Have you ever wished that you could email an owner asking them if they want to renew, and if they select "yes" or "no," those answers would power the process in LeadSimple?

This (and similar use cases) are possible through Zapier! Watch the video below to learn more and see below for a detailed tutorial walkthrough to build your own.

First, what is Zapier?

Zapier is a third-party tool that allows you to integrate softwares together, without any development needed. Create zaps, or defined sets of triggers and actions, to customize your own integrations between softwares.

Here's an overview of the steps required to create this Zap:

Note that this Zap is pretty involved, so please follow the instructions below very carefully. Let's get started!

The first step is to create your form in Google Forms. (If using JotForm, follow these instructions.)

The next step is to create your custom pre-filled form links to send to your owners or tenants in the process. (If using JotForm, follow these instructions.)

This involves formatting the link, so follow these instructions carefully.

First, go into Preview mode for your form.

Then, copy the link from the URL bar. This is the first part of your link. Paste this link in a note or word document to save it. We'll come back to it later.

Next, you will need to pull the question ID's you'd like to pre-populate from the form and add them and their answers to the form link in a certain format.

To pull the question ID's, go to the form and right click on the question. Then click "Inspect".

This will open up a development window either to the right or on the bottom of your screen. Don't be intimidated by this! You just need to find a specific set of numbers here. This will be your question ID.

To do this, you'll noticed that a certain line of code is highlighted (because you right clicked the question). You'll want to look a couple lines up for the line that includes "data-params". There will be a series of words, numbers, and the name of the question there.

You will see two sets of numbers, one before the name of the question and one after. You need to copy/paste the second set of numbers. In our example: 187968055.

Paste this set of numbers into the same note or word document where you pasted the form link.

Now to format our pre-filled form link.

First, we take the regular form link. In our example:

Then, we add a question mark to the end:

Then, add the word entry with a period after it, followed by your question ID and an equal sign.

Then we add the answer to the question that we want to pre-fill. This can be in a couple forms:

Now, our link looks like this:

To add additional pre-filled questions, add & between the answer to the previous question and the entry phrase.

And now we have our custom link, pre-filling the property address and process ID, and selecting the "Yes" and "One Year Lease" options.

If you want to provide alternative pre-filled options (so you can offer a "Yes" option and a "No" option for example), you'll need to walk through the same steps to create additional custom form links.

Example of what the "No" option would look like in our example:

Be sure to check your links over to be sure they are formatted correctly and don't include any spaces, then test them to be sure that they are pre-filling as expected.

Now, you need to add your custom links to your email templates in your process.

Now, we need to send an example email and form submission that will be used in building the Zap.

First, start a process with your own contact info, and send the email template through the process, to pull in the process ID and the property address. Then, click into the form, be sure all the answers are filled out, and submit it.

Now that we've done all the work to create the form and build our custom links, the final step is to the build the Zap. It is a simple two step Zap, since we don't need to include a "find process" step. (Since we already have the process ID in the form submission.)

First, login to Zapier. Go to your dashboard and click "Create Zap."

Choose "Google Forms" as your trigger app, and "New Form Response" as your trigger event.

Then, connect your Google Form account, and select the form you want to connect to the Zap. In our case: "Owner Lease Renewal Choice".

Then, test your trigger. It should pull in your test form submission from Step 4.

Then click Continue.

Next, we need to set up the action in LeadSimple. Choose "LeadSimple", and then "Update Process".

Next, connect your LeadSimple account. To do this, you need to grab your API key from the LeadSimple Integrations page.

Copy the API key there.

Paste it into Zapier, then click "Yes, Continue".

Next, we need to set up our action.

First, choose the process type you want to the Zap to look in. In our case, it's Lease Renewals.

Then, we need to fill out the fields we want to update. Note that you don't have to fill out all the fields visible in the zap, only the ones you want to update.

However, the process field is required. In this case, we don't want to choose a specific process to update every time - we want the zap to use the process ID from the form submission, since it will be different every time.

To do this, click the "Custom" tab, and look for your "Internal ID" (or whatever you called it in the form). Click on that.

Then, in our example, we want to fill out the Owner's Renewal Choice field, and the Offered Lease Length field, also using custom data from the form submission.

And then, the final step is to the test the Zap to make sure we configured everything correctly.

Run the test, then check in LeadSimple to be sure your process updated as expected.

Then, publish your Zap!

You may want to test the whole process again (with a new test process) to ensure everything is running smoothly.

Now that your custom fields are updating automatically when an owner or tenant fills out a form, you can build conditional logic into your process to move the process forward once they respond!

In our example, we would have the email step with the form links go out to the owner, and then have another reminder email go out a couple days later if they haven't submitted their reply. (This is done by having conditional logic based on the Owner Renewing field being empty. If they reply before the reminder goes out, the field will be updated automatically and the step skipped.)

If they reply that they do not want to renew, the process can automatically switch to the "Owner Not Renewing" stage, again with conditional logic powering the process.

And there you have it! That's how to build a Zap that will automatically update a process based on a form submission.

If you have any questions about this tutorial, you can reach our support team by chatting us via the chat icon in your LeadSimple account or emailing support@leadsimple.com.