Sapling - Sending SMS messages based on Sapling webhooks

Introduction

This article covers a sample use case leveraging Sapling's Webhooks, Public API, and Zapier integration. The example covered here is representative of the kinds of integrations you can build against your Sapling data.

One of the common use cases we hear from customers is connecting with them over text message (SMS). While texting your people operations comms isn't natively part of Sapling's Outbox feature, you can set up a texting capability with some low-code effort using Sapling's ecosystem tools and Zapier.

Sending a text

For this example, let's send a congratulations text message to a team member when a promotion occurs and their job title changes. You can set this up in 2 steps:

1. Configure a Job Details Changed webhook in Sapling
2. Set up a Zap for the flow in Zapier

Configure a Job Details Changed webhook in Sapling

1. Create a Job Details Changed webhook following the steps outlined in the Zapier Integration Guide
2. Set the Event Configuration to monitor for changes to the Job Title field

Set up a Zap for the flow in Zapier

1. In Zapier, create a new Zap
2. Use your Sapling webhook as the trigger
3. Use the Webhooks by Zapier app to as an intermediary action to call the Sapling Public API Get a User resource based on the GUID returned from the Sapling webhook - this fetches all of the user triggering the webhook's current data from Sapling...specifically, we want to get the user's mobile phone number
4. Use any of the SMS services in the Zapier ecosystem (e.g. Twilio) as a final action to send an SMS message to the user's phone number with a congratulations message
5. Save and publish the Zap, running it through a bit of testing to ensure all the pieces are triggering and acting as expected

Pro Tips

• You may want to include language in your SMS body that the message is automated or that the phone number isn't monitored for replies
• When working with SMS, be cognizant of your character limits and the fact that for some team members, receiving text messages may incur charges from their service provider
• If you'd like to see this kind of functionality natively built into Sapling, upvote this idea on our Feedback Portal!