October 2017 Summaries

Hotjar, a remote company, relies on communication and the use of automation tools like Zapier to work efficiently as a team. With employees spread across four continents, Hotjar uses Zapier for Teams and Shared Folders to reduce manual work and boost cross-team productivity. By automating workflows, such as connecting their content management system (CMS) with billing software, Hotjar was able to save its finance team a ton of manual time collecting information. The company believes that automation tools like Zapier empower teams to identify gaps in efficiency and create systems to improve them. By using Zapier for Teams, Hotjar is able to navigate the challenges of remote work and maintain collaboration and efficiency in their processes.

Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform, was struggling with manual work and siloed teams, which hindered collaboration and efficiency. To address this, they adopted an automation tool called Zapier for Teams, which allowed them to centralize data and automate tedious processes. With Zapier, Indiegogo was able to streamline their workflows, breaking down barriers between teams and improving communication with customers. The company's Director of Inside Sales, Garrett Grohman, credits Zapier with simplifying tasks, increasing productivity, and enabling him to work more efficiently. By automating repetitive tasks and integrating different applications, Zapier has helped Indiegogo scale processes as they grow, while fostering a culture of collaboration and open data sharing.

With multiple responsibilities and shared tasks among team members, Customer.io aimed to eliminate duplicate work and foster collaboration using app automation tool Zapier for Teams and its Shared Folders. The company leveraged Formatter and Webhooks to standardize data in different formats across various applications, including Slack, Livestorm, Clearbit, Close.io, FormKeep, and Customer.io. This enabled the team to streamline workflows, increase productivity, and provide a clean and uniform marketing reporting and analytics experience. By sharing ownership of Zaps and utilizing Zapier's features such as Shared Folders and Formatter, Customer.io was able to create efficient automation workflows that promoted collaboration and reduced manual tasks.

Collaboration is crucial as companies grow rapidly, but communication can break down easily. Lucidchart, a company that has grown 49% this year, understands the importance of collaboration and has built its product to facilitate it. The company uses Shared Folders in Zapier to maintain cross-team communication and keep different departments collaborating. With multiple Zaps, they have optimized the flow of information between the marketing and sales teams, resulting in a better chance of success for the company. Lucidchart also uses webhooks with Zapier to automate tasks such as creating new leads in Salesforce and building customer support tickets in Zendesk. This has improved their lead generation and customer support processes, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives. The company's use of automation tools like Zapier has enabled collaboration across teams and departments, making it easier for the marketing and sales teams to work together effectively.

Zapier for Teams has helped Intercom's Product Education team streamline their workflow by automating the process of updating product documentation and collaborating with customer support teams. With Zapier, they can create efficient workflows and collaborate across department lines using Shared Folders, which allows anyone with access to the team account to edit Zaps or build new ones. This has saved them around 4 hours every week in manual work, allowing them to prioritize and correct updates more efficiently. The integration of Typeform form responses with Trello project management tool has also improved their ability to gather customer feedback and improve help articles based on customer input.

Mode Analytics uses app automation tool Zapier to create efficient workflows, automating tasks such as creating leads in Marketo from multiple sources, sending team updates in Slack, and sharing responsibility for workflow creation among the team through Shared Folders. By using Zapier's features, Mode saves time on manual data entry and imports, reduces errors, and improves communication across the company. The company's collaboration on workflows has increased productivity and allowed them to focus on higher-value initiatives.

The challenges of customer support are mitigated by the camaraderie and collaboration that naturally develops within successful teams. Streak's growth and customer success team, led by Andrew Stewart, leverages Zapier to automate manual tasks and build connections between teams. By using Shared Folders in Zapier for Teams, they can share folders with entire departments or specific team members, making collaboration efficient and easy. The team automates tasks such as creating new leads, accounts, tickets, and sending contacts to drip marketing tools, streamlining their workflow. They also use Zaps to automate updates whenever a Box updates its stage, such as when a bug is fixed, triggering an email notification to the support team. Additionally, they create multi-step Zaps that link customer requests to their Boxes, building complete profiles of customers, and streamline new employee training by creating existing Zaps for new employees to learn from.

The Hotjar team uses Zapier to automate database creation, while Lucidcharts uses it to auto-populate Zendesk and Salesforce with valuable data. Indiegogo trusts Typeform + Zapier for contact management, and Mode Analytics automates lead collection using Zapier. Customer IO minimizes data entry with automated analysis, while a San Francisco non-profit uses Airtable and Zapier to send more students to college. Streak uses Zapier to enrich support requests, InVision saves 10 hours of work a week with efficient design, and Intercom's Product Education Team collaborates with Support using Zapier. These companies benefit from increased productivity, reduced manual labor, and enhanced collaboration with Zapier automation.

The ScholarMatch team uses Gravity Forms to collect feedback from students, which is then sent to an online database tool called Airtable, where they can sort and view the feedback easily. An automated workflow using Zapier allows for quick response to student feedback, enabling the team to conduct quality control, celebrate student achievement, and remain connected to their students as they scale their services. The ScholarMatch team has customized these workflows to notify advisors when new feedback is received, allowing them to monitor situations as they arise and resolve issues promptly.

This article highlights Lindsey Redinger's use of Zapier to automate various tasks in her user research team at InVision, a fully remote company spanning 10 countries. By leveraging app automation tool Zapier, Lindsey has been able to save around 10 hours a week on repetitive tasks and reduce project management time by 25%. She uses Zapier to automate scheduling processes, reminders, and notifications across multiple apps such as Calendly, Airtable, Slack, and Zoom, enabling her team to work smarter and not harder. With these automated workflows, Lindsey's team is able to manage their user research more efficiently, prioritize feature developments, and advocate for product enhancements. The use of Zapier has significantly improved the team's productivity, allowing them to expose insights to designers and product managers in a matter of minutes instead of days.

Zapier's onboarding process for engineers is designed to make new hires feel welcome and integrated into the company culture while equipping them with the necessary tools and knowledge to succeed in their roles. The process begins well before the first day, with preparations such as provisioning accounts, ordering gear, and creating personalized onboarding documents to ensure a smooth start. On the first day, new engineers are introduced to Zapier's operations, values, and communication tools, with a strong emphasis on transparency and collaboration in a remote work environment. The initial week involves face-time with managers and scheduled meetings with various team members, enabling the new hire to gradually understand the company's systems through documentation and practical tasks. As onboarding progresses, engineers engage in more complex projects, participate in "Support School" to learn customer support skills, and eventually meet in person with team members to reinforce connections. Continuous improvements to the onboarding process are pursued, including streamlining dev environment setup and automating training modules, demonstrating Zapier's commitment to enhancing the experience for new employees.

Blissfully, a SaaS monitoring software company, leverages Zapier for lead management by automating the process of collecting form submissions from Ninja Forms on their website, triggering Zaps that notify their growth team and create new contacts in HubSpot CRM with company information, and sending Slack notifications to facilitate quick responses. With this automation-powered workflow, Blissfully aims to provide a better experience for clients while staying ahead of competition.

We've all read about productivity hacks that claim to have the one key secret to supercharged productivity, but many of these hacks damage team efficiency in the long run by focusing on short-term performance over well-being. The Rock, Pebbles and Sand Analogy explains how prioritizing smaller tasks first can lead to no time left for bigger tasks, while Tony Schwartz and David Allen agree that addressing big rocks first is key to a productive day. However, when working with teams or clients, communication tasks cannot be put off, and avoiding emails can prevent colleagues from accessing important information. A better approach is to prioritize tasks by significance, focusing on big strategic decisions over smaller ones, but also checking off smaller tasks to get productivity momentum going. Putting too much pressure on oneself or the team can lead to burnout, with negative effects including depression and anxiety, sleep problems, absenteeism, higher employee turnover, and stress-related accidents. Instead, teams can focus on making work meaningful, providing regular feedback sessions, supporting professional development, streamlining tasks with project sprints and retrospectives, establishing healthy working guidelines, and supporting employee work-life balance through flexible working and well-being opportunities. By adopting these sustainable approaches, teams can achieve productivity without sacrificing their well-being or burnout.

The software landscape has evolved significantly since 1979 when VisiCalc was first introduced as a $99.95 tool for a $1,298 computer that few knew how to use. Today, businesses rely on dozens of programs, including alarm clocks, fitness apps, maps and transit and taxi apps, news and music apps, CRM and ERP software, eCommerce and ePos software, team inbox apps, email marketing tools, chat apps, video calls and chat, social networks, calendar apps, contact management software, document editors, notes apps, online publishing platforms, data storage and manipulation software, design tools, development software, commerce platforms, finance software, task management tools, and more. Each category of software has its own set of specialized apps that cater to specific needs, such as email clients, team inbox apps, customer support or help desk software, marketing automation platforms, transactional email services, chat apps, video conferencing tools, social media management software, calendar apps, contact management software, document editors, notes apps, online publishing platforms, data storage and manipulation software, design tools, development software, commerce platforms, finance software, task management tools, and more. Understanding these categories and specialized apps is essential for individuals to navigate the complex world of software and make informed decisions about their business needs.

FuseChicken, a smartphone accessory company, needed a platform to consolidate its systems, cut down on errors, and increase productivity after rapid growth. They found Airtable, which runs most of their company's operations except for accounting, and later discovered app automation tool Zapier, which connected Airtable to their preferred accounting software Zoho, saving them 40 hours a week and eliminating mistakes. With Zapier, FuseChicken created an efficient sales process using multi-step Zaps that automate tasks such as creating invoices in Zoho and sending notifications to Slack, allowing the team to focus on monitoring while Zapier does the heavy lifting.

Our bodies are predisposed to have high mental alertness at 10am, which is after we wake up, and energy levels drop off in the early afternoon until a predictable crash at around 3pm. To maximize productivity during this time, it's essential to plan for a productive afternoon by stopping when you're ahead on a task, setting minor milestones, and working with your energy levels. This can be achieved by using techniques like Hemingway's hack, setting "guardrails of motivation" such as reminders or work sprints, and making progress on smaller tasks. Additionally, incorporating physical activity, chaos, and winding down at the end of the day through activities like writing a letter to tomorrow you can help boost energy levels and set yourself up for success in the morning.

Graphiq, a graphic design agency from Norway, aims to make the internet look better by outsourcing design requests to a global talent pool without hiring an in-house team. To manage this process, they use app automation tool Zapier to automate their sales workflow, connecting various tools such as Typeform, Slack, HubSpot, Gmail, and Wunderlist. This automated system enables Graphiq's designers to be notified of new projects and streamlines the client onboarding process, saving time for the team to focus on clients and designing beautiful websites.

Zapier heavily relies on open-source software to build and enhance its products, contributing to a continuous cycle of innovation and learning within the developer community. They utilize a variety of open-source projects like Django, Node.js, and React, contributing over 25 projects of their own, which are showcased in their "Open Source at Zapier" directory. Open source is deemed invaluable by Zapier's team for its collaborative nature, allowing developers to learn from existing code and contribute improvements, which fosters a sense of community and advancement in software development. Some highlighted projects include Django Drip for sending personalized emails, the Zapier Platform CLI for building integrations, and the Zapier Transformer for text formatting and transformation. These tools demonstrate Zapier's commitment to open-source collaboration by providing resources for developers to build innovative solutions without starting from scratch, thus encouraging ongoing contributions and improvements to the shared codebase.