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Doug Sillars for api.video

Posted on • Originally published at api.video on

Create Video Integrations Without Coding - So Easy It's a Zap!

Now you can combine api.video with all your favorite applications without doing any coding! We are proud to announce that we've partnered with Zapier. Zapier allows you to integrate your favorite applications without any coding at all. Perhaps you don't program, but you have a cool idea for how to use api.video services with another application, or maybe you want to do a proof-of-concept before you code your idea. Zapier will let you do it all. Some examples for you to consider:

  • Receive a text message every time a new video is uploaded - This would be great if you want to stay up-to-date with breaking news clips, the latest episode of your favorite TV show coming out, or whenever someone on your team completes a new video project.

  • Copy videos you add to Amazon S3 over to api.video - Whenever you add a new video to Amazon S3, add a backup copy at api.video!

  • Send a slack message about a new video upload - If you have a workflow where other team members need to know a new video is available for them to edit, you can notify them in slack about every upload.

  • Copy videos you add to Dropbox over to api.video - Any time you add a new video to Dropbox, automatically add a backup copy with api.video.

  • Send an email notification about new videos - Send a note through Gmail every time you upload a new video to api.video.

How Does Zapier Work?

When you sign up for an account with Zapier, you'll learn about three concepts:

  • Zap
  • Trigger
  • Action A Zap is an application you build using Zapier. It's composed of at least one trigger and one action that occur between two different products.

A trigger is an event that kicks off a zap. For example, a trigger event could be you uploading a video to api.video. When a trigger event occurs, that's the cue for an action to happen. An action is what happens in response to a trigger. Say you have the trigger event of a video being added to api.video. A response action could be sending you a text message to alert you that there's a new video.

Using Zapier, you can choose from thousands of applications to use as a trigger or an action (depending on what's available for each application). Not all applications offer triggers and actions, and you may not necessarily see the trigger event or action that you want to happen. If that's the case for api.video, give us some feedback in our community forum about what you'd like to see!

How to Sign up for Zapier

Signing up for Zapier is a snap! To help you out, we've provided the sign up steps here:

  1. Navigate to Zapier's website

  2. Click Sign up in the upper right corner.

  3. Choose the sign up option that works best for you. We are using the sign up with Google option here. Enter your email and click Continue as -your email-.

  1. After you're logged in, you're asked what apps you use. Type api.video in the search bar, and when it comes back in the search results, click the api.video icon. You can choose other apps you're interested in integrating with as well.

  2. When you're done choosing apps, click Finish Setup. NOTE: If you didn't want to choose any apps for starters, you can also choose Skip.

That's it! You're all done, and ready to try creating your first Zap!

Create a Zap

Creating a zap is intuitive. From the dashboard, you'll see a screen that shows you the set up for a basics zap.

As you can see in the image, what you'll be doing is choosing two applications and transferring information between them. The application you choose for the left side is going to be your trigger event. The application you choose for the right side is going to respond to the event by taking action.

Generic set up will include these steps:

  1. Sign up for an api.video account.
  2. In Zapier, choose api.video for your trigger event.
  3. Set up the trigger event. You're provided with instructions for what to do every step of the way.
  4. Choose the application for your action event.
  5. You'll again need to have an account with the application you select, and the appropriate privileges for what you want to do.
  6. You'll have the opportunity to test the parts of your app as you go along.
  7. At the end, you'll be able to do a test run of the completely new integration you've made between applications.
  8. You can turn on your zap, and it will start running every time the trigger event occurs! You can also use pre-made zaps.

To make things as easy as possible, we offer walk throughs for setting up each of our pre-made zaps. See a complete list of our zaps at zap.a.video.

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