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Gasper Vidovic on May 23, 2016 (last modified on August 1, 2016) • 4 minute read
We’ve always nurtured an open culture at Databox, where all knowledge, experience and different points of view are encouraged to spread freely. And we think the same when it comes to our product. Not only do we want to build a platform with many connectors available out-of-the-box, but we also want to enable connecting to other systems that already integrate with hundreds of services.
Zapier came to our attention a while ago when we started to automate some of the tasks we were doing on a regular basis. It provides a simple service that allows you to connect with 650+ products and with minimal technical skills required.
We have several zaps live that help us synchronize our user data between Intercom, Mailchimp and some other services. In its own definition, Zapier connects the web apps you use to easily move your data and automate tedious tasks. So why not move your data into Databox as well?
Zapier acts as a universal data connector that will bridge the gap between Databox and other products. You can send various metrics and events to Databox via Zapier and register them as datapoints that will show up on any visualization you choose.
OK, let’s show it off with an example.
To get started, you’ll first need to get your token in Databox. You can do that bycreating a new Zapier connection in our web application. This will generate a unique push token that will allow Zapier to send data to your Databox account.
Now switching over to Zapier, where you start by creating a new Zap. For a demo trigger, we’ll be using Test Email by Zapier, a built-in service from Zapier that will trigger every time an email is sent to a custom @zapiermail.com address.
In a real-life scenario, your trigger can be any event you want to observe and keep track of in Databox. For example: every time you get a new user in Intercom, a new email subscriber in Campaign Monitor, or maybe a new transaction in Stripe.
The next step is to define the action that follows that trigger. Databox has a pretty straightforward logic with Zapier. Every action that is triggered in a Zap will count as one event and will increment the current daily value, stored under that key in Databox.
On the next step you’ll be required to select an existing Databox account in Zapier or create a new one. To create a new one just use the push token that you generated earlier in the Databox platform.
On the last step, you’ll need to choose a name for your metric, e.g. ‘Incoming email count’ and test the action you’ve just set up.
Turn your Zap on and the data will be pushed to Databox!
Going back to Databox. To display the data that will be pushed from Zapier you’ll need to create a visualization (called ‘Datablock’ – click here to read more about adding and modifying Datablocks).
Here are the steps to do so:
And that’s it! To play more with the data gathered from Zapier, just check out the Advanced settings popup where you’ll have all the options you need (changing the granulation, aggregation, format, scaling, etc.). Click here to read more about that.
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