Welcome to a practical Zapier tutorial! In this guide, you’ll learn how to help providers set up digital downloads for their listings. Specifically, you'll implement a system that automatically notifies sellers to provide a download link for digital products after they've created a listing for a digital download.
Tip: This Zap works well with its companion Zap for automatically sending a link to a digital download when someone buys a listing from the marketplace.
If you haven’t gone through the introduction and the action/event article of our Zapier collection, we encourage you to do so to better understand how things work. But if you want to dive straight into action, feel free to read on!
About Zapier
Zapier is a powerful and versatile tool that allows you to integrate different services to one another. You can learn more about Zapier in our introductory article or through this brief video from Zapier.
What 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.
This is a multi-step Zap, so you'll need a Zapier account that supports multi-step Zaps.
How to set up your marketplace
Your marketplace must be configured in a certain way to support this Zap. Here is how you should set things up:
Listing type for digital downloads
Log in to your Console at https://console.sharetribe.com/
Navigate to Listings > Listing types
Click on ‘+ Add a new listing type’
Enter a descriptive listing type name, such as “Digital downloads”
Choose a descriptive listing type ID, such as digital-downloads (note that spaces can’t be used here)
Choose ‘Purchase’ as the transaction process
Choose ‘Infinite stock, single item’ as the stock type. This means that an unlimited number of users can buy the download link, one at a time.
Adjust default listing fields as you see fit (for example, you probably want to remove the delivery fee options for pickup and shipping)
Click on the green ‘Save changes’ button at the bottom of the page
Marketplace activity
There needs to be at least one recently created listing for digital downloads.
With these pieces in place, let's get started!
Getting your Integration API key from 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.
IMPORTANT: Think of the Client ID and Secret as a sort of a password to your marketplace that can be used to access your marketplace data 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 sending digital download links on Sharetribe here.
Click on ‘Try this Zap'
Step 1: Find a recent listing creation from your marketplace
Connect your Sharetribe account by entering your Client ID and Client secret
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the ‘Trigger’ section
Choose ‘Listing created’ as the ‘Event type’
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the ‘Test’ section
Test the trigger, and make sure it finds a recently created listing from the digital downloads listing type
Click ‘Continue with the selected record’ to move to the next step
Step 2: Filter the event
Note that this step is optional. If your marketplace only deals with digital downloads and all listings should have a download link associated with them, then you don’t need to have this filter.
That being said, in other cases, we want to only run the Zap in a situation where a listing has been created in a digital downloads listing type. For this step, choose ‘Filter’ as the app from the ‘Built-in tools’ list by Zapier. You can select it from the on-screen list if you see it, or search for it – in search results, it appears as ‘Filter by Zapier’.
Under the ‘Only continue if…’, select the following 3 entries for the lines:
‘1. Listing Public Data Listing Type’
(Text) Contains
digital-download
Test the filter, and make sure it says “Your Zap would have continued for this test data”
If this step failed and the Zap would not have continued, the most likely reason is that the Listing Type ID was typed incorrectly. Please check the Listing type ID from your Console if needed. If it differs, copy it to the Zap (do not change it in the Console, as that can sometimes cause unrelated issues).
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the next step
Step 3: Retrieve the user information
In the “App & event” section of Step 2, select “Show User”.
Go to the ‘Action’ section, and click on the ‘User ID’ field
Scroll down the ‘Listing events in Sharetribe’ list and find and choose ‘1. Listing Author Id’, and close the list
Leave the ‘Included relationships’ section empty
Choose ‘No’ in the dropdown ‘Should this step be considered a “success” when nothing is found?’
Click on ‘Continue’ to move to the ‘Test’ section
Click on ‘Test step’ and make sure it finds the user information, specifically the User Email
Click ‘Continue’ to move to the next step
Step 4: Construct the email message from the available data
In the ‘App & event’’ section, choose whichever email provider you want to use to send the email, such as Gmail
Sign in with your email service provider in the ‘Account’ section, and move to the ‘Action’ section
In the “From” field, choose your email account from the list.
In the ‘To’ field, choose ‘3. User Email:’ from the drop down field. This is the listing creator’s email, to which we want to send the request to ask for the download link.
In the ‘Subject’ field, choose an appropriate subject line for the email. This can be for example “Please provide a download link for [1. Listing Title:]’, where the last part of that line is chosen from the drop down menu. This will then construct the subject line appropriately for each listing, based on its title.
In the Body field, you can now write in the message you want the provider to receive, and include the information that you want. When constructing the message, you may want to select multiple different variables that are placed within the message. The message could be, for example:
Hi there!
As you recently started creating the listing 1. Listing Title on our marketplace, you should know that you can also provide a download link to the listing if you want users to be able to get it automatically. This is optional, of course: you can also manually send the link to the users after they buy the listing from you.
If you reply to this email with a static link to the download, I can add it to the marketplace as a hidden link, which will be sent when (and only when) someone has paid for your listing. This saves you some manual work and lets the user get access to their purchase sooner.
- John Doe, administrator of Biketribe
This would translate to something like:
Hi there!
As you recently started creating the listing Mountain Biking Introduction Video on our marketplace, you should know that you can also provide a download link to the listing if you want users to be able to get it automatically. This is optional, of course: you can also manually send the link to the users after they buy the listing from you.
If you reply to this email with a static link to the download, I can add it to the marketplace as a hidden link, which will be sent when (and only when) someone has paid for your listing. This saves you some manual work and lets the user get access to their purchase sooner.
- John Doe, administrator of Biketribe
6. You can leave the other fields empty
7. Go to the ‘Test action’ and test the zap. If everything went well, you should now get an email with the download link to the email inbox associated with the customer’s account!
Final thoughts
Thanks for reading this tutorial about creating a Zap for automatic requesting of a download link from providers! 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, Mailchimp integration, and more. You can read about all our templates in this article. You can also access other full tutorials directly from these links:
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!