Welcome to a practical Zapier tutorial! In this guide, we’ll go through the process of automating the sending of digital downloads on a Sharetribe marketplace. Specifically, we will set up a system that automatically notifies sellers that they need to provide a download link when they create a listing that is a digital download.
This zap automation works well with its companion zap, which will automatically send a link to a digital download when someone buys a listing from the marketplace. You can read about it from this article.
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. If you want to dive straight into action either way, feel free to read on!
What is 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 do you need for this tutorial?
You will need a Zapier account, which you can sign up for at www.zapier.com. When registering, the process may ask you which Zapier apps you want to use. You can already find and select ‘Sharetribe’ from the list of applications, but you can also add it later.
The free plan with Zapier has a limitation: it's only possible to create single step Zaps. So while you can follow through this tutorial, actually using this Zap requires you to have at least a Starter plan for Zapier, which supports multi-step zaps.
In order for Zapier to be able to draw relevant information from your marketplace, you will need to have some activity there. In this tutorial, we will be setting up a Zap that sends an email to the listing creator asking for a download link. It is enough that you have at least one recent digital download listing creation in your marketplace, so Zapier will be able to find that from your recent events.
If there isn’t a recently created digital download listing on your marketplace, go ahead and create one now. If you want, you can read the section below on details on how to create a digital download listing type.
You’ll also need to create an application using the Integration API. For the purposes of this tutorial, you don’t need to know details about using the APIs, but if you want, you can read about them from our technical documentation here.
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 a 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 a digital download listing type
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
Creating a zap to request a download link from providers
(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'
Now, a lot of the work has already been done for you. You can use the steps below to verify that each step is configured correctly. For example, you will at least need to make sure the listing type id is correct, and modify the outgoing email message template to make sure it fits your own marketplace.
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!