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The SolarNexus Zapier Application

About

Zapier is an online automation tool that connects hundreds of apps, such as Slack, MailChimp, and now SolarNexus. You can automate repetitive tasks without coding or developers and it's easy enough that anyone can build their own app workflows with just a few clicks.

Adding SolarNexus to Zapier

To use Zapier, you will need to sign-up for a Zapier account separately.

The SolarNexus Zapier integration application is not yet published to the Zapier application catalog, so to access and use it in your Zapier account, click this invitation link.

List of All Triggers and Actions

Triggers

  1. Project Created or Updated

Searches

The available Search actions in SolarNexus are as follows:

  1. Find Job Solutions: Retrieves data on all solutions for a job.
  2. Find Primary Solution: Retrieves data on a job's primary solution.
  3. Find or Create Project: Searches for a SolarNexus project with a given ID, or optionally creates a new project if nothing is found.
  4. Find or Create Project by External Id: Searches for a SolarNexus project with a given external application ID, or optionally creates a new project if nothing is found.

Creates

The available Create actions in SolarNexus are as follows:

  1. Create Project: Creates a new project
  2. Complete Project Milestone: Completes a given milestone on an existing project
  3. Complete Project Milestone by External Id: Completes a given milestone on an existing project; project identified by external application ID
  4. Update Milestone: Updates a given milestone. Can update status, scheduled time (if an event) or due time (if just a task).
  5. Add Log Entry to Job

Triggers

All Zapier applications are made up of triggers and actions - each of these are steps in a Zap.

Triggers are events that happen in SolarNexus that can "trigger" something to happen in another application connected through Zapier.

The SolarNexus Zapier application currently has only one trigger:

Project Created or Updated

Despite only being one trigger, there are actually several events that are considered to be a project updated, including:

  • create a new project (project_create)
  • updates to customer or site information (general_project_info_update)
  • updates to the customer's energy service, like utility, rate, consumption (energy_service_update)
  • completion of a project milestone (milestone_completion)

Configuring the Trigger

  1. Create a new Zap with the "Project Created or Updated" trigger.
  2. Add the generated Zapier webhook to SolarNexus:
    • Copy the URL generated in the trigger
    • Go to Administration > Project Settings > Webhooks
    • Click "Add Webhook" and paste the URL into the "URL" field
  3. Select the relevant event(s) to trigger.
    • See the bulleted list of project update events above for valid triggers.
  4. Add a brief description of the webhook.
    • We recommend labeling with either the name of the zap or the zap's ID.
  5. Perform the relevant event in SolarNexus.
  6. Confirm receipt of data in Zapier.

The payload of data received can be used to configure the rest of your zap.

Actions

Actions are the things that you can do in SolarNexus in response to a trigger in another application. Actions consist of two major types: Searches and Creates. Searches look for existing data within SolarNexus without modifying that data. Creates can add new data or modify existing data.

Some actions are labeled as "Find or Create." These exist to make it easier to prevent duplication and to allow for new creation if a search does not yield results.

Creates

The available Create actions in SolarNexus are as follows:

  1. Create Project
  2. Complete Project Milestone
  3. Complete Project Milestone by External Id
  4. Update Milestone
  5. Add Log Entry to Job

Create Project

Creates a new project in SolarNexus. Data fields with project details are provided for mapping.

Complete Project Milestone

Marks a milestone as completed for an existing project, determined by SolarNexus Project ID. Allows scheduling times and assigning users for scheduled successor milestones.

Complete Project Milestone by External ID

Marks a milestone as completed for an existing project, but finds the project via a given External Application's Name and Identifier (aka the 'Source Application' if the project was created from an external application).

Update Milestone

Updates info on a provided milestone on a provided job. Allows adding notes, updating due dates of scheduled events, and updating status. This action will not complete the milestone.

Add Log Entry to Job

Adds a new note to a project with a given ID. Contains a flag to mark whether or not customer contact occurred with the note.

Searches

The available Search actions in SolarNexus are as follows:

  1. Find Job Solutions
  2. Find Primary Solution
  3. Find or Create Project
  4. Find or Create Project by External Id

Searches provide a means to find an existing record. The following earche

Find Job Solutions

This feature looks at a job with a given ID and provides a list of all solutions for that job. This is an advanced feature for use cases that require looping through multiple solutions. See this article on looping your zap actions.

Find Primary Solution

This feature looks at a job with a given ID and provides information for that job's primary solution and only the primary solution.

Find or Create Project

This feature looks in SolarNexus for an existing project that has a given SolarNexus Job ID. If a project is found with that ID, this action WILL NOT create a new project and will simply return data fields associated with the found project.

You can optionally choose to create a new project if a project is not found with this action. Input fields for mapping data to the new project are provided in this case.

Find or Create Project by External Id

This feature works similarly to Find or Create Project, but it uses a given External Application's Name and Identifier (aka the 'Source Application' if the project was created from an external application). SolarNexus needs both the Application Name and the Object ID associated with that external application to perform this search.

If a project is found with a matching Source Application name and ID, the step WILL NOT create a new project. Only data on the existing project is returned.

You can optionally choose to create a new project if a project is not found with this action (input fields for mapping a new project are provided in this case). This is a useful way to ensure that duplicate projects are not created in SolarNexus from an external CRM application, for example.

Common Use Cases

Create a project in SolarNexus and immediately complete the 'Lead Qualified' milestone.

This is a common case so users can immediately begin work on a solution and proposal. However, completing the 'Qualify Lead' milestone is only allowed if the project has an assigned Sales Owner. So upon creating the project, it's a good idea to also populate the sales owner, else the completion of the 'Qualify Lead' milestone step of your Zap will fail. If this is the case, a sales manager or admin user can manually assign a Sales Owner to the lead, and then manually complete the 'Qualify Lead' milestone.  

Available Data Fields

The table below shows a collection of SolarNexus data fields available in the various triggers and actions. The exact set of fields varies by Action or Trigger.

Here is a sample block of trigger data fields and sample values:

{
 "event": "milestone_completion",
 "project_id": 0,
 "source_application_name": "Test Application",
 "source_application_object_id": 0,
 "customer_type": "Business",
 "customer_organization": "TestOrg",
 "customer_first_name": "John",
 "customer_last_name": "Sample",
 "customer_email": "sample@example.com",
 "customer_phone": "555-555-5555",
 "customer_street_address1": "123 Main St.",
 "customer_street_address2": "Suite 456",
 "customer_city": "Anywhere",
 "customer_state": "FL",
 "customer_postal_code": "12345-6789",
 "customer_country": "US",
 "site_street_address1": "999 Central Ave.",
 "site_city": "Somewhere",
 "site_state": "FL",
 "site_postal_code": "98765-4321",
 "site_country": "US",
 "lead_source": "Company Website",
 "sales_owner": "Jane Doe",
 --- sold_solution_* properties included only if project has been sold
 "sold_solution_pv_system_rated_size_kw": "5.5",
 "sold_solution_contract_price": "11538.34",
 --- Below properties included only if event == milestone_completion
 "milestone_name": "Sales Appointment Scheduled", --- post-completion name
 "milestone_completed_at": "2018-04-10T21:15:10Z", --- time in UTC, ISO8601 format
 "milestone_completed_at_local": "04/10/2018 05:15:10 PM", --- time in account time zone
 "milestone_scheduled_successor_name": "Sales Appointment", --- pre-completion name
 "milestone_scheduled_successor_start_at": "2018-04-15T17:00:00Z", --- time in UTC, ISO8601 format
 "milestone_scheduled_successor_start_at_local": "04/15/2018 01:00:00 PM" --- time in account time zone
}