple actions, but they might also be filters and formatters as described below. More about multi-step Zaps.
• Filters: You can add filters to your Zap to limit the actions performed by the Zap based on specific conditions you set. For example, you might want to only create an task when a Google Calendar event contains certain text - such as a client or project name. You can add a filter to stop the Zap from creating tasks for any other calendar events. More about filters.
• Formatters: During your workflow, you might find you need to format the data you are working with. Zapier has several actions specifically designed to format text, dates and times, and numbers. Just insert those formatting steps into your Zap to modify, combine, etc. your data as needed, and then use that output in the next step of your Zap. Learn more about formatting data.

A note about update actions

When using update actions, you’ll need to pass through all relevant fields and not just the fields you want to update. The reason for this is so that you can also remove data. For example, if using the update task action and you want to remove the start time from a task, then you’ll fill all the original fields for the task, but leave the start time blank. That will clear the originally scheduled start time.

You can think of the update actions as a full replacement for the original item; just send through the data you want that item to have moving forward.

Connecting HourStack and Zapier

If you are new to Zapier, you can sign up for a free account to get started. The free account does have limits so you might need a paid plan if your workflows exceed the limits applied by the free plan. You can check out their pricing plans if you need more tasks, quicker update times, or advanced features.

Once logged in, you can create a new Zap in the editor by selecting your trigger and then actions or start by clicking the “Connect HourStack” button on our listing in Zapier.

Zapier has a getting started guide to help you set up your first Zap as well.

• What is Zapier?
• What is a Zap?
• Zapier Triggers
• Zapier Actions
• Advanced Features of Zapier
• A note about update actions
• Connecting HourStack and Zapier