Setting Up Vanilla in Zapier
When you choose to use Vanilla to create a Zap, it will ask you to connect your Vanilla app. You should be able to easily connect your app by following these instructions.
Enter your site URL
Enter your site's full URL, in this format: https://{yourdomain}.com.
Setting up your Access Token
You need to provide Zapier with an Access Token so that they can authenticate your connection. To do this, navigate to the profile/tokens page.
Click on the "Generate New Token" button. In the popup window that appears, provide a name for your token (e.g., "Zapier") and press the "Generate" button.
This will generate your access token, which you can copy and paste into the Access Token field when you connect your Vanilla app to Zapier.
Setting up your Secret
You need to provide Zapier with a "secret" to secure your webhooks. We recommend that you create your secret string the exact same way you create your Access Token. Just generate a new token (naming it something like "Zapier secret") and paste the generated string into the "Secret" field in when connecting your app to Zapier. That way, if your a webhook associated with Zapier is accidentally edited, you can copy and paste the stored string from you tokens page back into your webhook's secret field. Whichever way you choose to create your secret string, it must be at least 20 characters long.
More about Secrets
The secret string you provide Zapier is stored on Vanilla's side on each webhook's settings page.
DO NOT ALTER THE SECRET STRING. If you do, your Zaps will no longer work.
However, if for some reason you do alter the secret string and your Zap no longer functions, you can (as mentioned above) retrieve the string from your tokens page and paste it into the webhook's "Secret" field. Otherwise, you will need to reconnect your Vanilla app through the Zapier site. This should restore your Zap's functionality.
Triggers and Actions
Zaps usually comprise 2 steps: a trigger and an action. Triggers are the first step and are what "trigger" actions. Actions are the events that are performed whenever a trigger occurs.
Let's say we have a Zap set up to send out a tweet every time a new discussion is posted in Vanilla. In this case, the "trigger" is the new discussion posted in Vanilla and the "action" is the tweet. The two steps are visualized in Zapier like this:
You can read more about these terms and other Zapier terminology and "key concepts" here.
We will be adding more triggers as we develop our Zapier integration further.
Vanilla's Triggers
These are our current triggers and, for those that can be filtered, the fields you can filter them by:
- Discussion Added -- triggers whenever a new discussion is posted. Filterable by: category, discussion type.
