Automate Your Workflows in WordPress! Gravity Forms to Office 365 Excel!

Anyone who knows me will have come to realise that I love to help my clients increase productivity in their business by creating automated workflows which eliminate the need for manual labour. With a large portfolio of clients, I have come across numerous circumstances where I have been able to save people time and money by introducing sequences which eliminate the need for data entry, the sending of emails, manual reporting – and much more besides. 

There has been one such solution recently which I would like to share with you on this blog post, and this involves a great client of mine who is based in Lymington, Hampshire. The company in question has a website which markets around 10 different services to their visitors, each of them containing a unique feedback form. When the form is submitted, as expected, this sends an email to the relevant member of staff to action.

The member of staff would usually proceed to manually transfer the data from the email on to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which would be accessible by all other members of staff within the office. Given the complicated nature of the feedback forms, this would usually take five or more minutes per entry received.

The company were keen to retain the use of Microsoft Excel, meaning that they would not need to re-train staff with new procedures.

When I created their new website, whilst I conveyed the fact that it was possible to view all of the feedback forms received within the website’s own administration system, the company were keen to retain the use of Microsoft Excel, meaning that they would not need to re-train staff with new procedures.

It was essentially a case of, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… but, can you IMPROVE it?” Therefore a solution was required which would automate the input of their feedback forms into an Office 365 spreadsheet – step forward Sam D….

There is a premium plug-in for WordPress called Gravity Forms, which is fantastic for collecting data from your visitors. It is very simple to construct feedback forms which contain all types of fields including input boxes, text areas, drop-down boxes, radio buttons and much more. You even have the option of using conditional logic, which can hide/show a field depending on the answer of the previous field.

Alongside Gravity Forms is the ability to purchase numerous add-ons which can increase the functionality of your forms – one of which is called the “Zapier” add-on. Zapier is a third-party service which can enable the data from your Gravity Forms to be manipulated and utilised by any of it’s supported apps – and goodness me, they have hundreds.

In their own words, Zapier provides “easy automation for busy people, and moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work”. Whilst it has a free service which provides up to 5 connections (or “Zaps”) for free, to have any more than this, you will need to pay a monthly fee. In this case, because my client possesses around 10 feedback forms on their website, a monthly subscription was purchased – something which costs little over £15. For this price, they can have up to TWENTY “Zaps” that can automate up to 1,000 tasks per month!

“You simply have to allocate each field of your online form with specific column within your spreadsheet”

Creating a “Zap” is easy, as all that is required is to enter a web URL in to Gravity Forms, enter some test data on your form, make sure it appears within Zapier, and then it’s just a case of telling Zapier how the information should be processed. In the case of this job specifically, I connected Zapier with the company Office 365 account, located the spreadsheet in question, and then proceeded to create a new line in the specific tab of their spreadsheet once an feedback form had been submitted. You simply have to allocate each field of your online form with the correct column within your spreadsheet – once you’ve done that, all is good!

As a result of the Youtube video on this subject, I received some great instant feedback from one person, which makes the whole tutorial worthwhile to me! It just shows how much time you can save people by setting simple Zaps.

“It really is a useful service if you’re looking for some automation and timesaving within your business”

Zapier’s capabilities are endless as there is also the opportunity to manipulate this data even more should the need arise. For example, if you wanted to – you could send an automated SMS message to a user once they had completed a form, you may opt to alert your phone, you could add a pin to your Google Map, follow them on social media, and much more besides! It really is a useful service, and if you’re looking for some automation and timesaving within your business, then the solution it provides is worth it’s weight in gold!

Get Zapier Get Gravity Forms Ask Me For Help!