Welcome to a practical Zapier tutorial! In this guide, we'll walk through revoking a user's transaction right after they made a transaction. Specifically, we imagine a provider in a reverse marketplace who paid the lead fee, used their purchased ability, and now we update the marketplace to revoke their right to reach out to another lead, until they pay another lead fee. This is the final step to monetizing a reverse marketplace with lead fees.
By default, transaction rights are revoked manually in Console. With Zapier, you can automate this process. Once a transaction is made, Zapier triggers the user permission update in Sharetribe, automatically revoking the user the right to initiate future transactions.
IMPORTANT: After a transaction is made, the transaction rights are revoked automatically, but not instantly. The speed of the automation depends on how quickly Zapier polls your marketplace for updates.
The time it takes Zapier to get new information from your marketplace is called the 'polling time' and its length depends on which Zapier plan you are subscribed to.
The default polling time is two minutes, which means that when a transaction is initiated, it can take up to two minutes until the user permissions are revoked.
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 to 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
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
A transaction needs to have been recently initiated on your marketplace by a user who has transaction rights. If you haven’t done any test transactions, feel free to go do one now!
With these pieces in place, let's get started!
Getting your Integration API key from Sharetribe Console
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 a sort of password 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 a pre-existing Zap
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 revoking permissions on Sharetribe here
Click on ‘Try this Zap'
Step 1: Find an initiated transaction on your marketplace
Select ‘Sharetribe’ as the app. Use the Client ID + Secret that you created earlier to log in.
As the ‘Event’, select Transaction Events’
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the ‘Configure’ section
As ‘Event type’, choose ‘Transaction Initiated’
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the ‘Test’ section
Test the trigger, and make sure it finds a recent transaction from your marketplace
Step 2: Revoke user permissions
Select ‘Sharetribe’ as the app.
As the ‘Action event’, select ‘Update Permissions’
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the ‘Configure’ section
Under ‘User ID’, click the Plus sign +, and Select “1. Transaction Customer ID: xxxx” from the drop down. You can quickly find it by searching for “id”.
Select “False” for “Permission to initiate transactions”. You can leave all other fields empty.
Click ‘Continue’ to go to the ‘Test’ section
Test the action, and make sure that the transaction rights are canceled from the customer. You can do this from your Console.
Final thoughts
Thanks for reading this tutorial about creating a Zap for your Sharetribe marketplace to automatically revoke a provider's transaction rights after they initiate a transaction.
There is a companion tutorial for automating the granting of transaction rights after the provider pays the lead fee. 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!