How and Why to Integrate Formstack with Zapier

Zapier is, without a doubt, one of the kings of business automation. But, that doesn’t mean other tools aren’t trying to help you automate at least a part of your workflows.

In this quick guide, we’re going to explore Formstack – a popular form and document creation tool. 

Can Formstack Zapier integration help you automate key parts of your sales and marketing funnel? And, if yes, what are some of the areas where it can help you out? 

Let’s find that out – starting with a quick overview of Formstack itself.

What Is Formstack?

Formstack is a robust automation and business productivity platform. Today, it helps over 25,000 businesses worldwide improve their workflows and data collection with:

• A convenient no-code drag-and-drop form builder. Create beautiful, versatile forms with built-in conditional logic in seconds. Take your data collection to new heights.
• Automated document creation with templates and workflows. Create Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, and several other types fully automatically.
• A signature solution that allows you to collect signatures fully remotely – even with an SMS. The tool is compliant with key industry bodies including FDA and HIPAA. 

Each of the above is available as a separate Formstack product. There are also two other products called “Formstack Platform” and “Formstack for Salesforce”. The former combines all three – forms, documents, and signatures – into a powerful  platform. 

The Formstack for Salesforce bundle is a native Salesforce tool. It’s  a must if you want to get the most out of a Salesforce and Formstack integration. Unless, of course, you decide to go with Zapier. 

But, why would you need a Zapier Formstack Integration if the tool is called “the all-in-one workflow automation software”? 

Let’s take a quick look at why it’s worth integrating Formstack with Zapier – even with all its great native integrations. 

Why Integrate Formstack with Zapier?

As of early 2023, Formstack boasts having 100+ integrations. 

But while that number looks impressive, not all those integrations are truly native.

For example, ActiveCampaign, one of the best autoresponders for automation, is available only with the use of webhooks. 

Similarly, while GoTo Webinar is listed as an available integration, you’ll need Zapier to get the most out of it. The same is true for tools like Gmail or Slack – both of which are often used in sales and marketing workflows!

And, if you’re using a third-party tool to collect data for Formstack Documents – you’ll often need Zapier. 

Don’t forget that if you use one Formstack product but not the other, you may not have access to all integrations. With Zapier, you don’t have to worry about missing out on access to certain integrations (as long as you have a paid account).

And these are not the only reasons why it’s worth leveraging a Formstack Zapier integration. 

One of the biggest problems? Most of the time, native integrations are not enough to create workflows that put you ahead of your competitors. 

But, with access to over 5000+ apps, Zapier can give you everything you need. 

And that’s not counting thousands more that you can integrate with Formstack if you use Zapier webhooks. 

Lastly, let’s not forget that integrations were not created equal. Usually, those available in Zapier beat their native counterparts.

The reason is simple – Zapier has been around for a long time, and its team had the time to develop way more options. 

Of course, you still need to be able to leverage them. So let’s take a quick look at the Formstack options that you can find inside Zapier.

Formstack Zapier Triggers and Actions

When adding Formstack to Zapier, you can choose between two different tools – Formstack (forms) and Formstack documents:

The first one is the “core” tool that allows you to process submitted forms. The second one is the document generation tool. Let’s look at how each of them integrates with Zapier.

The forms tool, allows you to trigger the Zap whenever:

–          A new form is created

–          Someone submits a form

That may not seem like not much – just two triggers for a very robust tool. Plus, you probably won’t be using the first trigger that much.

After all, collecting data is a core Formstack feature. The workflows you can create with it include sending data to the tools of your choice or notifying your team about form submission. With the right setup you could even trigger an entire marketing campaign.

And what about Formstack actions?

Interestingly, you can set a Zapier action to create a form submission inside Formstack:

Frankly, this action is something that you probably won’t use at all. Or very rarely, at least compared to the powerful trigger.

Next, let’s look at what you can do with Formstack Documents. There’s just one trigger – a New Merged Document: 

Again, that doesn’t look like much but it’s more than enough to build robust workflows. With the trigger, you can easily send the documents or upload them to cloud storage. You could even tag their recipients in your favorite CRM tools. 

The choice of actions is more generous – five different actions allow you to:

• Combine different files into a single PDF or DOCX
• Convert a given file to a PDF file
• Send data to your Data Route URL. This allows you to then use that data to populate multiple documents.
• Create Document Merge – this lets you send data to your Merge URL and create a document. 
• Extract the field values from a given PDF

These actions can be used in hundreds of different workflows. In fact, they could effectively automate the creation of all kinds of documents. Of course, it’d be close to impossible to try and review them all here. But, there may be no need to.

After all, even just one or two good Zaps can improve your business workflow.

Here are a couple of Zapier Formstack Zaps that you can leverage in your consulting or service-based business today:

Add or Update Records in Your Central Data Hub

This is a core Zap that’s worth incorporating for all apps that collect user data. Whenever someone submits a form, you want to submit their data (or update it) in your central data hub. 

That central data hub serves as your company’s “Single Source of Truth”. That’s where you store all user data before it gets sent to your other tool. It can also be used to trigger many subsequent automation workflows.  

In our case, that central hub is Airtable:

However, depending on your workflow, it can be one of many CRMs or autoresponders. For a small database on a budget, you could even use Google Sheets!

Send a Certificate of Completion

If you’re a course owner, offering a certificate of completion can skyrocket the value of your course. And, as a result, it lets you increase your prices (and boosts your conversion rate).

I’ll tell you a little secret – a Zap like this was the first Zap I ever created back in 2017. I was working as a marketing specialist for a company selling courses. We wanted to automate the generation and handling of our certificates of completion. 

It worked flawlessly.

Once the Zap was up and running, the entire process was fully automated:

Back then, we didn’t use Formstack documents, but the process was quite similar. The exact workflow will depend on the tools that you use and the certificate that you want to generate. 

Of course, there are many alternatives to the above. If you’re a service provider or an agency, you don’t issue certificates. But, you can always use Zapier and Formstack to automate your contract generation. 

Add New Autoresponder Contacts from Formstack Submissions

The next Formstack Zapier automation involves sending user data to an autoresponder. In its simplest form, it looks something like this:

Doing this is key to staying in touch with your audience and building a long-term relationship with them. 

Of course, you could also first check if the record exists in your source of truth. Then, you could either tag them or move them to the right segment (depending on the submission type). 

Why don’t I recommend using one of the built-in Formstack integrations? First, some autoresponders, such as ActiveCampaign, require you to use Webhooks. This makes things more complicated.

Moreover, Zapier gives you access to thousands of apps that you can add to your workflow. Not to mention that most Zapier integrations offer more features. 

Notify the Right Team About a Form Submission

Next, you can consider notifying your team about the Formstack submission. As Formstack lacks easy-to-use Slack integration, Zapier is your go-to choice for notifying your team:

Depending on the submission, you might create different types of notifications:

• A notification for your sales team, when a new sales form was submitted.
• A notification for your support team, whenever someone sends a ticket.
• A notification for your developer team, whenever someone reports a bug.
• A notification for your project management team, to review the submission and assign it to the right person. However, with the right filters, this can also be automated 🙂

And, if you notify the sales team, you might consider blocking some time in your sales team’s calendar. Thanks to the wealth of available calendars, you’ve got plenty of options to choose from:

The final decision on whether you want to do that will depend on the type of Formstack form that triggered the workflow.

Add New to Your Sales Software 

Lastly, let’s not forget that if the submission came in from a sales form, you want to add the prospect to your sales software. Once again, Formstack boasts solid integrations with tools such as Salesforce. In fact, Salesforce could even serve as your aforementioned SSoT – Single Source of Truth. 

But, it’s not the only sales tool out there. Another popular alternative is Pipedrive. If you leverage the Zapier Formstack integration, connecting Pipedrive to the latter is super easy:

And, while Formstack integrates with Pipedrive, the use of Zapier just comes with several added benefits. The main one is the ability to automate consecutive steps of your sales workflow.

Speaking of consecutive steps – let’s look at a sample multi-step Zap that you could build with Formstack and Zapier. 

A Sample Formstack Zapier Workflow for a Service Business

Now that we’ve reviewed sample Zapier Formstack workflows, let’s look at what the entire Zap could look like. 

Here’s a screenshot of a six-step Zap that uses Formstack submission as a trigger: 

Once the Zap gets triggered, we use a filter and look for submissions that the system marked as urgent. The alternative could be to use a separate form. But the filter comes in handy if you want one form to handle different priority submissions.

Next, we ask Zapier to send a Slack notification to the team to let them know about an urgent submission. 

Then, Zapier will create a task and assign it to the person responsible for handling urgent matters.

After that, we need to create or update the record in Airtable. This lets us track that the given user or client has submitted a form. 

The next step is fully optional and depends on the type of submission. If the submission was about an urgent meeting, you can use a Calendar integration to schedule a meeting. This is useful especially if that calendar is connected to a tool like Calendly. 

By adding a meeting to your salesperson’s schedule, you can adjust their availability in your scheduling tool. This prevents double booking and helps ensure a smooth sales experience.

Lastly, the Gmail integration sends an email confirming the entire process. 

And, because Zapier has already assigned the task to the right person, you can make the email more detailed. 

Get More Out of Your Forms with Formstack and Zapier

As you can see, there are many benefits to integrating your Formstack account with Zapier. 

Naturally, the above workflows are there to illustrate what’s possible. There are dozens of Zaps you could create with Formstack as a trigger.

Whether you want to implement one of the above examples or have in mind something of your own, I’m here to help.

Visit this page to talk about your automation needs. 

Take advantage of automation and start spending your time on things that move your business forward.