zapier

Hi Bernard. That's an interesting topic! Could you tell me more about the Zap you are trying to set up? As far as I know the regular trigger-action Zaps don't include custom fields indeed, but by using Webhooks by Zapier, for example, you can pull that information along with other task details. So I'd love to learn the details of your workflow to see if there's a way we can do that.

Hi Sergey, Yes, since working with Appsheet, we have been able to get our product configurator into an app, and expanded it further to generate quotations on the fly while out and about. Still early days, but it's fun trying.

We have 20 or so workflows in Wrike across all departments. One of those involves the logging of our Sales orders. We have an ERP system, however, for communications around specific sales orders, we use Wrike. It is also a carrier to tag other tasks, for example, production issue, supplier issue, etc. This system has developed into a means for our accounts,  product managers, etc to see what is happening throughout the process, as each stage has a status. and the sales order moves from status to status using the board view. We have production meetings, sales meetings, finance meetings, and the same Wrike workflow is central to all these. Truely collaborative and transparent. 

In the custom fields, we other useful information (contract value etc), and I was trying to connect google sheet to the related Wrike folder so that I could check via an app what the status of an order was, and also get some general metrics, like ship values, etc. Our ERP doesn't allow us to do this through an App, while the Wrike app is ok, but not for something so specific. 

What we need to do is get the custom fields across into a google sheet for all task (sales orders) in the folder. From there, I can try out some magic.

I have heard of web hooks but never used them. 

That's the synopsis. 

That's a great example of how Wrike can be used! I'd like to clarify a couple of additional details if you don't mind.

Did you set it up initially with new tasks as triggers? My concern here is that at the beginning the fields must be empty so there wouldn't be much for Zapier to work with when a task is created.

My other question is do they remain constant, i.e. will a single transfer of information from Wrike to your app be enough, or would it need to be updated periodically to reflect any changes?

In the meantime I'll try to set something like that up and keep you posted.

Very good point. I hadn't thought of that. :-(

Yes, it would need to be updated, once a day would be enough. !! Almost a sync somehow.

If it could do a two-way sync, that would be even better, as some of the conditions would be good to update remotely.

One other thing I had raised with Wrike a few month ago, is whether, in the work flow, the assignee (individual or group) can is updated when a task is moved from one status to another. At the moment we move it, then reassign it. 

A proper sync, especially two-way, would be tough to build. I wouldn't say it's impossible but most probably it would require some extensive coding. Zapier's ability to run Python and JavaScript code will probably come in handy here, but I can't say for sure how feasible it is yet.

A trigger-action rule such as changing assignees based on the status change is definitely something Zapier does very well - but it will depend greatly on how complex the actual process is, i.e. how many potential statuses, assignees/groups of assignees are there.

I'll take some more time to play around with both concepts and post my findings here once I have something more definite.

I guessed it would be more problematic to get a two-way sync.

Something you said really caught my eye. Are you saying I can change the status of an assignee based on a status change alert using Zapier? I need to check that out, as that would be great.

Also, I think that if the task in google sheet could be updated based on a status change, in one direction only, then this would be a good start.

Can I say that your support, even at this level, it very much appreciated.

Looks like automating task assignment is not that difficult to set up, however it requires a separate zap for each potential step in the workflow (at least until we find a way to handle control flow in Zapier properly). I've tested the following process: each new task gets automatically assigned to a certain person, and when the status is changed to 'In Progress' two other assignees are added to take over:

This works on two 3-step zaps with identical structure: catch a webhook - use Filter to make sure it's the kind of update we're waiting for - send a PUT request to add the assignees to the task.

I'm still trying to figure out how to send a hook from Wrike.

Doing it this way will involve quite a lot of Zaps, I had hoped that Wrike would add this to their Workflows statuses, clearly simplier for me (and others). :-)

When you use Webhooks by Zapier, it generates a unique URL you can use to set up a webhook in Wrike as described here. The second step would be to use their Filter to act only on the relevant updates (such as a certain status change in our case), and the third would be to send a PUT request to modify the task that has been updated (see here) using the permanent token. By the way if you haven't had much practice with our API yet there's an excellent guide here.

I also agree that having this kind of automation inside Wrike would be pretty awesome. While this is not on the short-term roadmap (as it seems to require building our own automation platform), there are discussions in the Product Feedback section of our Community on the same topic, so it would be great if you upvoted them and shared your perspective in the comments. Our team monitors all the suggestions so the votes and the use cases from our users are very important to help them prioritize future updates. Please take a look at this and this posts.

While what we can do with Zapier may not be the most elegant solution, it does give us an ability to set up truly customizable automations which may not be applicable to every process, but I'm sure there are situations where having something like that would pay off.

2 notes--

First- For 2-way syncing, I've been using Unito which helps me get data OUT of Wrike and into other systems that I can actually use with Zapier. 

Second - Your Zapier integration is pretty bare-bones. Many other services (and competitors) have massively upgraded their options. It's been quite hard to transition all our automations from our previous system (Asana) to our new Wrike account due to the lack of options.

E.g. I can't 'search' for a record
I can't get the values of a wrike record after a successful test to use in later steps
I can't get the URL of a new wrike folder (or use the ID it returns in a URL string)
I can't trigger on a new project folder that's within a sub-folder

This is just a small selection. I'm no coder, but I've been attempting to trigger API calls and such. It's awful and complicated.

Please tell me there is a beta out there or a timeline for an update?

Thanks,
--Noel

Hi Noel! Improving our Zapier integration is not on the short-term roadmap, however our Product Team may give it a higher priority later this year. That is why it would be great if you posted your suggestions in the Product Feedback section of the Community. That way we'll be able to get other users who ask for these features to upvote your posts and keep track of the most popular ones.

In the meantime, I'll be happy to work with you on making your Zaps more versatile using our API. For example, if new Wrike folders are your triggers, here's how you can get their permalinks (= unique URLs):

As the second step you can use Webhooks by Zapier and send a Custom Request with the following parameters:

It'll use the Folder ID from the trigger. To authorize it you'll need to add the Authorization header with your permanent token (without brackets):

After that you can use the data from the second step, and one of the entries, 'Data permalink', will be the URL of the newly added folder:

Hope this helps! If you need to figure out anything else we can discuss it here or open a ticket for you if there is something we need to troubleshoot.

Hi Noel - You left a great comment! I work at an iPaaS company called Azuqua! We have an app library with over 200+ pre-built app connectors including Wrike. If you're interested in discussing integration I'd be happy to schedule a call or you can reach me at my email Cameron@azuqua.com.

Hi @Sergey,  I never left feedback on your zapier sample before, but just pulled it back up and successfully used the webhook calls!! WOOOOOO. So for anyone reading this chain, try what Sergey posted AFTER you set up a Permanent Access Token from the Wrike App Console. Then off to the races!

Hi Noel, thank you so much for posting this! It's really amazing to hear that you found it useful. Our API combined with Zapier's tools offers a lot of possibilities and knowing that one more person takes advantage of that makes my day!

😎On a side note, Zapier wrote me back with this (heavy-hinting) suggestion for YOU regarding Wrike Actions.

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"I took a peek and found that Wrike does not provide a response from the Create Task Action. Providing data back from an Action is not required, although it is a best practice we recommend." - Zapier Support

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.... It's hard to use your current integration to action off of other triggers and then not actually get any data back to do things with said data... like capture the task ID!

Any chance you can provide how to POST with a webhook? 

Thanks,

--Noel

That is a good point! I'll make sure to point it out to the Product Team - I can see how this can be a problem in multi-step Zaps. Good news is you absolutely can create tasks via API and Webhooks by Zapier:

Selecting POST as the action compared to Custom Request even allows working with data in a more convenient way: you can see how in my test I'm passing a title and a description into the new task. You can see the full list of available parameters in our documentation. Throw in the usual Authorization header and you should be good.

The response to this contains all kinds of information, including the task ID for next steps and the permalink (which you can email or push into a chat etc.) Let me know how it works for you!

Fantastic! Thank you SO much Sergey! 🙌

Hi Sergey!

I'm new on wrike and creating a custom API in Zapier, same use case with Bernard. I'd like to reach out to you regarding zapier webhooks and how you connect it on wrike, best to discuss on separate email. how can I reach out to you? 

Thanks!

Hi Glaiza Imutan, welcome to the Community! I've created a ticket with our Support Team and one of our experts will contact you shortly to help you with this 👍

Also, I'd like to mention that you can check our New to Community forum to discover all the resources you can find in our Community 🙂