Automate and integrate WordPress with other

applications

WordCamp Birmingham 2015by Jason King @jasoncsking

The client

A partnership of six advice agencies in Brent.

Brent CAB was the main point of contact.

www.bam.org.uk

A single point of contact for local people to access advice on benefits, health, work, money and immigration.

Built with WordPress, Bootstrap, Gravity Forms, Font Awesome.

The problem

How can the public send an enquiry via the website ...

… and have that enquiry directed to the advice organisation most able to answer it?

There were a lot of meetings

The website is just one part of a complex process involving multiple organisations, each with ways of working, to deliver different kinds of advice.

Lot of note taking. Lots of user testing. Lots of planning.

The right tools for the job

WordPress obviously+ Gravity Forms famously good plugin+ Freshdesk helpdesk application+ Zapier to connect them

= solution?

Gravity Forms: conditional logicUsers are forced to provide the information that advisers will need.

On submission, Gravity Forms can send an email notification

But six advice organisations can’t share a single email account. What could they use?

Freshdesk

A helpdesk application that multiple advisers can use to field and respond to enquiries.

But how can we collect information in Gravity Forms then use that information to create a support ticket in Freshdesk? Answer: APIs

What’s an API?When one web application loves another web application very much - they give each other a special hug.

Something like that. Only involving data transmission, routines, protocols for inputs and outputs etc. It’s complicated - is there a way to make it simpler?

ZapierAutomates tasks and simplifies the one-way transmission of data between 300+ applications.

Has a free plan, for up to 100 tasks per month.

Zapier means you don’t have to understand APIs. Huzzah!

Alernatives to Zapier

You create a trigger and an action

What can trigger an action?● New Comment● New Category● New Post Format● New Post Type● New Author● New Post Status● New Taxonomy● New Post● New Comment Status

Plus: any web hook

Using the HookPress plugin, trigger off of pretty much anything!

You select your first app’s accountIn this case, whilst in the Zapier dashboard, we need to connect to Freshdesk.

… and your second app’s accountThere’s a Zapier add-on for the Gravity Forms plugin to enable us to select it.

Are we over-complicating this?We didn’t even need Zapier. Here’s our eventual and much simpler solution:

1) User completes online form

2) Gravity Forms sends email notification direct to Freshdesk, which is able to create a support ticket from that email

@net2london