Twelve Days of Integrations: Zapier

It’s that time of year again, though it may not quite feel it. The leaves have taken their time falling from the trees, department stores are playing “Happy Holidays” on a loop to almost entirely empty rooms, and I’m wearing a big pink hat I bought on Etsy last month because it makes not leaving my house feel slightly more festive.

To celebrate, Shortcut is highlighting twelve of our integrations with a detailed write up alongside their own little digital snow globes. We hope you return every day to enjoy these posts alongside your tinglers and fuzzles, your dafflers and wuzzles, and your delicious pot (or Beyond meat) roasts  

Our ninth featured integration is one that expands the numbers of tools you can integrate with. Zapier.

Our integration with Zapier is arguably the ultimate integration in that it’s an integration whose sole purpose is to make it easier to integrate Shortcut with other tools. We’re talking levels upon levels upon levels of integrating here. We’re through the looking glass. That’s so meta. Etc.

Aside from the incredible opportunity this provides to say some variation on the word integration three times in every sentence, the power of our integration with Zapier is how it enables you to not only connect Shortcut to the over 2000 tools Zapier supports, but to also use use our APIs and Zapier webhooks to build on top of those connections and create something even more powerful for your own workflow (a topic we'll dive deeper into in on our 12th Day of Integrations).

Does Shortcut already make it easy to integrate popular tools into your own workflow? Absolutely.

Does this make it even easier by expanding the number of possibilites? Absolutely.

Are we only typing questions here that we can answer with absolutely? Nope. That was just a coincidence.

How does it work?

The Shortcut Zapier integration currently allows you to create Shortcut stories from a defined Zapier Trigger. Here's how you set it up:

Linking Shortcut to Zapier

In Shortcut, click on your profile icon in the lower left, navigate Settings > API Tokens and create a token for the Zapier integration. Copy this token.

Go to your Zapier dashboard, and navigate to the My App section to locate the recently linked Shortcut app.You will then be asked to enter the API token from the Shortcut Workspace. Paste the token copied in step 1 here:You will then be asked to enter the API token from the Shortcut Workspace. Paste the token copied in step 1 here:

You will then be asked to enter the API token from the Shortcut Workspace. Paste the token copied in step 1 here:

After this, you should see the Shortcut app linked to your Zapier account:

Make a Zap with the Shortcut App

Click the "Make a Zap!" button on the top right corner. You'll need to set up a "Trigger" and an "Action", which is currently scoped to creating a new Shortcut Story.

We'll create an example trigger that uses Gmail.

After you select the source trigger app and the desired event, you'll move to step 2 and choose the Shortcut app:

You'll be able to format your created Stories however you want. Story Name and Project are the only required fields but you can also choose to specify the Epic, add a description, and choose the Story type.

Once this is done, you'll be prompted to Test & Continue the Zap. After the test, you'll see:

This test should have successfully created a story via Zapier. Go check it out in Shortcut!

We now need to turn this zap on so that this can all happen automatically. Simply click on Retest & Continue after the test has been performed:

This will now take you to the screen to turn on the Zap!

And you're all done! With Shortcut + Zapier you can integrate us with other tools until you're blue in the face or grow out little, pointy elf ears.