Your Bloomerang database is the central donor management and fundraising platform for your organization, but Bloomerang likely isn’t the only app that you use day to day. We believe Bloomerang is your central system and that integrations supplement your Bloomerang database. Automation should start from a lens that Bloomerang is core to your donor management and fundraising technology.

Bloomerang is now connected to Zapier and Zapier connects to 3,000+ other apps, including task management solutions like Asana. The combination of Bloomerang and Zapier offers an all-in-one integration platform for automating your day to day workflows.

The goal of this webinar is to show you how integrating Bloomerang with a task management solution and Zapier can streamline data entry, save time, and reduce effort.

During this webinar, we will:

• Introduce Bloomerang + Zapier, how they work together, and why Zapier automations are a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy
• Discuss how a parsing tool like mailparser.io can be used with Bloomerang scheduled reports to support automation
• Demonstrate how you can use Bloomerang scheduled reports and mailparser.io to sync newly created tasks in Bloomerang to a task management solution like Asana
• Explore advanced use cases and alternatives
• Demonstrate how you can use the Bloomerang API to create new tasks for major donation follow-up

 

 
Webinar transcript (not including Q&A):
Good afternoon, and welcome to Bloomerang Academy! Thank you for joining us. My name is Diana Otero, and I am the Product Engagement Manager at Bloomerang. You might recognize me from attending Bloomerang Academy classes or listening to our release and help videos.

Today, we’re talking about “Bloomerang + Zapier: Using Scheduled Reports to Automate Task Management.”

[SLIDE]

I’d like to introduce our presenter today,  Jessie Gilchrist. Jessie is a Zapier Certified Expert and Bloomerang Integrations Consultant at Sidekick Solutions. Sidekick Solutions is a Bloomerang Partner, specializing in system automations for Bloomerang. Sidekick Solutions has been a Bloomerang user since 2013 and most recently was part of the Bloomerang team that launched the Bloomerang Zapier app, which is a key component of today’s webinar.

We’re excited to have Jessie here today to share her expertise and explore how you can use the Bloomerang Zapier app with PayPal to automate entry of donations processed by PayPal.

Thank you Diana. Hello everyone! It’s great to be here.

[SLIDE]

The goal of today’s webinar is to show how Bloomerang scheduled reports can be parsed and synced to a task management tool or calendar using Zapier. This sync can support your fundraising efforts by reducing the time spent performing data entry and ensure tasks entered in Bloomerang appear in your day-to-day task management solution.

Our webinar today will…

• Introduce Bloomerang + Zapier, how they work together, and why Zapier automations are a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy
• Discuss how a parsing tool like mailparser.io can be used with Bloomerang scheduled reports to support automation
• Demonstrate how you can use Bloomerang scheduled reports and mailparser.io to sync newly created tasks in Bloomerang to a task management solution like Asana
• Explore advanced use cases and alternatives
• Demonstrate how you can use the Bloomerang API to create new tasks for major donation follow-up

As Diana mentioned, feel free to submit any questions during the presentation. We’ll take a couple of breaks to answer questions and then open up for more questions at the end.

Alright, let’s dive in.

[SLIDE]

First, we want to do a quick poll to see how many are using Zapier and using it with Bloomerang.

[SLIDE]

Thank you for that feedback. Since we have a few of you that are new to Zapier, let’s start with a high level overview of “what is Zapier” and why we believe it is a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy.

You might be wondering why we are talking about Zapier, when this presentation is about Bloomerang and task management. That’s a fair question. And it offers an exciting answer.

[SLIDE]

Zapier is the software that enables additional Bloomerang integration and fundraising opportunities. It’s a middleware that sits in between your Bloomerang database and other apps like Asana, Trello, Google Calendar, Outlook, etc., helping them “talk” to each other.

Zapier is automation software. With Zapier, you can build one integration or many, automating hundreds of tasks around your Bloomerang system within a single platform.

So, why get excited about Bloomerang Zapier integrations?

[SLIDE]

Three reasons…

First and most important, Zapier connects to 3,000+ other apps. Any apps in Zapier’s directory can be connected to Bloomerang. If it’s on Zapier’s list it can be integrated with Bloomerang. That includes task management solutions and calendar apps!

Second, Zapier was designed for anyone to build integrations. You don’t need to know how to code to build Zaps. Anyone can build and maintain a Zap. We’re going to walk through some builds today so you can get a feel for what that process looks like.

Third, Zapier enables custom integrations. You aren’t limited to one-size fits all workflows, mapping, or formatting. You can build integrations that are perfect for your organization and your workflows. Flexibility is especially important because every organization’s fundraising strategy and needs are different.

[SLIDE]

Before we dive into the specifics for using Bloomerang scheduled reports to trigger automations with Zapier, let’s first do a quick overview of Bloomerang’s scheduled report functionality and how parsing tools work.

First, a quick poll to see how many are using scheduled reports in Bloomerang.

[SLIDE]

If you’ve attended any of the other Bloomerang + Zapier webinars in this series, you’re likely familiar with the Bloomerang Zapier app. The Bloomerang Zapier app is an easy way to connect your database to Zapier and build automations with over 3,000+ other applications.

However, the Bloomerang Zapier app isn’t the only way to trigger automations. Using scheduled reports in Bloomerang and a parsing tool to process the report, you can open up additional opportunities for automation, saving your organization time and energy.

[SLIDE]

Last year Bloomerang released functionality that allows you to deliver a report to one or many email addresses on a recurring basis.

Based on your automation use case, you can set your scheduled report to kick off your workflow on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The ability to send scheduled reports to non-users allows you to use these scheduled reports to trigger Zapier automations.

With the expanded opportunities through scheduled reports, you can trigger automations based on…

• Non-transaction records in Zapier (i.e., interactions, notes, tasks)
• Soft credits
• Tribute acknowledgements
• Updated or refunded transactions

Additionally, scheduled reports allow you to pull in Bloomerang transaction data that is not available in the Bloomerang Zapier app. For example, the next installment date and amount for recurring donations and pledges is not available in the Bloomerang Zapier app. You can use scheduled reports to pull this information into a workflow.

[SLIDE]

When triggering an automation from a Bloomerang scheduled report, the report needs to pass through an intermediary tool, called a parser, before a workflow can be triggered in Zapier.

A parsing tool’s primary job is to extract information contained in an email or attachment in a way that can be used for further steps in an automation.

For example, if you forwarded an email to a parsing tool, rules could be set up to extract the email sender’s name and email address, the date the email was sent, and the body of the email.

For the purposes of this webinar, a parsing tool is used to extract each row in a scheduled report as a separate record to trigger an automation. Without a parsing tool, there is no way for Zapier to pull apart separate records in the report or appropriately identify the different fields (i.e., columns) in the report for each record.

It is important to note before we move forward that parsing tools are not included in your Bloomerang or Zapier subscription. A parser is a separate integration tool with it’s own subscription. Throughout the remainder of this webinar, we’ll be demonstrating a use case with mailparser.io, a popular parsing tool. We’ve found mailparser.io to be user friendly, reliable, and competitive when it comes to pricing.

[SLIDE]

Before we move onto our use cases, let’s take one or two questions about scheduled reports and parsing tools.

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The use case we are going to showcase is how you can use a scheduled report of non-transaction records in Bloomerang to trigger a Zapier workflow.

This is an important demonstration as there is likely a use case at nearly every organization for automating tasks following the creation of a non-transaction record, such as an interaction, note, or task.

[SLIDE]

Before we dive into the demo, we’d like to get a sense of the tool(s) you are using for task management.

[SLIDE]

In this demonstration, we are going to use a daily scheduled report of tasks created yesterday and create a corresponding task in Asana, a task management app.

This is a great use case to make sure fundraising tasks created in Bloomerang make their way to your task management solution, ensuring you don’t miss a deadline.

In the demo for this workflow, we’ll show how you make this workflow dynamic, assigning tasks in Asana to the appropriate team member’s to-do list.

[DEMO // 9 SLIDES]

The first thing we need to do is set up our parsing inbox.

• After logging into my mailparser.io account, I’m going to click “Create Inbox”. I’m going to name this inbox: Daily Report: Tasks Created Yesterday.
• Mailparser is going to provide an email address for the parsing inbox. I want to copy this email address as I’ll need it when setting up my scheduled report.

Next, we need to set up our scheduled report in Bloomerang.

• After logging into Bloomerang, I’ll go to the Reports page and build a new task report from scratch.
• I’m going to name this report: Tasks Created Yesterday.
• We’re going to add a filter to limit the report to tasks created Yesterday. I’m also going to add another filter to only include tasks that have not been completed, so I’m going to set the Status to “Active”.
• Now, I need to modify the columns returned in my report to ensure all the data I need when creating my task in Asana are included. By default, all the standard fields on tasks are included in the report except “Note”. We are going to pull that in, as well as constituent contact information like primary phone and email.
• We recommend noting the columns included as your reports and their order as the parsed report will only provide numerical column references starting with “0” (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).
• I’m going to click “Save And” and select Schedule Report. This is where I’ll set my Frequency to Daily and set the time to 3:00 a.m. so it will create the tasks before the workday starts.
• Then, enter the email address for my mailparser.io inbox to the Recipients field. I’ll set my subject to “Daily Report: Tasks Created Yesterday”. Also, I’m going to check the box to not deliver the report if it is empty. This will save on usage in mailparser.io and Zapier.

Now, if you were doing this at your own organization, you’d need to wait overnight for the first scheduled report to deliver to your mailparser.io inbox. We already have one set up, so we’ll pop in and show the parsing rules you’ll want to set up when your first report delivers to mailparser.

• Open the parsing inbox and go to Parsing Rules.
• Click “Create Parsing Rule” and select Attachment.
• In the Parse Attachments dropdown, select File Content (Table Cells) and set Filter by Type to XLSX. Bloomerang scheduled reports are delivered as XLSX files.
• Then, click Add Cell Filter, then Remove & Select, and Remove Rows. We want to remove the first row of the scheduled report from the parsing as it is the column headers. If we don’t remove this row, every time the report is delivered to the parsing inbox the row of column headers will trigger the automation. This is unnecessary and removing this row will prevent errors and unnecessary task usage in Zapier.
• We’ll name our rule: Bloomerang Parsed Report. Once we save this rule, now we can set up our automation in Zapier.

Once our parsing inbox is all set-up, we’ll hop into Zapier to set up our automation to create a task in Asana for each task that is sent to mailparser.io and parsed.

• Select Make a Zap.
• We’re going to name this Zapier workflow: New Bloomerang Task > Create Task in Asana.
• The workflow starts when the scheduled report is parsed by mailparser.io, so that is our trigger. Zaps start with a trigger, an event that happens in one app. That prompts the integration to run. Mailparser’s New Email Parsed trigger is the best option of the available triggers in the mailparser.io Zapier app.
• We’ll select the mailparser.io inbox we set up to parse the scheduled report.
• Then, let’s test our trigger to generate sample data. This will return rows recently parsed from the scheduled report sent to this mailparser inbox. These are samples only and will not run through the integration because they were created before the integration is turned on. As a reminder, Zap triggers run in real time.
• Once we have our sample data, our first action will be to create a conversion step to convert the Bloomerang User the task is assigned to, to the team member’s email the task in Asana should be assigned to. For example, in our Sandbox the user is Jeff Haguewood, but we need to assign the task using his email.
• Select Formatter as the app and Utilities as the action type. Then in Transform select Lookup Table. Our input will be the column in our parsed report that contains the Bloomerang User the task is assigned to. Then, in the lookup rows, we’ll enter the Bloomerang User Name on the left and the Asana user’s email on the right. Add as many rows as needed to include all Bloomerang users.
• Next, we’ll add an action to create a task in Asana. We’ll select our Workspace/Organization and I am going to leave the project blank so the assigned person can link the task to the appropriate project in Asana (if any).
• Next, we’ll map in the data from our parsed scheduled report into the desired fields on the task in Asana. This is why it was important to note the fields and ordering when we set up our Bloomerang scheduled report. Each column from our report is available for mapping into our task.
• I’m going to map the Subject as the Name of the task.
• Then, I’ll add the Constituent’s name, phone, and email, as well as the Purpose, Channel, and Note to the description.
• If we pulled additional fields for context into the scheduled report, we can map this here too. For example, we could’ve also included key constituent custom fields.
• We’ll map the Due Date from the task in Bloomerang to the Due On field for the task.
• We’ll map the output from our conversion to the Assignee field and set the Assignee Status to Inbox. This will ensure the Asana task is assigned to the appropriate person and appears in their recently assigned task queue.
• Now we can select that we’re done editing and turn on our Zap.

Since this workflow triggers off of a scheduled report, we cannot provide a “live” demonstration of the report delivering to mailparser, being parsed, and then triggering the Zapier workflow. Instead, I am going to show you how the mapping we just walked through in our demo build translates from Bloomerang to Asana.

[SLIDE]

The workflow we’ve demoed today is considered a standard sync of Bloomerang tasks to Asana. This standard sync can be expanded and modified to support more advanced use cases.

Want to take this workflow to the next level?

If you have a team member familiar with custom API calls or engage an integration consultant, a workflow can be designed to not only create tasks in Asana for new tasks created in Bloomerang, but the workflow can also be customized to update tasks in Bloomerang as “Complete” when completed in Asana.

This creates a full life-cycle for the task in both Bloomerang and your task management solution without having to spend time entering and updating the same information in both systems.

The workflow can also be enhanced to:

• Include a hyperlink/URL to the task or constituent in Bloomerang in the Asana task (requires Find Constituent action to return Constituent ID)
• For tasks with a Channel of “In Person” or “Phone” create a subtask to “prep” for the meeting/call 1 day before the day the task is due/occurring
• Create a corresponding interaction in Bloomerang when the task is completed in Asana
• Send a reminder for tasks due each day in a team messaging channel like Slack

[SLIDE]

There are also alternatives to this workflow. For example, you could:

• Create an event on a Google or Outlook calendar on the due date for a task in Bloomerang
• Send a digest of “tasks due today” to a team communication channel like Slack

[SLIDE]

Since we have a few minutes, I’d like to showcase another task management automation that is self-contained in Bloomerang.

[SLIDE]

In this workflow, we will trigger new transactions in Bloomerang of $1,000 or more and create a task in Bloomerang for personalized follow-up by a team member a week after the donation.

[DEMO // 3 SLIDES]

As we dive into this demo, I want to acknowledge that there are some advanced automation concepts in this use case. You may need to watch the recording from this webinar while setting up this automation in order to pause/rewind/rewatch as you set it up.

Let’s hop into Zapier and set up our Zap.

• I’m going to choose a New Transaction in Bloomerang as my trigger.
• For this workflow, I only want to trigger on transactions with revenue so I’m going to set the transaction Type in my trigger to Donations, Recurring Donation Payments, and Pledge Payments.
• Then, I will set my minimum amount to $1,000.00. This will filter out any transactions less than $1,000 from creating a task in Bloomerang.
• We are not going to include the constituent’s cumulative giving history or household information. However, if you wanted to map any of this information into the task, you could set these to “True” to pull this information into the payload for mapping.
• Now, we’ll pull in a test transaction.
• Next, we are going to use a Zapier Formatter step to calculate 7 days from the date of the transaction. This can be helpful as we don’t want the task in Bloomerang due the same day as the transaction. Instead, we want to follow-up with the donor one week after the donation.
• We will select the Formatter by Zapier app and an action type of Date/Time. We’ll select Add/Subtract Time as our Transform type. Then, we’ll map the date of the transaction to the Input.
• In the Expression, we’ll enter “+7 days” to add 7 days to the date of the donation. And we’ll select our To Format of YYYY-MM-DD. We’ll test this step to get an output value for mapping.
• This is when we get into an advanced automation concept. There is not an action in the Bloomerang Zapier app to create a task in Bloomerang at this time. Therefore, we need to do a custom call to the Bloomerang API to create the task.
• We will select the Zapier Webhooks app and select an action event of POST. A POST webhook is a technical way of saying it is an API call that will create a new record.
• In the URL, we will enter the endpoint in the Bloomerang API for creating a new task. This is https://api.bloomerang.co/v2/task?sendNotifications=false. If you wanted to send an email notification to the Bloomerang user when the task is created, you could update the end of this URL to “true” instead of “false”.
• Next, we’ll set our payload type to Json and enter the following values in the Data section. The data we enter in the left column must match how I am entering it here exactly. Meaning, it is case and space sensitive.
• Now, we will map in the data from our transaction trigger and Formatter step.
• Now that we have our data mapped, we need to add our authorization headers. We have two headers to add: x-api-key and content-type. For content-type enter application/json. For x-api-key, we need to generate an API key in Bloomerang. From the same Edit User screen, we’ll click “Generate” to create a new API Key. Then, we’ll click to copy the key and paste it into our Zap.

Now let’s test this out. I have a Zap like this that is already turned “on”. I’m going to enter a $1,000 donation in Bloomerang. And if we give it a second to process through Zapier, we’ll see the task created in Bloomerang.

If we had this automation working in tandem with the Bloomerang > Asana workflow from earlier, this new task would hit our daily report to create tasks in Asana and tomorrow Jeff would come into work with a new task in Asana to follow-up with this donor.

[SLIDE]

To wrap up today’s presentation, I’ll leave you with a few thoughts on the power of Bloomerang integrations with Zapier.

We believe Bloomerang is your central system and that integrations supplement your Bloomerang database. Data entry, reporting, and automation should start from a lens that Bloomerang is core to your donor management and fundraising technology.

Zapier and a task management tool supplement and extend the power of Bloomerang. They don’t replace it. By syncing tasks created in Bloomerang to a task management solution used across your full organization, you can save time, resources, energy, and more. Spend less time performing data entry and more time focusing on your mission and cultivating donors.

[SLIDE]

Next step is getting started.

1. Sign up for a Zapier account, it’s free with a trial and free up to certain limits, nonprofits get a discount
2. Connect your mailparser.io and Asana accounts to Zapier
3. Schedule your report to send to mailparser.io and set up the standard task sync in Zapier for the parsed report.
4. Turn on your Zap and monitor it, watch as tasks queue in your task history, resolve errors and high-five for successes

[SLIDE]

Thank you for attending today.

Again, my name is Jessie Gilchrist. My email is here and my door is always open.

[SLIDE]

If you’d like to work with a consultant to set up Zaps or develop a custom Bloomerang integration to address a unique use case, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

I will hand it off to Diana for a quick poll before we open up for more questions.

[SLIDE]

Would you like a follow-up about consulting services to set up integrations with Bloomerang?

[SLIDE]

Let’s take a few final questions.

Thank you to everyone for joining us today. We, at Bloomerang, are very excited for the extended capabilities through Zapier. We’re very excited to see where all of you will take it. Zapier enables integration with over 3,000 different apps and we’ve only just scratched the surface of what you can do with Bloomerang and Zapier. We hope that you can find a way to automate your processes and work better with Bloomerang using Zapier.