5 ways to automate Coda

5 ways to automate Coda

For any team, successfully collaborating on projects requires dozens of steps. You have to manage company docs, establish project timelines, create project briefs, and share to-do items—all across multiple apps. If you’re not careful, your team could end up spending valuable resources jumping between tools and ironing out processes—instead of getting the actual work done. 

Coda, an all-in-one platform that brings tools and teams together in one workspace, can lighten that load. From collaborating on documents to creating project briefs, it makes every work process a breeze. 

But when you pair Coda with Zapier, you can take your work processes to the next level. With just a few Zaps—our word for automated workflows—you can automate things like sending notifications for project updates or adding notes straight to Coda from your team communication tools. Take a look.

New to Zapier? It’s workflow automation software that lets you focus on what matters. Combine user interfaces, data tables, and logic with 6,000+ apps to build and automate anything you can imagine. Sign up for free to use this app, and thousands more, with Zapier.

Jump ahead

To get started with a Zap template—what we call our pre-made workflows—just click on the button. It only takes a few minutes to set up. You can read more about setting up Zaps here.

Save form submissions 

Using a form tool like Typeform is a great way to collect project information (think team availability or product feedback) from different people.  

Then, once you organize that information in Coda, you can give everyone involved a bird’s-eye view of your project and bring it to life. But don’t fall into the trap of copying and pasting each form submission manually. 

Instead, use these Zaps to automatically parse new form responses to your Coda table, streamlining the way you collect—and present—that data. 

Log team conversations 

Most team collaboration happens in real time in workspaces like Slack or Gmail. When you’re discussing project updates or assigning someone a task, you’ll want to keep your team docs up to date with all the latest info. 

But sorting something out in Slack—only to then add those updates to Coda—is just a clear example of how you shouldn’t duplicate your work. 

With these Zaps, you can log those conversations in Coda automatically by adding an emoji to a specific message in Slack or saving an email. 

Get notifications for important updates

As a project progresses, it’s natural that different team members will update and make changes to tables and other documents in Coda. But what happens when you’re waiting on someone else to finish a task before you can start yours? 

You’ll want to get notified about it right away to get the ball rolling. Instead of waiting on others to let you know or checking Coda multiple times a day, you can set up workflows to automatically notify you in Slack or via email when something changes. 

Keep an up-to-date log of changes

It’s highly unlikely that you use Coda to document everything. Other teams might not even use Coda, for example, and prefer instead to use a spreadsheet tool like Google Sheets to add their own project updates. Or you might (diligently!) want to back up your Coda data in a spreadsheet so nothing ever gets lost. 

If that’s the case, you can use these Zaps to keep everything updated and in sync across both apps. That means if anything ever gets added to Coda, Zapier will automatically sync those changes for you.

Connect Coda to almost any app

But what if you want to connect Coda to an app that doesn’t integrate with Zapier? Or maybe the integration you’re using doesn’t have a specific feature (like certain triggers or actions) that you require? 

When that happens, webhooks can help. They can fill in the gap by accepting data from one app and sending that information to another. For example, this Zap will automatically pull data from your source app and send it straight to a Coda doc—so you can keep everything up to date, regardless of where it comes from. 

Alternatively, you might be researching topics online to help your project. Instead of copying and pasting those web pages directly into Coda, you can use this Zap to send your browser-based updates into a table—automatically. 

Streamline any work process with Coda and Zapier

Fun fact: Coda is a term from music. It’s the section at the end that brings a piece to its final harmony. And it’s appropriate that Coda—the software—does something similar. 

That’s especially true when you connect Coda to the rest of your tech stack with Zapier. This is just the start of what you can do with Coda and Zapier. Check our App Directory to see what else you can do. 

by Zapier