Welcome to a practical Zapier tutorial! In this guide, we'll walk through automating the granting of the transaction right after a provider has paid a lead fee. Granting transaction rights is a key step of how to implement a lead fee in a reverse marketplace.
By default, transaction rights are granted manually in Console. With Zapier, you can automate this process. Once the payment is confirmed via Stripe, Zapier triggers the user permission update in Sharetribe, automatically granting the user the right to initiate transactions. This automation saves you time and effort by eliminating manual granting of user permissions.
Let’s dive into the technical setup and streamline your marketplace workflow!
What is Zapier?
Zapier is a powerful and versatile tool for integrating different tools into your marketplace. You can learn more about Zapier in our introductory article or through this brief video from Zapier.
If you haven’t read the introduction and the action/event Zapier articles, we encourage you to do so to understand better how Zapier works. But if you want to dive straight into action, feel free to read on!
What do you need for this tutorial?
External accounts
Stripe Payment Page
Set up a Stripe payment page to collect the lead fees. This page will handle the payments before automatically granting the transaction right.
Zapier Account
Create a Zapier account if you don’t already have one. You can sign up at www.zapier.com.
During registration, Zapier may ask which apps you plan to use. You can enter Sharetribe at this point or add it later.
How to set up your marketplace
Lead fees are typically used by reverse marketplaces to charge providers for the ability to contact leads. Your marketplace must be configured in a certain way to support a reverse marketplace and the resulting Zapier automation.
Here is how you should set things up in brief:
Enable restrict transaction rights feature
Ensure that the restrict transaction rights feature is enabled in your Sharetribe marketplace.
Dynamic Parameters Set Up
Add the User_ID and Email Address as dynamic parameters to the transaction rights CTA button. This is crucial to ensure that the correct User ID and email address are fetched during the Zap process so the correct user gets granted the transaction rights.
Marketplace Activity
Your Sharetribe marketplace (test or live) should have at least one user who doesn't have transaction rights so that Zapier can perform the action of granting this right and test whether this works. If you don’t have any recent users, create one now to ensure there’s data for Zapier to process.
With these requirements met, you’re ready to get started! Let’s begin.
Getting your Integration API key from Sharetribe Console
You'll need Integration API keys to connect your Sharetribe marketplace to Zapier.
Navigate to Build > Advanced > Applications
Click on "+ Add a new application"
Give the application a descriptive name (like Zapier), and select "Integration API".
Click "Add application".
Important: Copy and paste the Client ID and Client secret to a safe place, like a password manager.
Think of the Client ID and secret as passwords to your marketplace that can be used through other services. Note that you won’t be able to ever see the Client secret to this application again in the Console under any circumstances. Make sure you copy it to a secure place. If you lose it, you will need to create a new application.
Creating the Zap, step by step
(Optional) Importing the Zap template
Go to www.zapier.com and log in with your account (or create a free one if you don't already have one)
Open the pre-made Zap for automatically granting the transaction right here.
Click on "Try this Zap."
Step 1: Find the payment in Stripe
First, locate the payment in Stripe that will be used as the trigger for granting the transaction right to a user in Sharetribe.
In the Setup section, select the Stripe as the app
Select "Checkout Session Completed" as the Trigger event
Connect the Stripe account where you have you’ve set up the lead fee payment page/ product.
Click Continue to move to the Configure section
Select "True" in the would you like to use test mode data for the test sample field.
Click Continue to move to the "Test" section
Test the trigger, and make sure it finds a recent Stripe payment. You can perform a Stripe payment in Test mode (Learn how here).
Test payments in Stripe (payments using test credit card credentials and the test checkout page) do not work as triggers in Zapier. This means you will not be able to test the fully automated workflow while Stripe is in Test mode. Only Live mode payments on a live checkout page can trigger a Zap. Nevertheless, you can use Stripe’s test data only if you are finding the record it creates in Zapier manually while testing your Zap.
Step 2: Grant transaction rights
Once the Zap is triggered by Stripe after a successful payment, the next step is to update the corresponding user's permission in Sharetribe, and grant them the transaction right.
In the Setup section, select Sharetribe as the app
Select "Update permissions" as the Action event
Connect your Sharetribe account
Click Continue to move to the Configure tab
Add "Client reference ID" as the User ID.
Select "True" in Permission to initiate transactions. Leave the other options unchecked
Click Continue to move to the "Test" section
Test this action to confirm that Zapier grants the transaction right to the correct user on your marketplace
Note: Users are not automatically notified when they're granted the transaction rights. You'll need to collect details about the user to send them an email notification.
Step 3: Collect user details
In the Setup section, select Sharetribe as the app.
Select "Show user" as the Action event.
Connect your Sharetribe account.
Click Continue to move to the Configure section.
Select "User ID" in the User ID.
Select "No" in Should this step be considered a success if no search results are found?
Click Continue to move to the "Test" section.
Test the trigger and make sure it shows all the information related to that user (such as the first name).
Step 4. Notify user about being granted the transaction rights
In the Setup section, select Gmail, or any Zapier-supported email tool you use for sending notifications email notifications from your marketplace.
Select "Send email" in Action event.
Connect your email account.
Click Continue to move to the Configure section.
Select "User Email" in the To/ receiver email address field.
Fill in the "From" and "From name" with your marketplace email address and name, and add a Subject title.
Select plain in the body type.
In the Body field, write the message you want to communicate to your users when they have been approved to the marketplace. You can add variables by clicking on the + icon such as the User profile first name. For example, you could write the following:
Hi
Thank you for your payment!
You can now initiate transactions on the marketplace.
Best regards,
The Marketplace team
Final thoughts
Thanks for reading this tutorial about creating a Zap for your Sharetribe marketplace to automatically grant transaction rights to a user after the lead fee is paid!
There is a companion tutorial for automating the revoking of transaction rights after they are used by the provider. Follow our Zapier tutorial to set it up.
You can also learn more about the possibilities to monetize with one-time fees or possibilities to monetize with subscriptions.
Feel free to read through other parts of our Zapier guide as well: the Introduction and the article about Events and Actions. We also have tutorials and templates for various different Zaps available, including SMS notifications, digital calendar invites, and more. You can read about all our templates in this article.
Please get in touch with us from your Console or from the bottom right section of this page from the chat widget if you have any questions about this guide, or anything else. We'll be happy to help!