Zapier: How to select accounts dynamically/programmatically - zapier

A lot of Zapier steps have "Choose account" as the second configuration section ("Choose app & event" --> "Choose account" --> "Set up actions" --> "Test action").
Is there any way to select the account dynamically? We want to be able to use the account that corresponds to conditions determined earlier in the zap (i.e. using a value from the output of a step). Right now, we have to manually select the account from the list of connected accounts, and there seems to be no way to change it during the zap.
Which means for each new account that we manage, we have to copy the entire zap just to change the selected account. And then we have an ever growing list of zaps to manage (every change needs to be repeated for every single account/zap).
Background: Our company manages a growing number of accounts -- let's use Twitter accounts as an example. We use Zapier to update these accounts (ex: send out a new tweet) based on some triggers & conditions. Imagine managing hundreds of accounts this way; it's not scalable.
And please don't tell me about Paths. That is not a scalable solution either, and it's limited to only 3 paths (it can be increased to 10, but that's no better).
We're also aware that Zapier has a limit of 2,000 app connections. That's a problem we'll deal with later.
EDIT: We're also considering using an external service to update the accounts (ex: send out the new tweets), so we'd be open to suggestions in that regard. Worst case scenario, we'll build a small custom API to perform the updates on any specified account, and Zapier will call that API instead of performing the updates directly on a specific account.

This is not currently possible - the params of all steps in a zap (selected account, field mappings, input field values, etc) are all locked in at zap creation time.
This is cool feedback though! Definitely worth reaching out to Zapier support about if you haven't.

Related

Lookup Twitter Spaces created by accounts I follow

According to this page,
you can lookup Spaces created by accounts followed by a specific user. Given a single user ID, a dedicated endpoint will traverse the user’s followings and return live or upcoming Spaces created by any of these users.
I would like to check periodically for Spaces scheduled by any of the ~10k accounts I follow, but I can't find the "dedicated endpoint."
Unfortunately this is an error in the Twitter developer documentation - this functionality does not exist in the API. You'd need to build this via a much more manual process of calling the lookup endpoint by creator ID - the endpoint can support up to 100 user IDs at a time, so that will take some time to cover your larger number of accounts followed.
(side note, I've asked for the documentation to be updated to correct this confusing statement)

Options for combining multiple Amazon Lex bots

I work in a large enterprise where multiple teams are developing Lex bots (on separate accounts). Each bot supports a different domain or application,. In some cases, it would be nice for a single user interface to ask a question without needing to know which bot to ask. Is there a way to federate bots, or to forward un-recognized intentions to 'backup' bots?
I feel like what I really want to do is treat each bot as a skill is treated in Alexa, except I'm in the position (through entitlements) to know which 'skills' would be appropriate for a given user.
The answer here is that you would need to develop a custom application that delivers a user's input to each of your company's array of bots.
You'd need to look at the NLU Confidence score from each Bot's response to decide which response is the most accurate to return to the user. Would also be worthwhile keeping some state in your app to remember which Bot the user is currently interacting with and defaulting to that Bot for successive user inputs. Should you reach a point where the confidence score is low, it might present a signal to you to test the user's input across the other Bots.
What you'll need to be aware of here is that your costs will increase with each additional Bot that you add. So, assuming you have 5 area-specific Bots, one inbound message from your user could result in 5 Lex calls. As you start moving into significant volumes of interactions, this could start proving to be an obstacle.
An alternative would be to use a custom fallback intent to invoke a Lambda function that calls your Bot orchestration function. Assuming that you're able to find the correct Bot to handle the user's query, you'd need to remember that so succesive messages now get routed to that Bot.

TFS 2012 Add custom Dictionary

We're about to implement TFS 2012 and I've been having some fun customizing some work items to aid us in our reporting. One issue we have is our reporting based on clients.
Our Product Backlog Items keep our requirements, however, we need to report our requirements per client (government regulations). Some requirements will affect all clients, some will only reflect certain ones. I've been able to add a global list of clients along with a multi-select option and that part is working great.
The issue is we need to also note the requirement number for each selected client. I know I can go in and add a field for each 'Client Requirement', but as that list gets bigger, that screen will be insanely huge.
Does anybody know of such a way to implement something of the sort?
One option would be to create a custom Work Item Type for Clients. Then link your PBI's to the appropriate client WI's. When you create a link you can enter a link comment also which you could use to capture the client-specific requirement number.
I would create a custom "Client Requirement" work item that has the list of clients to select and includes a field for Client ID. You can then either use the related link type or create your own, maybe "Implements \ Implemented By" so that you can create a Reporting Services report that pulls the ID's

Access Transactions in Quickbooks Online

I'm using trying to interface with Quickbooks Online for an internal application that will push and pull transactions using qbXML. My problem is that I can't figure out which message I need to send in order to list and add the items listed under the "Banking" > "Registers" page. I've gone through the messages listed in the Onscreen Reference for Intuit Software Development Kits and none of them seem to give me this information.
Also, does anyone know of a list that explains what each message does?
If you're in a bank account register, you're writing checks. There are 3 kinds of checks in QuickBooks:
Expense checks - if you added a check directly in the register window, you would be adding an expense check.
Bill payment checks - these appear in a check register, but you can only add them with a bill payment operation.
Payroll checks - these appear in the check register, but they can only be added using the Intuit Payroll Service or by enabling manual payroll (almost no one does manual payroll in actual practice, but it is good to know about for testing purposes).
The first 2 types of checks have their own message type: the Add/Mod Check and Add/Mod BillPayment messages respectively. Payroll checks can't be added by the SDK. You can query all 3 types using a Transaction query message. I should also mention that it's possible to add an entry in any register using a journal entry, but that's not a good idea unless you are certain you know what you're doing.
I hate to tell you this, but the best reference for QuickBooks messages is the one you're already using. There are also XML files in the <sdk root>\docs directory that describe SDK operations. But there is really no substitute for understanding how QuickBooks operates from a user's perspective.
If you're going to be working with QuickBooks integration, it's a good idea to make friends with one or more QuickBooks Pro Advisors so you can run these kinds of issue by them. The relationship is generally mutually beneficial, since QuickBooks Pro Advisors often find it handy to have access to an SDK programmer.

Query for open tasks in Asana

We're looking at using Asana to combine CRM, administration and issue tracking in a web dev firm. The key feature we need is a view of the "next actions" or "top [1|2|3] priorities" across all projects in a workspace, irrespective of who they are assigned to. It seems Asana does not provide this out of the box (is that right?) so I am looking into writing API queries to pull this out into a dashboard of our own.
I understand you don't want to let people pull ALL tasks in one workspace, as it may grow, but is there a way to pull out the top few open tasks in each project, without having to specify the assignee?
(I work for Asana)
Currently, the API allows you to grab all tasks in a project, see https://asana.com/developers/api-reference/projects. It will return them in ranked order (the same as they would show up in the Asana UI), however it won't limit them to some number; you'll have to get them all. Limits and pagination are on our roadmap to enable developers to work more efficiently with larger projects and workspaces.
So, it seems like you'd want to grab all projects, then iterate through them and query all tasks - this will give you their name and ID by default. If you want more detail for the ones you're going to show, then I recommend querying the details on each of those tasks individually.

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