As someone who is not a coder I've been a convert to API integration services for a long, long time. Using two services, Zapier and IFTTT, I've automated a lot of my social media as well as my daily routine tasks. I'm now playing with WorkFlow on my iPhone and iPad to do some of the same things while on the go.
For example, each time I create a GoToMeeting session, an automated calendar routine is run, making it easy for me to send out calendar items to everyone with notes. This Zapier "Zap" leverages access to both the GoToMeeting API and the Google Calendar API. In parallel, and since other members of the Comunicano Team have the ability to set up calls on my conference bridge Zapier also accesses the same GTM API and calls the GMAIL API to send an email to me that a conference session was created. Another option I've "programmed" is to combine GoToMeeting and Twilio's SMS API to be alerted by SMS of the same information. If I wanted to I could also notify others on my team, post to a team calendar or notify someone else who needed to know what was scheduled if I had a real life assistant.
Over on the IFTTT API integration side , I've made it possible with various weather services to receive key information on a daily basis. Using an integration with Yahoo Weather I receive an alert the night before when it's going to rain, as well as the daily weather reports for places I tend to frequent. Yahoo pulls the data from the Weather Channel and IFTTT sends the details every morning into my inbox. But, because I'm using IFTTT I don't need to know how to code at all to make the API work for me.
Another useful IFTTT integration takes advantage of my iPhone's GPS location data to tell my friends that I'm back in town via a FaceBook status post and in turn when I get back "home" the same type of alert goes out. I've set up individual alerts for places I frequent, thus eliminating the need to post each time on FaceBook.
These two services are not new, but the number of services they are integrating with keeps growing. For me, finding ways to eliminate having to manually do something by assigning it to a BOT is worth the time and effort to learn just what has been made both possible and easy.
Comments