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Zapier Central: AI chat meets the power of Zapier to give you easy, powerful automation.

by | Sep 2, 2024 | Zapier

Featured image for Solvaa blog post "Zapier Central: AI chat meets the power of Zapier to give you easy, powerful automation."
Zapier Central is the latest Zapier AI feature, which brings the ease of ChatGPT-like AI interactions to the realm of automation. Whether it’s drafting an email, summarising webpage content, or triggering sophisticated workflows with simple prompts, this tool is designed to make your life easier. In this post, we explore the key features of Zapier Central.

Zapier Central is in Beta and features may change

 

What is Zapier Central?

Zapier Central is a feature that allows you to create AI-powered ‘bots’ that can do everything from answering text prompts to performing actions in connected apps. You can name the bots and give them specific instructions (e.g. “You are a virtual assistant, your tone is polite and friendly”). If you have a Zapier account, you can try it for free, and if you need some assistance getting started, check out the Zapier Central help guides.

 

Zapier Central bots work in much the same way as ChatGPT, you type in a prompt and the AI will answer it. Like ChatGPT, you can ask it questions, have it generate text for you, and you can add files that the bot can use as a data source.

 

If you add a data source to the bot, you can then use the text prompts to ask the bot questions about the data. For example, I gave my bot a Google Sheet containing data about how many lessons students had completed in the Solvaa Automation Academy. I asked the bot to tell me which students hadn’t yet completed any lessons and it was able to give me a list of names, broken down by the team they’re in.
A screenshot showing a response from a Zapier Central bot when asked to interpret the data in a spreadsheet.
Although that’s a neat trick, it’s nothing that ChatGPT can’t do. The real power of Zapier Central lies in its Actions and Behaviors.

 

 

Actions – using Zapier AI to get things done

If you’ve built a Zap, you’ll be very familiar with the Actions in Zapier Central. Once set up, they allow you to perform actions (e.g. send an email, create a calendar event) in the selected app. To set up an Action, you choose your app (e.g. Google Drive), your app connection (which account you want to use) and the action (e.g. Find File). In this example, I asked the bot to find a number of files in my Google Drive, and it did so very successfully:
A screenshot from a conversation with a Zapier Central bot. It shows the user asking the bot to find a number of files in GDrive that match a specific criteria and the bot finding them.

While this is helpful, the real power comes when you combine Actions together. Having found the list of files I needed, I asked the bot to create a draft email for me, including a link to the files in the email:

A screenshot from a chat with a Zapier Central bot. It shows an email drafted by the bot based on information gathered from previous prompts.
Finally, I asked the bot to send the email, and the whole process of finding the files, creating and sending an email took only a few minutes. Compare that with the hassle of searching through different folders in Google Drive, getting the links for all the files, creating an email and adding the links, and Zapier Central could certainly save you a lot of time!

 

 

Zapier Central Behaviors – building workflows with words

Behaviors are like Zaps that your Zapier Central bot will run. You can trigger them with an app, the same way that you would with a Zap, or with a message to your bot. If you want your Behavior to carry out an action in an app, you need to add that to the ‘Behavior actions’ section when you set up the Behavior.

 

A screenshot from Zapier central showing the options available when setting up a Behavior.
The ‘instructions’ you give to a Behavior tells it what to do when it is triggered. You can write this in natural language, and the Behavior will interpret what this means. In other words, it allows you to create something very close to a Zap simply by writing a prompt. Of course, as with all AI, you may need to tweak your prompt to get the output you need, so it’s important to test your Behavior before publishing it.

 

 
If the Behavior isn’t ‘behaving’ as you’d like, you can either tweak the prompt, or look at the options in any actions that you’ve added to it. For example, if you add a ‘Send email’ action, you can have the Zapier AI choose the values for things like the to address and from name, or you can add your own value.

 

 

The Chrome extension – bringing Zapier AI to your browser

The Zapier Central Chrome extension allows you to access any bots you’ve created from your Chrome browser. That means that if you created a bot with a specific Behavior, you can trigger that Behavior at any time from within your browser.

 

 
In addition to being a quick way to access your bots’ Actions and Behaviors, you can use the Chrome extension as your Zapier AI browser sidekick. In seconds, you can summarise the information on a webpage, translate it or analyse the images on a page.
A screenshot showing the Zapier central Chrome extension open in a browser.
Adding Actions to bots that you access in the Chrome browser takes things up another notch. Let’s say you’re looking for a new coffee maker for the office. You’ve found one that you like and need to send it to your accounting manager for approval. You type the following prompt into the Zapier Central assistant:
“Send an email to Shonda. Ask her what she thinks of the coffee machine on this webpage for the office. Include a link to this webpage and summarise the benefits of this option for her.”

 

The bot will then summarise the information from the page you’re on and send an email to your intended recipient. All without you leaving the page!

 

One word of warning – the Zapier AI is sometimes too keen with actions. For example, I tried the above prompt but said “draft an email” and the bot ignored my instruction to draft the email and went straight to sending it! You’re also relying on the bot to pick up details like who the email should be sent to, the ‘from’ name, etc. from the prompt that you give it. So, it’s important to be specific with your prompts.

 

Summary

Zapier Central is a handy tool that gives you an AI assistant at your fingertips. Combining AI prompts with data sources and Zap actions gives a lot of potential to the feature.

 

That said, it’s not perfect and it’s important to test Zapier Central before unleashing it on crucial tasks. As with any generative AI tool, remember that it may get facts wrong so don’t always take everything it says as fact.

 

Zapier Central is still in beta, so it’ll be interesting to see how it develops before Zapier decides to fully release it. In the meantime, it’s certainly fun to play with and with a bit of time to set it up, it can be a useful AI assistant for you.

Solvaa: Strategy, Solutions, Support, Education

UK-based Solvaa® is a systems, process and automation consultancy specialising in improving business workflows. Solvaa® works with SMEs worldwide to implement digital tools, better processes, use business process automation and generative AI to boost productivity, enhance lead management, and remove unnecessary time, costs and hassles from stretched business owners’ days.

We help you simplify and streamline existing processes, integrate your business tools to make data transfer more efficient, and automate manual tasks. Our business process automation specialists have extensive experience using multiple cloud-based business tools, including Zapier, Pipedrive CRM, SmartSuite, Xero, Google Suite, ClickUp, Asana, Airtable, Hubspot, Active Campaign, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Quickbooks and many more. We are Zapier Certified Experts, SmartSuite Certified Partners, Pipedrive Certified Partners and Xero Certified Advisors. We also educate teams about using AI in their daily roles, mindset, governance and strategy in our Solvaa AI Academy.

Solvaa® was founded in 2016 by Kelly Goss, a no-code solutions architect, business process automation specialist and author of Automate It with Zapier (first edition) and Automate It with Zapier and Generative AI (second edition).

A thought leader on business process automation and digital adoption, Kelly attended an invite-only Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the UK government at No.10 Downing Street, providing insights and recommendations on how SMEs can benefit from productivity gains by using digital technologies, automation and AI. She has also been invited to speak at the House of Lords and at many other events.

Contact us today to find out how Solvaa can help your business make big savings on operational costs and time, and significantly increase productivity.

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