Did you know dolphins have the best memory in the animal kingdom? You might've thought it was elephants. 

Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Everyone has that team member who remembers everything. It might be you. Or maybe your brain refreshes every 48 hours. That's okay—we weren't built like dolphins, but we still have to stay on top of meetings, deadlines, and other tasks. 

All the calendars and to-do lists in the world can't save us from ourselves, though they certainly try. And though app reminders keep you and your team on top of the important stuff, they often rely on humans to set them first. Who has time to check all the alert options for a task or calendar event? 

We may never be as cool as dolphins, but with automation, you can automatically send or receive reminders of your most pressing tasks wherever you need them.  

Easily create automatic workflows that send reminders for you

With Zapier, you can automate recurring tasks—giving you back valuable time to focus on higher priority items. The workflows you build in Zapier—we call them Zaps—can automate many common tasks, such as sending out a weekly reminder email to your team.

A Zap always consists of two parts: 

1. The trigger, which is an event that starts a Zap. For example, every weekday at 3 p.m. (Think of this as the when.)

2. The action, which is an event a Zap performs after it's triggered. For example, send an email. (This is the do.)

To help you get started, we rounded up a few of the most used Zaps that automatically send reminder messages on a recurring schedule. Just click on the button below to get started. 

Send weekly reminders

Send daily reminders

Send monthly reminders

Build your own Zap

If you need a more complex reminder system because you're a complex human being, you can create your own Zap instead. This is also the best way to start if you'd like your Zap to perform more than one action, like send yourself a reminder message in Slack and adding a task to your to-do list. 

Here's how to do it: 

1. Create a new Zap in your Zapier account.

2. Select Schedule by Zapier as your trigger app and choose the frequency you'd like your message to trigger, such as daily or weekly. (If you need reminders on a more nuanced schedule, we'd recommend setting up a Zap based on events in your calendar instead.)

3. Select your email, team chat, or task app, then choose the action event that will send your message. (For example, you might select "send channel message" for team reminders or "send direct message" for personal alerts.)

4. Next, finish filling out the message details. You can add links and format your text however you'd like. (If you'd like to add more actions, click the plus sign (+) and repeat steps 3-4 as needed.) 

5. Test your Zap, and if all looks good, it's ready to use!

Use automation as a second brain

With thousands of integrations, you can use Zapier to automate most (if not all) of your tedious tasks—gaining back valuable time. By automating reminders to yourself or your team, you can save your precious brainpower for the tasks that need your undivided attention. You may not be a dolphin, but you can at least enjoy the freedom like one. 

This article was originally published in September 2021. It was most recently updated in March 2024.

Ever wished you had more time in the day to get stuff done?

Between juggling meetings, tackling your inbox, completing priority items on your to-do list, and tracking your team's progress, it's easy to get overwhelmed.

While automation can help you scale, and AI tools can help you analyze and interpret data, rarely are the two effectively combined in one platform. 

That's where Zapier Central, an experimental AI workspace, is changing the game. With it, you can teach AI bots to handle tasks—automatically—across your favorite apps. 

Table of contents

• What is Central

• Why we love it

• What you can do with Central

• How to get started with Central

What is Zapier Central?

Central is an AI workspace where you can work hand-in-hand with bots across Zapier's ecosystem of 6,000+ apps. You create, teach, and interact with them so they can help you scale your impact over time. 

Think of these bots as mini teammates who help you with specific tasks, like analyzing data or drafting responses to customers. By chatting directly with AI, you can train them by showing them the exact behaviors to follow—without using a line of code. 

With Central, you can trigger each bot to do something specific after something happens in other apps. 

For example, say you receive a new lead through Facebook Lead Ads. That's the trigger. In your instructions, you can tell the bot to summarize that lead data, then send a notification message to your sales team in Slack. That behavior will then repeat anytime you receive a new lead in Facebook Lead Ads, meaning you're getting things done even when you're not around. 

Central features include:

• Behavior: Tell your bot what to do when it's triggered, how to process or summarize data, and which actions it should take. You can trigger behaviors on demand, when new data comes through an app, or when you use a specific keyword in a message to the bot.

• Access to 6,000+ apps: You can add automation into the mix by adding app triggers (events that initiate a bot's behavior) and app actions (tasks the bot can carry out). 

• Data sources: You can give your bot access to live data (like a Google Spreadsheet) so that it can find, analyze, and summarize up-to-date info when you ask for it.

• Collaboration and delegation: You can work alongside your bots to carry out tasks or let them work in the background for you. 

• Conversation history: Your bots store all your previous conversations, so you can go back and continue chatting where you left off. 

• A single, unified workspace: Central provides a simple chat screen, where you type out your queries and interact with your bots, and an activity screen, which lists out all the tasks your bot has completed.

• The best of AI and automation: All in all, Central gives you a way to combine the best of AI chat, automation, and advanced data analysis in one interface. 

Why we love it

At Zapier, we're convinced that AI automation is the future of work for everyone—from automation power users to non-technical folk. 

Yet most AI tools fall short when it comes to automation, as they need constant instruction to work and struggle to integrate with other apps. 

Central is an experimental workspace that aims to bridge that gap, so that everyone can automate and scale faster. 

What you can do with Central

When it comes to Central, there are endless possibilities for AI automation. Most use cases will depend on what you need help achieving in your day-to-day, but here are a few quick examples:

Lead qualification

Teach bots to get background on new leads and keep you up to date. Ask them to enrich new lead data, add it to a spreadsheet, and get a prioritized list of leads most likely to convert. 

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for database apps (like Google Sheets), CRM tools (like HubSpot), or team chat apps (like Slack). 

• Data source: Upload lead storage data from Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, or Airtable. 

Email management

Tame your inbox with bots that draft replies, create tasks for urgent requests, and archive any spam or marketing emails. 

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for email apps (like Gmail) and project management apps (like Trello). 

Customer queries

Get answers about customer sentiment or order volume, sort customers by value, and tap into customer needs or feedback. 

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for forms apps (like Typeform) and eCommerce tools (like Shopify). 

• Data source: Upload order tracking files from Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, or Airtable. 

Project management

Nudge tasks towards a resolution, remind teams about deadlines via email, track task progress, and celebrate wins. 

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for task management apps (like Asana), email tools (like Gmail), or team chat apps (like Slack). 

• Data source: Upload project brief files from Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, or Airtable. 

Customer support

Queue up messages for customer support, provide your bots with a script according to your style, and resolve issues faster. 

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for support apps (like Zendesk), project tools (like Jira), or email apps (like Outlook). 

• Data source: Upload your help documentation as a reference from Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, or Airtable. 

Calendars and meetings

Create meeting agendas, update meeting notes based on criteria, and prioritize tasks based on your notes.

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for calendar apps (like Google Calendar), video conferencing tools (like Zoom), and file storage apps (like Google Docs). 

• Data source: Upload your strategy docs as a reference for prioritizing tasks from Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, or Airtable. 

Expense tracking

Stay up to date via conversations with your bot on tracking expenses, checking invoices, and logging sales.

• Behavior: Add triggers and actions for accounting apps (like QuickBooks), payment processing apps (like Stripe), or spreadsheet apps (like Google Sheets). 

• Data source: Upload your order logs as a reference from Google Sheets, Notion, Google Docs, or Airtable.  

How to get started with Central

Want to see it in action?

1. Head over to central.zapier.com and sign up.

2. Click  + New bot.

 3. Name your bot by clicking the current name at the top-left of the screen.

4. Add the behavior by clicking Create behavior. A dialog box will open.

5. In the Instructions field, describe what you want the bot to do.

6. Click + Add trigger to select a trigger.

7. Click + Add action to select an action. You can add multiple actions.

8. Test your behavior, then enable it. 

9. Next up, you can give your bot a data source. Click Add data source in the initial chat message, or click the +plus icon beside the Instructions field. 

10. In the dialog box, select the app for the data source from the available options. 

11. Select an existing connection for the app. 

12. Next, select a document to use as the data source. After you select a document, it will have the label Synced. 

13. Click Add data source.

Need more help? Read our Zapier Central quickstart guide for step-by-step instructions on creating your first Central bot. 

Teach bots to work on their own with Central

Zapier Central gives you a single, unified workspace that combines the best of AI and automation. Built on Zapier's ecosystem of 6,000+ apps, Central puts you in the driver's seat to automate even more work with the help of friendly, useful AI bots.

Ready to try it out yourself? Give it a go and start powering your business today. 

No matter how fast and efficient digital processes become, a good old-fashioned paper trail is still satisfying. It's practically non-negotiable for industries like accounting. But what happens when a client insists on a PDF copy, and an email confirmation won't cut it?

Thankfully, Plumsail Documents can help you tackle those document requests and keep business moving. It's a tool that lets you auto-generate and populate documents with app data for invoices, employment agreements, and more. Just choose an existing template or upload your own, add placeholders for your data, and then customize your saving and sharing options.  

Zapier can help you streamline your workflow further. With a simple Zap (our word for automated workflows), you can automatically generate a pre-filled document whenever you receive a new Jotform submission. That way, you don't have to copy and paste information manually whenever you need a document. 

The problem: You collect information digitally, but your clients prefer paper copies. Business processes are less efficient because you have to create documents manually. 

The solution: Quickly create customer documents with Plumsail Documents and Zapier. Automatically create a new document with Plumsail Documents whenever you receive a new submission in Jotform. 

Ready to try it yourself? Get started with our pre-made workflows called Zap templates. Just click on the template below, and we'll guide you through the setup process. It only takes a few minutes.

Zap rating: Beginner

Pro tip: Don't use Jotform to collect customer info? No problem! Plumsail Documents connects with other form tools through Zapier, so you can quickly generate the necessary documents.

This is the start of all you can do with Plumsail Documents and Zapier. Zapier supports thousands of apps so that you can automate almost any task at work. Start building your Zap now with Plumsail Documents and improve your business processes.

Getting work done is much like the evidence boards you see in crime movies. It's a mess, loosely tied together with string, and as the detective, you must crack the case on an impossible deadline. (With no noir soundtrack or a trenchcoat, unfortunately.)

With MeisterTask, you don't need to be a detective to make sense of your work. It's a task and project management tool that lets you collaborate with team members and build a virtual timeline of assignments. In a nutshell, it's an easy way to cut through the noise and chaos of project management.

Crack the product management puzzle with MeisterTask 

MeisterTask takes a visual, clutter-free approach to project management. First, there's a home dashboard you can customize to show you upcoming deadlines, task timers, and more. Your projects are laid out Kanban-style, so you get the visual satisfaction of moving tasks to the "done" column. 

MeisterTask shines by combining project features and visual design to make it a one-stop shop for project work—without being overwhelming. Tag coworkers on a task or add a comment to leave feedback. Attach relevant files and images to a project so you spend less time digging for that project brief. It's also easy to customize MeisterTask on a project level to suit your team's workflow.

Master those tasks: Popular MeisterTask workflows

No need for detective work (or string) to achieve those deadlines. Connect MeisterTask with Zapier and automate your work across your favorite apps.

Whether notifying your teammates about new assignments or managing work requests, you can create automated workflows called Zaps to improve team collaboration and productivity. 

Get started quickly with a few of our most popular MeisterTask workflows: 

This article was originally published in 2020 by Elena Alston and was updated in March 2024 by Krystina Martinez.

Managing projects in a small business setting might seem simple—there are fewer people involved and fewer processes to navigate. But big businesses often have a dedicated project manager for marketing, another for sales, and another for product development. The small business project manager, on the other hand, oversees multiple departments and wears more hats than can comfortably fit a human.

It's important to find project management software that can help you maximize output while juggling everything else on your plate. I considered more than 50 project management systems to find tools that have a feature set specifically designed to work for small businesses. After extensive testing, I narrowed it down to the best solutions.

The best project management tools for small teams 

• Asana for ultimate project flexibility 

• Trello for Kanban (and beyond)

• Paymo for managing projects across multiple clients

• Wrike for spreadsheet lovers

• Nifty for Notion lovers

• ClickUp for customized project views

• Any.do for simple project and task management

What makes great project management software for small business?

Despite all the hype about popular project methodologies (Scrum, Lean, Agile—you name it), there's no real one-size-fits-all solution. Every team is different: workflows, resources, and workday demands differ greatly from one company to the next. So how did I pick the best small business project management software?

I started by ensuring that each app met some basic criteria I felt were indispensable.

• Collaboration for teams and/or clients. Successful projects don't happen in a vortex. All apps that made the list offer some level of in-app collaboration, like built-in chat or file sharing, or a trusted integration with a tool like Slack.

• Integration possibilities. Your project management workflows are at the heart of your company, so all of the apps need to integrate with the other apps in your tech stack.

• Customizable views. While there are a number of capable tools focused specifically on Agile and Scrum methodologies, I didn't consider those for this list because your project management app should work for every team in your business. That means customizable views and support for multiple project management methodologies.

• Pure project management apps. There are many software options that include project or task management as a small subset of features, but for this article, I only considered apps that were primarily focused on project management. 

• Robust team roles and permissions. The more people you involve in a project, the more important it is to set customizable project permissions. Some people may simply need view-only access, while others need full admin rights. 

In addition to those dealbreakers, I asked myself a number of questions while testing the apps:

• Is there an active development team behind the software, keeping it up to date and bug-free?

• Is the interface intuitive, or do you need to spend a significant amount of time reading through tutorials just to utilize basic features?

• Does the app offer some flexibility so that you can create your own project management methodology, or does it try to force you into an inflexible flow?

I've been testing these apps for a number of years, but I started from scratch as if I'd never used them before. For each app, I went through the signup and onboarding process, created a project, chose a methodology (Gantt, Kanban, Scrum, etc.), and created a new task, including adding a due date, attaching files and links, assigning the task, and more.

After the first round of testing, I eliminated any apps that weren't user-friendly or were clearly geared toward bigger enterprises. Then I went back in and spent some more time in the top apps: toggling between view options and project management methodologies, adding a new user to the app and editing permissions, toggling between additional settings like filtering for my own tasks versus all tasks and more deeply customizing views (e.g., changing the Kanban column labels), and testing out any unique features.

The seven apps below are the result of all that testing.

The best small business project management software at a glance

Best project management software for ultimate project flexibility

Asana (Web, iOS, Android)

Asana pros:

• User-friendly interface

• Focused My Tasks page

• Simple, flexible view options

Asana cons:

• Fewer user permissions controls

• Pricier upgrade than most

In a cluttered world of modern project management software, Asana stands out as a profoundly effective tool that supports multiple project management styles, giving you full control over how you want to visualize and organize your work. 

Its interface is intuitive and well-designed, with an easy hierarchy of elements. On the far-left is the navigation sidebar, where you can access the various projects, stats, message inbox, and your personal task list. The main area displays a list of tasks, their due dates, and who each task is assigned to. Each task can be assigned to multiple projects in case of overlap and can have an infinite number of subtasks.

Where Asana shines most is in its flexibility: there's no right or wrong way to create your project, project sections, or tasks. The default view is the list format, which is clean and easy to scan for due dates and assignees. But you can also switch to a board, timeline, calendar, workflow, or dashboard layout. 

Asana allows you to create task and project templates (or start from one of several pre-built project templates), but its default setup is completely open-ended: the only required part of any task is a title. After that, you're free to add a description, organizational tags, custom fields (available with paid plans), due dates, assignees, and more. Still, with all the possibilities for adding information to your tasks, Asana's interface is relatively clean. This helps to keep the focus off the project management tool and on the work itself. 

While I wasn't terribly impressed by any of the AI features I came across in testing this year, Asana's new "Ask AI" feature was among the most useful, allowing you to pose simple prompts like "How many tasks in the project are currently in progress?" or "Show me all the tasks that are dependent on [INSERT MILESTONE HERE]."

For even more flexibility, use Asana's Zapier integrations to connect Asana with your favorite apps, like Gmail and Slack. For inspiration, take a look at some of the most popular ways to automate Asana, or try one of these pre-built workflows.

Asana price: Free for up to 10 team members, unlimited projects and tasks, 3 project views, and basic features; from $10.99/user/month (billed annually) for the Starter plan that includes additional features like the Asana Intelligence, advanced reporting, custom fields, Timeline and Gantt views, and more.

Best small business project management software for Kanban (and beyond)

Trello (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android)

Trello pros:

• Visual drag-and-drop interface

• Endlessly flexible Kanban boards

• Intuitive, useful automation

Trello cons:

• Less in-depth features than some

Trello is a simple, visual way to organize your projects with Kanban boards. And, unlike most project management software, Trello doesn't have the same learning curve: your team will be able to quickly get up and running thanks to its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. 

Start by creating a new board from scratch or choosing a template from hundreds of options across marketing, sales, design, team management, and more. Each Kanban board can be set up to mimic the standard Agile format: the backlog, in-progress, and completed lists. Or, you might get imaginative and use the boards as ideation or collaboration tools, where team ideas are compiled, then sorted and approved as needed. Cards (i.e., tasks) can include checklists, due dates, labels, attachments, images, comments, custom fields, and more. 

As you start completing tasks, simply drag the cards to the appropriate list. You can keep track of all comments and tasks that mention you—or that you're watching—from the activity menu.   

Trello also offers one of the best free plans on the market, with unlimited tasks and Power-Ups; 10 collaborators and boards per workspace; and 250 command runs per month of Butler automation.

Trello is the epitome of Kanban simplicity and has gained a positive reputation for that reason. But therein also lies its greatest weakness: if you have complex tasks with multiple dependencies, for example, Trello's features fall short. (Yes, there are workarounds, but they're not built in and can be complicated to configure.) 

To help augment Trello's project management for small business, use Trello's Zapier integrations to connect Trello with your favorite apps, like Google Calendar and Slack, so no tasks fall through the cracks. Here's some inspiration for how to integrate Trello with your other tools, or you can get started with one of these templates.

Trello price: The free plan includes up to 10 collaborators and 10 boards per workspace, unlimited Power-Ups, and 250 Butler command runs per month; upgrade for $5/user/month (billed annually) to the Standard plan, which includes unlimited boards and collaborators, custom fields, advanced checklists, and 1,000 command runs per month.

Best project management tool for managing client projects

Paymo (Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android)

Paymo pros:

• Centralizes every aspect of client management

• Customizable user roles

Paymo cons:

• Kanban board isn't customizable

If you need a project management system to manage projects, invoices, and billing across multiple clients, Paymo is a great option.

With its billing-centric format, projects are set up per client, and you can decide whether the project is billable based on hourly rates or a flat fee (or not at all). Since a timer is built into the interface, you can track the time spent on each task and project, and Paymo will automatically create the invoice based on that information.

Each project houses its associated tasks and subtasks, with five options for how to view work: list, table, Kanban board, Gantt chart, or calendar. You can also use Paymo's filter to sort all of your tasks for every client and project by status, due dates, priorities, and more. Within each project, you can view timesheets, communicate with teammates, and save all related files for the project. 

If the majority of your projects are services for clients that require billing and invoicing, Paymo stands out as an affordable but robust enough option to handle task lists for multiple team members. 

You can also use Paymo's Zapier integrations to connect it with other tools, like your accounting or calendar apps. Here are some examples to get you started.

Paymo price: The free plan includes unlimited invoices, users, and tasks, up to 10 projects, and 3 clients; upgrade for $5.90/user/month for the Starter plan that includes unlimited projects and clients, plus additional view options.

Best project management software for spreadsheet lovers

Wrike (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android)

Wrike pros:

• Top-notch table (spreadsheet) view

• Flexible, freeform task details

• In-depth email integration

Wrike cons:

• Less useful list and board views

If you've always been a spreadsheet lover, Wrike does the best job of bringing together the familiarity of your good ol' spreadsheet with more advanced features and a few other views for team members who may not love the spreadsheet vibe.

Wrike's email integration is different from the Gmail or Outlook integrations in the app directory. Once set up within your profile, any message you send to wrike@wrike.com will automatically populate in Wrike. You can create a new Wrike task, assign a task, add attachments, schedule a task, update the task status, designate task priority, add a comment, or add a task to a subfolder or several folders—all via email.   

While you can accomplish a lot without ever leaving your inbox, you'll eventually log in to Wrike and manage projects from there. You can add multiple custom fields to each task (e.g., numerical priority level, currency, percentage). Once each task is set up, your Table view is basically a supercharged spreadsheet.

For a development project, you might care more about priority levels and progress percentage, making the corresponding columns more prominent than others; for marketing, due dates might be most important. In either case, your team members will always know what information is required with every task assigned to them. 

Plus, the freeform task detail view works more like its own doc than a simple text box, meaning you can create a fully-fleshed out brief right within the Wrike task.

Want to do even more with Wrike? Wrike's Zapier integrations let you automate your work and connect with thousands of other apps. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started.

Wrike price: The free plan includes unlimited tasks and users; upgrade for $9.80/user/month (billed annually) to the Team plan that includes Gantt charts, automations, shareable dashboards, and more for up to 25 users.

Best project management software for Notion lovers

Nifty (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android)

Nifty pros:

• Streamlined features that just work

• Tons of useful view options

• Strong user role controls

Nifty cons:

• Kanban customization is less intuitive than some

If you're looking for a streamlined project management solution that's far from basic, give Nifty a try. It doesn't skimp on features—it comes with plenty of customizable views, user permissions and controls, and even time tracking. But the defining characteristic of Nifty's project management is that it just works. Plus, Nifty can grow with your business—that's why it made our list of best enterprise project management software, too.

If you love Notion but want something built more specifically for project management, Nifty offers a similar vibe. A number of project templates across several departments and use cases means you can get up and running in no time at all. (Or you can import projects and tasks from your existing project management tool.) The streamlined project dashboard is among the most useful I saw, giving everyone a high-level view of the project outline, members, and recent activity. Click on Roadmap (to the right of the Dashboard tab) to get more details on project milestones, scheduling, and percent completion.

Kanban, list, calendar, swimlane, timeline, report, and roadmap views are clean and useful—you can set the default view for each project in settings and toggle between them in the top-right corner of the Task tab.

Another thing I love about Nifty is the communication and collaboration features, which make it easy to keep all conversations about a project or task together. Instead of switching to Slack or email, team members can comment on individual tasks and talk about the project as a whole in Discussions. Nifty also offers super granular controls over user permissions, including the option to create your own completely custom roles.

Nifty offers a dozen native integrations, and it also connects to Zapier—which means you can unlock powerful automations to, for example, automatically pull your emails into Nifty Discussions or create tasks based on form submissions. Take a look at these examples for some inspiration.

Nifty price: Free for unlimited users and 2 active projects; upgrade for $5/user/month (paid annually) to the Personal plan for 2 guests and clients per seat, up to 40 projects, and more advanced features like custom fields and time tracking and automation.

Best project management software for customized views

ClickUp (Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android)

ClickUp pros:

• Tons of customizable views

• Generous free plan

• Strong collaboration features

ClickUp cons:

• More upfront setup required

While most project management apps offer a handful of view options, ClickUp stands apart from the crowd with about a dozen different ways to view your tasks, including Kanban, Scrum, Gantt, calendar, timeline, workload, and mind map, among others. You choose which views to keep in the navigation up top, and it can be different for each project—making it a great solution for use across teams.

The best part: where many apps lock views (like Gantt) away in premium plans, you can access nearly all of those views in ClickUp no matter which plan you choose—even the free plan.

ClickUp's customizability goes beyond task views. You can design your own dashboard by choosing from more than 20 widgets, and add a number of ClickApps to extend the tool's features, including apps for time tracking, sprints, custom fields, and even screen recording. All that customizability does require a little more time and effort upfront to set up your app, but guided in-app onboarding and the option to import tasks from another tool can help speed things up.

ClickUp works with Zapier, so you can automate repetitive tasks like adding form submissions or starred emails as tasks in ClickUp. Learn more about how to automate ClickUp, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

ClickUp price: Free for unlimited tasks and members, time tracking, unlimited list, board, and calendar views, plus limited use of Gantt, timeline, workload, mind map, and table views; upgrade for $7/user/month (paid annually) to the Unlimited plan to add unlimited storage, integrations, and dashboards, plus remove limits on features like Gantt charts, teams, and custom fields.

Best simple project and task management software

Any.do (Web, iOS, Android)

Any.do pros:

• Integrated task and project management

• Simple and easy to use

• Helpful, focused My Day feature

Any.do cons:

• Limited feature-set

Any.do is better known for individual task management, but they recently released Any.do Workspace: a full-on project manager designed for teams.

It's not the most robust or in-depth project management app on the market, but it covers the core features teams need—like chat, file sharing, a handful of view options (list, column, calendar, and table), and simple if/then automation—while maintaining the simplicity and productivity focus of Any.do's task manager.

Capable collaboration features combine with focused individual productivity tools to create a simple, intuitive, and low-touch project management solution. My favorite of the latter being My Day, a feature (found in the left-hand menu) that helps individuals quickly see upcoming tasks and build out an agenda for the day.

While the app only includes a few integrations, Zapier is one of them, which means you can connect Any.do with thousands of other apps to build workflows that automatically create new Any.do tasks from the other tools in your tech stack. Learn more about how to automate Any.do with Zapier, or get started with one of these templates.

Any.do price: Free for personal task management and individual features; upgrade to the Teams plan for $4.99/user/month (billed annually) to get a collaborative workspace with unlimited project boards and team members, plus more advanced project management features.

Which project management software for small business should you use?

As you select a project management app, ask yourself a few questions: Do you value flexibility or structure? Do you need detailed metrics on your projects? What type of data do you need to store about your projects?

Each app on this list offers a free version that lets you test it out. I suggest you pick the one that seems the most suited to you and give it a try. If it doesn't work for you, move along to the next tool. 

Just remember that the best methodology is the one that gives you the structure and mental support you need to get your projects out the door efficiently, with quality output. 

Related reading:

• ClickUp vs. Asana

• Trello vs. Asana

• The best free project management software

• RACI: A map for team structure (with template)

This article was originally published in April 2019 and has also had contributions from Emily Esposito. The most recent update was in March 2024.

There are a lot of ways to convince yourself to do something (even when you really don't want to). One way is to first understand what drives you to be productive in the first place—and conversely, what doesn't. At least, that's the guiding principle behind discovering your Enneagram personality type. Because what works for one personality type won't necessarily work for another.  

For example, as a true Enneagram Type 7—an "Enthusiast"—I tend to overcommit to new projects because I like to take on new challenges. Brainstorming new ideas, then (a recommended productivity strategy for an Enneagram Type 3), wouldn't make sense for me. What will? Keep reading to find out (or jump ahead). 

Here, I'll give you a brief overview of what each Enneagram personality type means and recommend productivity strategies and apps you can use based on your Enneagram type. 

What is the Enneagram? 

The Enneagram is a personality structure made up of nine distinct personality types. The belief is that everyone's overall personality is made up of all nine types, but one always stands out as your most dominant self. Once you identify your dominant personality type, along with your underlying motivations and core beliefs, you can adjust how you approach everything from relationships to work in a way that suits your personality. 

You can take the Enneagram test to discover your type, but it'll set you back about $20. (Don't be fooled by websites that claim their tests are free. Taking the test might be free—getting the results is not.) 

If you already know your Enneagram type and want to discover productivity tips and app recommendations tailored to your type, jump ahead. Otherwise, keep scrolling.

• Enneagram Type 1: The Reformer

• Enneagram Type 2: The Helper

• Enneagram Type 3: The Achiever

• Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist

• Enneagram Type 5: The Investigator

• Enneagram Type 6: The Loyalist

• Enneagram Type 7: The Enthusiast

• Enneagram Type 8: The Challenger

• Enneagram Type 9: The Peacemaker

Enneagram Type 1: The Reformer 

Enneagram Type 1s are idealistic people who are constantly on a mission to improve themselves and the world around them. While others tend to view Type 1s as well-organized and self-controlled, this isn't how Type 1s see themselves. Because they hold such high standards, Type 1s are highly critical of themselves and others and feel like nothing they do is good enough. Left unchecked, this tendency can push Type 1s to become all-consumed by their work.  

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 1

As an Enneagram Type 1, there are plenty of ways you can accomplish nothing and still feel exhausted—or worse, burnt out. To avoid that, here are some practical strategies you can use to achieve more (no burnout required). 

• Set HARD goals. Creating Heartfelt, Animated, Required, and Difficult goals taps into the sense of mission that drives an Enneagram Type 1 to want to improve. When detailing the HARD criteria of your goal, you address questions like, "How will this goal make your or someone else's life better?" and "How will you grow while pursuing this goal?" Plus, HARD goals work in tandem with SMART plans—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound—which offer a clear path forward. Learn more about how to build a SMART plan around your HARD goal. 

• Delegate tasks. Not only do Type 1s want to better themselves—they want to push others to do the same. By delegating tasks, you cultivate a culture of trust and empower others to achieve their full potential. Beyond that, collaboration can lead to better outcomes, which ultimately feeds your mission to improve.  

• Embrace "good enough." This may be the trickiest strategy mentally, especially for an Enneagram Type 1—but hear me out. Your to-do list is likely made up of a mix of impactful and essential-but-tedious tasks. The former are ones that move the needle (they have the potential to "raise the bar") while the latter don't benefit a ton from added time and energy (these can get by with being "good enough"). If you group your tasks into these buckets and embrace "good enough," you can direct your energy where it's most useful.

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 1

You need a place to store and keep track of all your tasks. (How else will you get to cross it off and feel that inexplicably overwhelming sense of satisfaction that comes with it?) To do that, check out Zapier's roundup of the best to-do list apps. 

Take Todoist, for example. You can quickly add tasks to your to-do list, group them into projects—for example, "work" and "personal"—and set due dates.  

Todoist also integrates with Zapier, which means you can automatically create tasks in Todoist whenever something happens in one of your favorite apps. Here are some ideas for automating Todoist with Zapier, or try one of these examples.

If you need to manage tasks for a group, you're better off using project management software. Asana is a top pick of the best free project management software particularly for teams. It's easy to create tasks and assign them to others. The AI assistant can even help you set realistic goals for a given project. And its dashboard gives you a clear overview of task progress and milestones achieved. 

Whether you're working solo or with a team, you can integrate Asana with Zapier. This way, you can connect project information to other apps. Try one of the workflows below, or get inspiration from these automations from real users. 

Enneagram Type 2: The Helper 

Empathetic and self-sacrificing, Enneagram Type 2s feel their best when they feel helpful. While well-meaning, Type 2s tend to become over-involved in the lives of others and end up doing things for them in order to feel needed. Without healthy boundaries, an Enneagram Type 2 can slip into people-pleasing behaviors that stretch them too thin and foster resentment. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 2

Despite what your insides tell you, it's ok—necessary, even—to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. And you'll find you get more out of work and life when you do. Here are some actionable strategies to help you do this. 

• Set boundaries. There's no one right way to identify, create, set, or keep a boundary. But there are plenty of places you can start. For example, define who you work with. Maybe you'll help people only if they come to you first and ask for help. Or perhaps you'll make yourself available to help only during weekdays. This way, you can still fulfill your desire to be helpful without overstepping or overcommitting.  

• Embrace saying no. As an Enneagram Type 2, you're deeply empathetic. It makes sense, then, that you feel compelled to say yes to every request that comes your way. But by defaulting to yes, you may end up deprioritizing important work or worse, burning out. By saying no to tasks that don't align with your priorities, you keep your energy focused on what matters. If the idea of saying no is uncomfortable to you, check out this trick folks at Zapier use to help them say no.

• Practice effective communication. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous strategy. Instead of just saying no, you can follow it up with the why. For example, "I wish I could help you with this project, but I don't have time before the deadline because of other priorities." This is clear and minimizes the potential of any misunderstandings. Whether you're texting a friend or Slacking a coworker, these communication tips can help. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 2

As an Enneagram Type 2, you need a way to establish and maintain healthy boundaries. Habit-tracking apps are a great tool for doing just this. 

Habitica, for example, is a habit-tracking app that gamifies habit tracking by turning it into a role-playing game. You can add tasks, daily activities, and habits to a list—but you can also battle monsters with your friends. Here's a screenshot from mine.

If a pseudo-retro gamified experience doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other apps on the market. Streaks is a solid option for iPhone users, while HabitNow is built for Android. For even more options, check out the best habit tracker apps. 

Enneagram Type 3: The Achiever 

Enneagram Type 3s are energetic and ambitious, often exceeding the expectations set before them. The downside, however, is that Type 3s tend to perform others' definition of success—so much so that they lose sight of what matters to them. Even though others tend to look up to Type 3s because of their personal accomplishments, those same achievements can also be a source of exhaustion and alienation. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 3

If you find yourself saying yes to everything because you're unclear about what matters to you, here are some strategies to combat that. 

• Write down your priorities. By taking a personal inventory and clearly defining your priorities in ink (or digital ink—your choice), you can anchor future decisions around them. For example, if your goal is to publish a novel by the end of the year, it's easier to say no to joining your company's rec curling league in favor of writing morning pages. 

• Brainstorm new ideas. If you feel so far removed from what matters to you—as in, you have no clue what's truly important to you anymore—consider this a fresh start. Take the opportunity to jot down every idea that comes to mind. Even if your ideas feel "bad," some of the best ideas are born from bad idea brainstorms.

• Spend quality time away from work. Before you hit total burnout, proactively schedule a proper break from work—physically and psychologically. Whether that's a week-long staycation so you can finally dive into the books piling up on your nightstand or a road trip with friends, detach yourself from work entirely. This will give your body and brain a chance to recover and recharge so you can be more productive when you return. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 3

Enneagram Type 3s need a way to remind themselves of what matters to them. Journaling apps are a great place to start. 

To ease yourself into journaling, try the Five Minute Journal (there's an app for iOS and Android users). There are timed prompts in the morning and evening that help you set a purpose for your day and reflect on the positive things that happened.

If longer-form writing isn't for you, Daylio allows you to reflect on your day using only visuals. For even more options, check out the best journal apps. 

Enneagram Type 4: The Individualist 

Enneagram Type 4s are passionate about expressing their individuality and surrounding themselves with beauty. Driven by the belief that they're unique and that no one can truly understand them, they tend to isolate themselves—favoring to do everything on their own, in their own way. The real challenge for an Enneagram Type 4, then, is doing tasks when they're feeling uninspired or that don't utilize their talents. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 4

When it comes to productivity strategies for an Enneagram Type 4, the strategies have less to do with the task itself and more to do with setting up an environment and support systems that inspire you to operate at your full potential. 

• Schedule regular check-ins. Type 4s work best when they feel their contributions are valued and acknowledged. This can be difficult, especially if your work doesn't require a lot of collaboration or you work remotely. In this case, schedule weekly or bi-monthly meetings with your manager to reflect on what you've achieved. Acknowledging your achievements together will unlock the motivation you need to keep progressing.  

• Create an inspiring workspace. If you're trying to do your best work from a cubicle set in a windowless office, chances are it's a struggle. While it might sound silly, something as simple as relocating to a table near a window (if possible), adding color to your walls, or setting a plant on your desk can improve your overall mood. Here are other ways to create a productive desk setup.

• Make time for creative pursuits. Perhaps your job is all numbers and black and white answers—there's little room for you to think outside the box there. In that case, take up activities that provide the creative outlet you need. Who knows? Just like this business owner, maybe jazz classes are what you need to break out of a professional slump. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 4

As an Enneagram Type 4, you need ways to incorporate creativity throughout your day. Maybe that's doodling a portrait of the office dog. Or perhaps it's sketching out a new project workflow, complete with flowcharts. While they don't offer tools to doodle Rover, the best mind mapping apps offer creative ways to visualize new ideas. 

Take Coggle, for example. It lets you mind map with text and images. You can also collaborate with colleagues on a map, which is especially great for Type 4s who deeply wish to connect with others. 

Enneagram Type 5: The Investigator 

Enneagram Type 5s are deeply curious—they're driven to understand how the world works, testing most assumptions for themselves. Type 5s tend to be isolated as they spend a lot of time contemplating why things are the way they are with the belief that they can rejoin the world only after they've figured out every detail. It's this relentless pursuit of knowledge that can hinder them from meeting ambiguous or urgent deadlines. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 5

Left to your own devices, you would gladly spend your whole day learning. But that would make the whole get work done thing a bit tricky. These productivity strategies give you the best of both worlds: time for learning and tackling your task list. 

• Block time for research. If you regularly find yourself falling down a rabbit hole of curiosities, that's ok. Lean into it. But set a time limit. Time blocking is a time management technique that lets you schedule how you'll spend each day, one block at a time. This way, you can carve out time for research and getting work done. 

• Automate research gathering. Instead of spending valuable time gathering research, leverage AI to round it up for you. Some AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, can even take it a step further and analyze the data for you, surfacing the most relevant information. 

• Seek opportunities for knowledge sharing. As an Enneagram Type 5, you have an intrinsic desire to be seen as someone who has insights to share. By engaging in knowledge sharing activities—informal lunch-and-learns with your team or more formal mentorships—you create an opportunity to share what you've learned. Knowledge sharing also has the added benefit of equipping teammates with knowledge that can help them be more effective in their roles. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 5

There are only so many hours in a day, and you need a way to ensure those hours are spent doing what you love to do (learn) and what you have to do (your job). A time blocking app is a great way to help manage your schedule. 

Sunsama offers a simple solution to planning out your day. Sign on in the morning, and you'll be asked which tasks you have to work on, how long you think they are, and when you want to do them all. When you're nearing the end of your day, Sunsama will prompt you to jot down what you finished and what you didn't get to, so you have a way of logging everything else you want to Google. 

Enneagram Type 6: The Loyalist 

Reliable, hardworking, and productive—Enneagram Type 6s consistently prove themselves to be invaluable assets, especially in a collaborative environment. The key issue for Type 6s, though, is that they lack self-confidence, so they rely on external supports for guidance to survive. Without adequate support, they can be anxious and self-doubting, which can hinder their ability to make decisions and slow down progress. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 6

In order to be productive, you need to feel secure. These strategies will help you develop and maintain that security. 

• Create a routine. As reliable as they are, Type 6s need to feel that there's something equally reliable in their lives. A daily routine is one such way to establish a sense of stability. Whether it's starting your day with exercise or ending it with meditation, find the routine that works for you. 

• Schedule regular check-ins. If you have a lot of projects on the go, it's helpful to have someone ask you how things are going and if there's anything they can support you with. Be honest in your conversations—if you do need support or if something's not working, let your manager know so they can jump in. In terms of staying motivated, this sense of "I've got your back" can go a long way for an Enneagram Type 6.

• Prioritize your tasks beforehand. When Type 6s feel anxious, they lose the ability to make a decision. Get ahead of this by sorting your tasks using a priority technique, such as the MoSCow prioritization method. This way, you can simply work down your list of high-priority tasks without giving it too much extra thought. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 6

Many prioritization techniques can be done using pen and paper. But if you prefer to do things digitally, try a project management app that offers Kanban boards.

Trello is a popular choice for this. You can add your tasks and organize them into different lists—for example, using the same MoSCoW prioritization method mentioned before, you could label your lists as "Must do," "Should do," "Could do," and "Won't do." And if your priorities change, it's easy to drag-and-drop tasks from one list to another. 

To get the most out of a project management app, though, you have to first make sure all your tasks actually get added to your board, so you can categorize them. With Zapier, you can automate this process by connecting Trello with your task sources, like Slack or your email inbox. Learn more about how to automate Trello, or get started with one of these workflows.

Enneagram Type 7: The Enthusiast 

Enneagram Type 7s are versatile and spontaneous, always on the lookout for an exciting new adventure. While their seize-the-day energy can be infectious (you're welcome), they have a tendency to get distracted by the next great thing, act impulsively, and overextend themselves. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 7

Your boundless positive energy is a huge asset to getting things done—that is, if you can direct it where it's needed without getting sidetracked. Here are a few ways to help you do just that. 

• Gamify your deadlines. Deadlines may not be enough to motivate you to get something done—especially when that thing loses novelty. By turning your task into a game, though, you become more emotionally involved with the task at hand, which encourages you to actually complete it. Here are even more ways to set deadlines that motivate you. 

• Try parallel working. Parallel working (or body doubling) refers to doing a task with someone else present. Knowing that someone is present and aware that you're doing a task tends to increase your motivation to complete it—whether that's washing dishes while your roommate hangs out in the kitchen with you or coworking over Zoom, these are all great ways to hold yourself accountable to getting tasks done.  

• Minimize distractions. We all fall prey to distractions, but they're especially challenging for an Enneagram Type 7. Instead of relying on willpower alone to stay focused, leverage software to block distractions while you work. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 7

As someone who gets easily distracted by all the things (hey, fellow Type 7s!), I highly recommend using a focus app. 

Freedom can block distractions—both websites and apps—on all of your devices, simultaneously. No more blocking Instagram on your computer, only to immediately open it on your phone. If you start a session, your distractions are blocked everywhere.

Or you can try something more fun like PawBlock. If you visit a distracting website, you'll see a cute animal who's disappointed with your choices. Decide to leave that site, and you'll see a happy animal. It's manipulative, but hey—if it works, it works. 

Enneagram Type 8: The Challenger 

More than any other personality, Enneagram Type 8s like to be in charge. While Type 8s view their brutally honest communication style and assertiveness as an act of service to others (how else would you push others to perform?), it can be viewed as confrontational and intimidating which can quickly bring collaborative efforts to a halt. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 8

Unlike other types, productivity strategies for an Enneagram Type 8 are more focused on learning to work effectively with others so that you can continue to work collaboratively to move projects forward. Here are a few ways to do this. 

• Set clear goals with your team. If you're an Enneagram Type 8, you probably read the headline of this article and thought, "I have no problem getting things done." Where you tend to run into trouble, however, is communicating your expectations with others. By working with your teammates to clearly define and agree upon goals, you ensure everyone's on the same page. 

• Learn how to deliver feedback. Honesty is important when building relationships. But there's a fine line between being honest and being brutally honest. Here are some tips to  help you deliver feedback your recipient can stomach—and grow from. And if they have feedback to share, here are tips on how to actively listen so the deliverer feels heard. 

• Delegate tasks. Similar to Type 1s, Type 8s want to empower others to achieve their full potential. One way to do this is by recognizing your teammates' strengths and delegating tasks accordingly. 

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 8

The key to succeeding as a team is ensuring you're all working towards the same definition of success. A collaborative note-taking app offers a practical way to track these goals, leave notes, and create tasks to support these goals. 

Take Notion, for example. While it's technically a note-taking app, it can be so much more. It's practically three tools in one: a powerful notes app (which is why I'm mentioning it), a task and project manager, and a reference wiki. 

Notion also integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to your other go-to apps. Here are ways you can use automation to turn Notion into the perfect information hub. Or get started with one of these workflows. 

The only downside is that you have to upgrade to a paid account to use Notion with a team. For free alternatives, check out the best note-taking apps. 

Enneagram Type 9: The Peacemaker 

As the name suggests, Enneagram Type 9s like to go with the flow and strive to create harmony in their environment. Type 9s can easily adapt to any situation, making them ideal collaborators. This chameleon ability, however, can cause them to lose touch with their own priorities, which can foster a sense of resentment. 

Productivity tips for an Enneagram Type 9

Keeping the peace doesn't have to come at the expense of your own needs. Use these strategies to establish healthy boundaries. 

• Write down your priorities. If you've lost track of what matters to you, now is a good time to reexamine that. Take time to reflect on the projects you actually want to take on, the goals you want to achieve, and work backwards from there. Armed with a list of tasks that will benefit your goals, you'll have an easier time saying no to tasks that don't.  

• Learn how to disagree. Type 9s are conflict-avoidant. You'll do anything to keep the peace, even if that means saying yes to something you disagree with or a project you don't really have time to take on. But disagreeing isn't inherently bad—it all comes down to how you disagree. 

• Use a priority matrix. Enneagram Type 9s tend to get lost in big-picture thinking, even for small decisions. Using a priority matrix can help prevent you from getting carried away by grounding you in concrete questions.

Recommended productivity apps for an Enneagram Type 9

Boundary setting can be challenging for an Enneagram Type 9 because there's an intrinsic fear that saying "no" to something (no matter how respectfully) will disturb the peace. To solve that problem, let an AI assistant say no for you instead. 

Reclaim is a solid choice for this. During onboarding, you set up your work hours and choose the way the AI engine should prioritize your tasks. You can also set how defensive the AI engine should be when scheduling. If you set it to Always free, it'll let Phyllis from accounting grab those 30 minutes easily; if you set it to Busy, it won't let even the president in. 

Reclaim isn't the only AI scheduling assistant on the market. There are other AI assistants that can help you with managing projects or syncing team calendars. Here are the best AI scheduling assistants. 

Embrace your Enneagram at work

You already know how your Enneagram affects your life, but it's interesting to see how it can affect your work, too. I'd bet that if you can find the right methods and apps to support your Enneagram type, you'll be more productive—and more fulfilled—at work.

Related reading:

• How to embrace sustainable productivity

• Scheduling methods to bring more focus to your day 

• Time management tips for getting more done at work 

• The upside-down world of bizarro productivity tips

There's a 25-year-old "South Park" episode I think about way too often. Working on a presentation with a coffee-addicted classmate named Tweek, the boys see a gnome stealing underpants from Tweek's dresser. They follow him to a cave, where they discover a network of gnomes executing a massive underpants-smuggling operation.

Explaining their business model, the underpants gnomes present this outline:

• Phase 1: Collect underpants

• Phase 2: ?

• Phase 3: Profit

This only slightly oversimplified satirical bit reflects what sales plans too often come down to: offer something, then get money. The reality is that sales success hinges on the research and tactics between those two phases. If you're not sure how to start defining those for your business, this guide should help. (And if it doesn't, our sales plan templates should.)

In this post:

• What is a sales plan?

• What goes into a sales plan

• Free sales plan templates

• How to start sales planning

• Types of sales plans

• Sales planning tips

• Automate your sales

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan is a strategic document outlining goals and strategies for reaching predetermined sales targets. For the "South Park" underpants gnomes, it's the glaring question mark standing between their product and their profits.

These formal documents set the foundation for business objectives and operations, defining everything from target markets to marketing ideas to benchmark reporting to revenue projections. They're thorough enough to communicate nuanced research but concise enough to easily share with stakeholders across an organization.

What goes into a sales plan (including examples)

A sales plan has the information stakeholders need to establish sales goals, set strategies, allocate resources, collaborate across teams, track goal progress, and measure success. Basically, whatever the stakeholders need to make sound decisions about sales processes.

The specific elements of a business plan differ by factors like sales plan type, industry, product type, goal horizon, and organizational structure. Some may have just a few sections across a page or two, others a dozen or more over several pages.

While your sections may differ in number or phrasing, you can expect some version of these elements to go into most sales plans.

Objectives

This section is where you set measurable sales goals. (In fact, this section is also called "Goals" in many sales plans.) Depending on your industry, common sales objectives include:

• Total revenue growth

• Market share expansion

• Customer acquisition volume

• Adoption rate increase

Obviously, you could just write "$100 billion" here and insert a Dr. Evil meme, then hope for the best. But the real objective of the objectives section is to come to attainable sales goals that align with broader organizational growth goals.

Target market

If your product is a massive eCommerce space with rock-bottom prices and free next-day shipping, write "Everyone" and move on. But since you're probably not Jeff Bezos, you'll need a detailed description of your ideal customer profile. 

By identifying specific segments and demographics, you can focus marketing operations and cater your sales plan to the customers and users most likely to help fulfill your sales goals.

Strategies

This is where you'll give the broad strokes of the approach you'll take to achieve your sales goals with your target market. Whether it's for entering new markets, expanding within existing markets, or launching new products, this generalized section communicates the stepping stones that will lead to your objectives.

Note that this section is related to the tactics section below but isn't as granular. Think of this as a space to describe the high-level strategies, their benefits, and their relation to sales goals and markets.

Tactics

This is where you get down to the proverbial brass tacks with specific actions and campaigns that'll actualize your greater sales strategies. Feel free to go full sales nerd about things like pricing strategy, lead management, and marketing channels. 

These tactics are still theoretical and don't have to be set in stone at this phase. But this is a space to describe specifics like customer survey or beta testing methods, social media marketing campaign concepts, new sales techniques, or new ways of utilizing existing sales software and resources.

Team roles

As anyone who's ever watched a heist movie knows, every great plan needs a crack team. In this section, you'll list either each member of your sales team or the team leads, depending on your team size. Beyond a simple list of names, here are some helpful elements to include about each:

• Title

• Aptitudes or experience

• Certifications or completed trainings

• Hourly pay rate (for budgeting and forecasting)

• Daily or weekly utilization limits

• Associated accounts

This should help you outline a structure for assigning individual roles and responsibilities related to your strategies and tactics, ensuring you've got the people power to get the job done.

Needs

As you develop your strategies, you may find that you don't quite have all the resources you need to bring them to reality. Maybe you need additional sales tools to execute new tactics. Or maybe you need to build extra time into your timelines to create new sales enablement content to prepare your teams. 

It's possible you may even need new hires, freelancers, additional trainings, certifications, or third-party agencies to do the things you need to do. List those here, so you can incorporate them into your time and expenses.

Timeline

Stakeholders won't just want to know what you're going to do—they'll want to know how long it'll take. Outline your strategies by breaking them into key milestones and deadlines according to the personnel you have. This should also map to revenue projections as your strategies mature.

Budget

The last thing you want is to create a beautiful, perfectly crafted sales plan and discover that you don't actually have the funds to execute it. Based on entries in the last few fields, you should have a good idea of expenses based on strategy resources, personnel utilization, timelines, and any purchases your team may need. 

Chart those here with estimates for any other potential expenses related to marketing, advertising, and sales promotion activities.

KPIs

Sure, you've been making sales since you started executing your plan. But how do you know you're making enough sales to justify your efforts?

This is where key performance indicators (KPIs) come into play. By setting these during the sales planning stage, you allow stakeholders to measure the success of individual sales efforts, so you can report on how performance compares to sales targets over time. 

If you're not sure where to start, check out this robust list of eCommerce KPIs to get some KPI-speration.

Potential challenges

If sales were easy, every company would be successful. Even at the planning stage, you should be able to see some possible roadblocks on the horizon.

The best plans are realistic enough to be actualized, so be realistic about what might stand in your team's way. Try to get ahead of challenges relating to things like target market sensitivities, general market conditions, internal resources, competition, seasonality, or campaign effectiveness. Then, come up with contingencies, so you're ready for these obstacles if they do arise.

Free sales plan templates

As anyone who manages workflows knows, everything's easier with templates—and a sales plan is no exception. Even if you don't think you need one, a sales plan can help you create more iterative processes, save time for stakeholders, and use automation for both creation and distribution.

Here are three templates for the same general sales plan structure to choose from, depending on the level of granularity and presentation you're looking for.

Sales plan template 1: Comprehensive document

If you're looking to get buy-in for your sales plan from senior stakeholders, you'll need a document that can organize and communicate your research.

This comprehensive sales plan template includes fields for each of the sections outlined above. Just copy it, rename it to your liking, and then click into each field to start filling in the information outlined in this post. (For sections you don't need, just delete or fill with "N/A" and move along.)

Best for: Communicating every element of your sales plan in full detail with (virtually) unlimited space

Sales plan template 2: Summary document

Maybe you need a sales plan template that gets the point across quickly. This one distills the gist of a sales plan into six concise, actionable sections, so you can share the most important elements of every sales objective in one document.

If you need room for more objectives, just copy/paste an empty row.

Best for: Quickly sharing the fine points of a sales plan with only actionable takeaways

Sales plan template 3: Project workflow document

What does your sales plan look like on a day-to-day basis? If you're having a hard time translating that, use this template.

Just include your sequence of objectives and related tasks, include the person they're assigned to, and tweak the date ranges. You can even update the progress graph for each task as you progress through them.

Best for: Organizing tasks, roles, and timelines within a greater sales plan

How to start sales planning

Step 1: Start sales planning. Step 2: ? Step 3: Start selling.

Sales planning may not be that easy, but it doesn't have to be especially complicated, either. It should take enough time and resources to come up with a document that's persuasive and detailed but not so much that it cuts into the real money-making efforts themselves. 

Here are a few ways you can set your plan up for efficiency, success, and—maybe most importantly—stakeholder buy-in.

Start with competitor research

The more you know, the better—and that's especially true for sales planning. Good competitive market analysis can set up your entire plan by showing you what success really looks like in the market right now, not just what you hope it can look like.

You may be tempted to start the sales planning process by outlining your objectives and tactics, but competitor research can go a long way in setting the stage for both. This can show you what works, how well it works, and what doesn't work. It can also show you opportunities to fill market gaps your competitors are missing.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel, but it can be very helpful to just reinvent what your competition is doing.

Helpful resource: The best competitor analysis tools

Don't shy away from established frameworks and methodologies

Established things are established for a reason: they work. If your organization doesn't already deploy standardized frameworks like SWOT analyses or lean on a methodology like Agile, consider using one to gain insights into your planning process or streamline it. 

Here are a few benefits many of these can potentially bring:

• Iterative internal processes

• Improved collaboration

• Predictable lines of communication between teams

• More useful insights from stakeholders

• More accurate internal data

• More reliable goal-setting

Obviously, the benefits will depend on the types of frameworks and methodologies you use. But the real key to any of them is the ability to standardize some element of the planning process and make collaboration more efficient.

Helpful resource: Reach any goal this year with the SMART system

Collaborate with stakeholders to define success

You may have one definition of success, while your stakeholders have a completely different one. Remember that your objectives and KPIs need to have bases in two realities: the market's and your company's.

It's the job of senior stakeholders to align sales efforts with high-level goals that help keep the entire operation afloat. That means they may have goals in mind that conflict with your market research findings about sales potential. The sales team, on the other hand, may need to help align expectations with market realities.

Successful sales plans keep both parties on the same page. As such, it helps to collaborate before setting sales benchmarks to see what success can look like for all involved parties.

Helpful resource: How to build a KPI dashboard in Excel in 3 steps (with free templates)

Don't forget about operations

Operations is one of the more complex elements of the sales process and can prove to have more volatility—along with a more significant impact—than others. While this may not necessarily apply to SaaS companies, for those with inventory to consider, sales and operations planning (S&OP) is essential.

S&OP helps align sales teams with operations teams to ensure they have the inventory needed to both keep up with demand and promote maximum stocking efficiency. Since inventory can take time and careful scheduling, it's best to get S&OP underway as early as possible. Demand forecasting, for example, is closely related to both sales and inventory projections, so combining these projections early is worthwhile.

Helpful resource: 7 key stages of product development life cycle

Establish clear lines of communication

If all good plans require a team, then all good teams require sound communication.

Since sales campaigns require collaboration between multiple parties and teams, it helps to have open communication channels during the sales planning process. This could mean adopting an Agile workflow and establishing daily Scrum meetings, hosting regular "office hours," or even just checking in with team leads.

While you're setting up these channels, tap them to get more accurate insights into sales planning elements like budgets, assets, and resource needs.

Helpful resource: The best collaboration tools for teams

Types of sales plans

While the sales plan templates in this post are somewhat generically designed for new product or feature launches, there are tons of other types of sales plans you can choose from. Many expand on specific elements already included at a high level in our templates, foregoing some of the other sections that aren't as relevant. 

If you know you want your plan to have a more granular focus on specific use cases, you could consider one of these options.

New product sales plan

This details the introduction and promotion of a recently launched or forthcoming product. Similar to the template and example in this post, it can be for a physical product, digital product, or service. It includes general information without getting too bogged down in details.

Best for: General sales planning for new products, services, or features

Milestone sales plan

Prioritizing timelines, this plan delineates sales objectives and targets to be achieved within specific timeframes. Typically, these timelines fall into weekly, monthly, and quarterly milestones. You can list these in a timeline section for any plan, but this plan is structured around those elements.

Best for: A bird's-eye view of the time a sales campaign will take

30/60/90 sales plan

This sales strategy outlines goals and priorities for the first three months of a new hire's tenure, typically focusing on short-term objectives. This can lean toward onboarding milestones to get the new rep up-to-date on sales processes.

Best for: Bringing on new sales reps

Sales budget plan

As a financial framework, this plan details allocated resources for sales activities and expenses to achieve revenue targets. This gets much more granular about the costs associated with sales, making that element of planning its primary focus.

Best for: Communicating nuanced expense figures

Sales tactics plan

Similar to a sales budget plan, a sales tactics plan is mainly concerned with one area of the sales planning process: the tactics. It takes a comprehensive approach to specifying the methods and techniques required to achieve sales goals and overcome challenges.

Best for: Communicating specific details about sales strategies

Sales territory plan

This one makes me think of classic mob movies—two families hashing out their territories in the Bronx over plates of spaghetti. It's a strategic outline of how you'll distribute sales resources within specific geographic areas or customer segments.

Best for: Segmenting sales efforts geographically

Sales focus area plan

This one highlights specific product lines, customer segments, or markets on which the sales team will concentrate their efforts. It helps align sales team members on their individual responsibilities.

Best for: Setting expectations for sales team roles

Market expansion plan

When you use this sales plan, you're taking a strategic approach to broadening the reach of a product or service by entering new geographical areas or targeting additional customer demographics. You can tailor it to go deep on a range of KPIs that suit your specific goals for saturation. 

Best for: Planning specifically for market growth KPIs

Marketing alignment plan

Marketing and sales—one hand (or team) washes the other. To help bump that cleaning sesh along, consider one of these plans. They help coordinate strategies, ensuring a solid connection between sales and marketing efforts.

Best for: Aligning sales and marketing teams

Growth action plan

This strategic roadmap details initiatives and steps to foster business expansion, increase market share, and achieve sustainable growth. It includes actionable strategies for making growth-oriented goals a reality.

Best for: Establishing actionable strategies for growth KPIs

Sales planning tips

As you build out your sales plan, you might find that you need a little help. Here are some of our top tips for sales planning:

• Know your audience: The sales plan will either be for stakeholders, team members, or both. Write to their level and with the level of detail they need.

• Start with SWOT: A SWOT analysis is a great way to get a quick, relevant picture of fundamental sales plan elements like aptitudes, challenges, and opportunities.

• Budget carefully: Not every sales plan style includes budgets by default—but don't let this deter you. It's vital to know what you can afford before you start executing your plan.

• Vary strategies: To reduce volatility, try to keep your sales tactics varied. This also helps you find the strategies that work best and back them with data.

• Continue monitoring: You can't know if you hit your KPIs unless you monitor according to the benchmarks you're tracking.

• Automate: Sales automation can help you achieve more with fewer resources, reducing budgets, lightening team loads, and cutting timelines in the process.

Make a (sales) plan to automate

Hopefully this post has you pumped for sales planning—or at least finding a mysterious new three-step business model (or even just watching "South Park"). 

To make the process easier, remember to use one of the sales plan templates we provided, so you can start the planning phase on the right foot. And when you use Zapier's no-code sales automation, you take sales efficiency to a whole new level. It'll help you do things like adapt and scale your sales processes, remove friction from buyer journeys, and free up sales teams to do more of what they're good at.

Related reading:

• How to automate your sales

• Audit your lead management process: A step-by-step guide

• How to craft a winning CRM strategy in 8 steps (with examples)

• 6 ChatGPT prompts that will generate great sales emails

I have a strong suspicion that both avid fans and accidental victims of late-night cop show binging are already familiar with the term standard operating procedure (SOP).

It's the bread and butter of angry captains yelling at daring detectives to get their act together and follow the SOPs. It's also yet another document that's more common and complex than people think.

SOPs aren't exclusive to your insomnia shows. They're a common document that outlines a step-by-step process for anything that requires it, from the financial and manufacturing fields to businesses and government organizations. Armed with the theme song of "CSI: Miami," I've put together some SOP templates and a quick guide to help you write your own. 

Table of contents:

• What is an SOP?

• Benefits of creating an SOP

• SOP templates and examples

• Types of SOP formats

• How to write SOPs

What is an SOP?

An SOP is a step-by-step list of instructions for a specific process or task.

A lot of businesses rely on a framework to complete certain tasks. Things have to be done a certain way and in a certain order for the operation to be successful. Standard operating procedures help everyone get on the same page about what to do, when and how to do it, and why.

It's about more than just documentation—it's about business growth. Here are some examples of when you might need an SOP:

• Customer service functions like onboarding and offboarding clients

• HR functions like recruiting new team members

• Marketing functions like creating and publishing content

• Sales functions like putting together a bid or proposal

• Operations functions like packaging orders

• Accounting tasks like invoicing

Good standard operating procedures highlight whose responsibility it is to complete certain tasks. They state the goal of the process, when it needs to be done, the steps involved, and what resources are available to complete it.

Basically, SOPs help you transfer those best practices you've developed inside your head into documented processes. Once documented, the standard operating procedures allow someone else to complete those tasks with the same standard and care as if you were doing it yourself.

One thing to keep in mind is that SOPs are flexible in terms of length and detail. You can create high-level SOPs that provide a brief overview of a specific task, or detailed SOPs that walk you through the steps, explain the reasoning, and accommodate long processes. The templates I've put together below outline the structure and provide a starting point for you to build your own document. They should fit your SOPs regardless of how detailed they need to be, but for detailed documentation, you'll need to flesh them out quite a bit.

Benefits of creating an SOP

Before you start creating SOPs, it's important to really understand why you're creating them. Here are a few of the main benefits you'll see. 

Enable business growth

As demand for your services grows, so will your team. This can mean anything from outsourcing certain tasks to freelancers to employing permanent staff. Having standard operating procedures means you can serve more people by replicating processes at scale—without compromising quality.

SOPs also help your team grow. Team members are no longer bogged down mentally, wondering if they're doing things right. Instead, they can execute quickly and focus on growing their skills.

Make processes more efficient

Standardizing will help you see where every process fits in and if there's a better way to do things. You'll begin to see how each process improves your business—or not. It's not only about documenting your processes; it's also about making sure they're the right processes to begin with.

Plus, once processes are standardized and documented, it'll be easier to find technologies available to automate those processes. For example, if you notice a common process that involves moving information between apps, it's time to automate.

Scale your training

Simple documented procedures become training manuals. When you bring in a new team member, they'll be able to get up to speed without you micromanaging. As your business grows, you won't have time to train every new employee—SOPs will take care of a lot of that work.

Maintain quality standards

Good customer service comes from a culture of excellence. If you want your business to excel at giving customers consistent quality, there must be a framework in place that ensures everyone provides a uniform service, even in your absence.

By setting up SOPs, a business can make sure customers receive the same high-quality service every single time.

Take a hands-free approach 

Having SOPs in place for your team means you can take a vacation every now and then and not worry about everything falling apart. In the absence of business leaders, SOPs become your team's reference point and go a long way in standardizing and maintaining business operations.

9 SOP templates and examples

I'm living in anticipation of the moment that I get to throw "Sorry, it's standard procedure" at someone in a cool, put-your-sunglasses-on sort of way, but as the following SOP examples will demonstrate, we're all much more likely to hear that line from HR.

These SOP templates provide the structure you'll need, and the examples will give you a rough idea of what a finished SOP could look like, but it's important to tailor the template to your specific needs rather than adopt someone else's.

1. Basic SOP template

This simple SOP template is designed to be a straightforward guide for documenting standard procedures. In the example, the SOP document assigns responsibilities to stakeholders and outlines every step of the day-to-day operations. It's as straightforward as you can get.

Best for:

• Outlining routine tasks and processes clearly and concisely

• Businesses new to standardized procedures

• Outlining procedures with minimal complexity

2. Detailed SOP template

This SOP example features a more comprehensive template for documenting long or complex processes. Its structured format makes way for details, such as the procedure, safety precautions, and troubleshooting sections.

Best for:

• Capturing intricate workflows

• Providing in-depth context and description

• Accommodating thorough documentation requirements

• Detailed step-by-step instructions

3. Manufacturing SOP template

This SOP example covers a manufacturing business's need for a document that outlines different procedures and defines the party responsible for each one. The description sections provide context on the task and goals, while the responsibilities section assigns team roles.

Best for:

• Documenting manufacturing workflows

• Maintaining consistency, quality, and efficiency in production processes

• Outlining complex procedures

4. Finance SOP template

Financial SOPs can usually benefit from a flowchart or illustration to further illustrate the point. While it's not a requirement, it can add a bit of color to your document if there's room for it.

Best for:

• Outlining financial frameworks

• Ensuring regulation compliance

• Maintaining accuracy and transparency in financial operations

5. Human resources SOP template

While concise, this standard operating procedure covers all HR functions within a business. It might seem a bit overwhelming to new hires, but it'll give the entire team a good idea of what their HR department is up to.  

Best for:

• Standardizing HR processes

• Ensuring compliance with employment agreements

• Promoting consistency and fairness in HR practices

6. IT SOP template

This SOP template is tailored for IT processes and protocols. IT in general requires impeccable documentation, and an SOP is the perfect way to reinforce that sentiment and turn it into a habit.

Best for:

• Standardizing IT procedures and complex protocols

• Outlining cybersecurity measures

• Enhancing efficiency and reliability in IT services

7. Customer service SOP template

This is possibly the field I feel most needs intricate SOPs. It's no secret that customer service will always find a way—or a million—to surprise you. This example outlines what an agent should do in different scenarios, making it much easier to handle all the out-of-the-box thinking that people seem to be capable of.

Best for:

• Standardizing customer service operations

• Improving customer satisfaction

• Ensuring quality service delivery

8. Project management SOP template

The project management SOP template offers a framework you can leverage to document your processes and procedures. The objective, procedure, and documentation sections should provide as much context as possible, as this document serves as both an SOP for your team and  a valuable document for broader business goals.

Best for:

• Outlining and providing context around standardized project management practices

• Ensuring project success

• Facilitating communication and collaboration

9. Customer management flowchart SOP template

Example process flowchart:

I went with a flowchart SOP for this example, and as you can see, it makes a huge difference in making complex processes feel much easier to understand and digest. Businesses that establish SOPs for customer management and communication can leverage a visual format that simplifies their work.

I would encourage you to create your own flowchart and then insert it into your SOPs. But you can customize this flowchart by copying the template, navigating to Edit, and then making the changes you need through the drawing tool. (If this is your first time trying this feature, here's Google's guide on how to use it.)

Best for:

• Simplifying complex and/or long processes

• Facilitating communication and collaboration

• Providing quick reference material to the wider team

Types of SOP formats

There are three main types of SOP formats to keep in mind as you start writing your own. It's not uncommon for businesses to adopt multiple of these for their different operations. For example, a manufacturing company could adopt a simple SOP format for their customer service department and a more complex hierarchical SOP for specific manufacturing operations.

Simple SOP format

This SOP format is straightforward, presenting information clearly and concisely. It focuses more on instruction clarity and outlines than context and big-picture operations.

It should include:

• Step-by-step instructions

• Bullet points for easy readability

• Minimalistic design for quick reference

Hierarchical SOP format

As the name suggests, this format is organized in a hierarchical structure, allowing for easy navigation and understanding of complex processes. It's best for complicated processes that need breaking down on several levels. For example, a company creating an SOP for multiple departments with more than one reporting chain requires something that can fit relevant stakeholders and keep them in the loop.

It should include:

• Main sections and subsections

• A clear hierarchy of information

• Detailed and layered procedures

Flowchart SOP format

Flowchart SOPs add a visual touch to your process flow, with illustrations depicting each step and decision point. Flowchart SOPs are uniquely positioned to break down processes that might require decision-making depending on the situation.

Let's say you're running a sales team. Sometimes, a sales agent has to react to their potential customer's situation and make a decision on how to proceed based on that situation. A flowchart SOP outlining the next steps can simplify the process by covering (almost) all possible outcomes. 

It should include:

• Graphical depiction of process flow

• Decision points and branching paths

• Easy visualization of the entire process

How to write SOPs

How does one write step-by-step instructions? The answer is "with a small amount of difficulty," especially if you're doing this for the first time. A template and an example are a good place to start—you just have to figure out what needs instructions and write them out in a manner that everyone understands. 

Your documentation will be different depending on your business, but here's a general guide on how to create SOPs that will help you get where you want to be (ideally, on a nice vacation).

1. Identify your process

SOPs only work if you have core processes that need to be standardized: you do them a lot, and they need to be done in the same way every time, with little to no variation. You don't want to have SOPs for every little thing—only processes with lots of steps.

2. Gather information

Remember: if you already have a team, include them in this process. You don't want to create processes that people don't identify with; plus, your team may have already figured out a simpler way of doing that same process.

Gather information, including team pain points and challenges, so you have the full picture before you start outlining your step-by-step guide.

3. Outline your steps

Start by writing down these processes in clear and simple sentences—avoid long paragraphs filled with jargon, and always remember your audience. Add screenshots or images where you can to make things even clearer.

Flowcharts can help. While they don't add the necessary context, they can be a great first step for someone first learning a process. The new team member can review the flowchart, which gives them a big-picture look, before diving into the specifics.

4. Write clear instructions

You don't want to leave any room for mistakes or confusion. Your instructions should be clear, concise, and to the point. There's no point in creating an SOP if every step is a complicated mess that can be easily forgotten.

I find it helpful to put myself in the reader's shoes, pretend that I don't know a thing about the process, and see if everything I wrote would make sense to an absolute novice.

5. Review and update

It's easy to create SOPs, feel a sense of accomplishment, and then let them collect dust in a Google Drive folder. Once you implement your SOPs, encourage your team to provide feedback through surveys and questionnaires.

And even once they're "done," remember that SOPs aren't user manuals that you toss aside after opening the box only to consult when things have gone wrong. They're living documents you need to update whenever something changes in your workflow or you find new efficiencies for your processes.

6. Provide training and support

Keep in mind that your team or organization will need to be trained in these processes you created. Make sure they have the support channels they need to master your plan.

7. Automate anything you can

The real game-changer for SOPs is discovering processes that can be fully automated.

Automating will free you and your team to focus on doing work that will put you ahead of your competitors, delight your customers, and encourage growth. By creating SOPs, you're essentially reviewing all your processes and can figure out which ones you can automate. Here's what makes a task ripe for automation:

• It's something you have to do frequently or on a schedule

• It involves moving information between apps

• It's boring and doesn't require higher-order thinking

• It takes you away from what you really want to be doing

Once you set up a few automated workflows, automation will become a habit, and you'll be on your way to eliminating repetitive tasks. And it all starts with your SOPs.

The right standard operating procedures can help you shift your focus from maintaining the operational workflow of your organization to improving it. Over time, you'll be able to identify the most repetitive processes for automation, creating time for more pressing and important tasks.

Related reading:

• How to create a goal-crushing project plan (+ templates)

• Marketing calendar templates to boost your strategy

• Communication plan templates—and how to write your own

• Free small business budget templates for future-proofing your finances

I like to think that the first person to record a Google Meet call did so purely for the cathartic email they got to send their coworker Dave, to show him what he missed because he was late.

Whether you're here because of Dave or for actual business reasons, I've prepared a step-by-step guide on how to record on Google Meet, with some extra tips and tricks thrown in there too.

Table of contents:

• Recording through Google Meet: A step-by-step guide

• Google Meet recording settings you can tweak

• Third-party recording software

• Why you should record your meetings

• FAQ

Recording through Google Meet: A step-by-step guide

Either those smart folks at Google already knew that their user base was in dire need of a recording feature, or a Dave used to work there. Regardless, Google Meet offers a built-in recording method you can activate at the beginning of the meeting and capture up to eight hours of footage.

Note that you can only record Google Meet calls if you're the meeting host or have host permissions.

1. Click the Activities menu on the bottom-right corner of your call.

   

2. Select Recording.

   

3. Tweak the recording settings to fit your needs. Enable captions or transcripts if you need them, and click Start recording.

   

4. To make sure your Google Meet call is recording, look for the red "recording" icon in the top-left corner of your screen.

   

5. When the meeting ends or when you manually stop the recording, it'll automatically be saved to your (the meeting host's) Google Drive in a dedicated folder called Meet Recordings. The video file will be named according to the date and time of the meeting.

Note: You can stop the recording from the same menu whenever you're ready. Depending on the length and quality of the recording, both the video file and the transcript can take some time to render and appear in your Drive. So sit back, relax, make a coffee, and wait for that email notification. 

Google Meet recording settings you can tweak

There isn't a lot to customize in the Google Meet recording menu. But you can tweak some video and audio settings for a higher-quality recording—because no one wants to watch an eight-hour recording of your pixelated face flickering between confusion and stunned silence while your voice does its best WALL-E impression.

Audio and video settings

Check your input devices to make sure you're using the right camera and microphone. I know what you're thinking: how many webcams and microphones could one person have installed?

The truth is that a lot of software tools might end up displaying as input devices, like microphones. Here's how to check:

1. Click on the More options button (three dots) at the bottom-right of the menu, and select Settings.

   

2. Navigate to the Audio submenu. Here, you can set which input device you want to use as a microphone, enable Noise cancellation and Push to talk, and select the Speaker you'd like to use as an output device.

   

3. Navigate to the Video submenu. This is where you can set the Camera you'd like to use. You can also set Send and Receive resolutions for your video feed. 

   

Let's talk about resolutions. In the case that you never played video games, never set up a new TV for the first time, or completely missed the past 20-25 years, the resolution refers to a measure of quality. You'll see two different resolutions in the Video submenu.

• Send resolution refers to the video resolution of your camera as seen by other meeting participants. Increasing the resolution here means others see a higher-quality video stream.

• Receive resolution refers to the video resolution of other participants as you see them. Increasing the resolution here means you see a higher-quality video stream of other participants in your meeting.

Keep in mind that higher resolution and quality usually mean a bigger recording file. But if you have the space in your Drive, you should be good to go.

Recording best practices

As a Dave expert myself, simply explaining what "resolution" means doesn't really get him moving. He likes his instructions in a simple cheat sheet format. And to that I say, "Oh, Dave, you crack me up. Here's what you should do, you lovable sloth."

• Set your Send resolution and Receive resolution to High Definition (720p) or higher.

• Turn off Noise cancellation if you're in a quiet room, as it sometimes causes issues picking up your voice or producing choppy audio.

• Use Captions and Transcripts—they help simplify meeting content and automate what could end up being hours of work.

While Video effects is a cool feature that can help you adjust your appearance, lighting, and background, it's more of a visual add-on that doesn't really make much of a difference in terms of recording quality or length. If it's your kind of thing to join a client meeting wearing virtual rabbit ears, I say knock yourself out.

Third-party recording software

If you're not satisfied with Google Meet's barebones option, take a look at Zapier's picks for the best AI meeting assistants.

They can record your Google Meet calls and add a lot of interesting features, like summaries, action items, and even the ability to ask questions about your meetings.

There are also industry-specific options, like BrightHire, which is built for interviews and integrates with HR systems.

Why you should record your meetings

Comfort levels aside, recording your meetings can be useful beyond having a three-hour recording of your own voice droning on to the head-nodding of everyone present. 

• Creating a point of reference: Let's say you had a call with a new client discussing the partnership and what it entails. A recording of that meeting makes it a valuable reference point for you, your team, your client, and any other parties involved in the project. It's a nifty "um, actually" tool to bring up whenever Dave starts misremembering details.

• Training and presentations: You can use the Google Meet recording feature to create presentations and training materials for your team. You'd just need to start a call by yourself and record as you go through the topic. Later, you can share the link for some solid training content.

• Recruitment and onboarding: This is more specific to HR functionalities, but it makes sense that recruiters and managers prefer to record interviews and testing sessions for potential hires. This way, every decision-maker involved in the recruitment process can rewatch the entire thing and make an educated decision. All recording software mysteriously malfunctions whenever a Dave is scheduled for an interview.

Transform your Google Meet recordings into resources

I can see why some people might feel uncomfortable being recorded or recording others. Always make sure meeting participants are aware of the recording before you start it. There's etiquette to this, and you should always respect others by offering them the choice of taking part—even Dave. 

Whether you're trying to optimize your HR processes, create valuable reference points, or develop training material, transforming your Google Meet recordings into resources might become a process of its own.

Zapier can help you connect Google Drive to the other apps you use, so you get recordings wherever you need them. Learn more about how to automate Google Meet and Google Drive with Zapier, or take a look at these examples to get you started.

Google Meet recording FAQ

I would personally recommend using the built-in recording feature unless you know for certain that you'll need something different than just a bare recording. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some common concerns from Daves and non-Daves alike to help you make that decision.

Can you record Google Meet without permission?

You technically can. But Google Meet will automatically inform participants that you started recording and display the corresponding icon. Google Meet will also warn you to make sure everyone is ready and that recording a meeting without the consent of other participants may be illegal.

Where are Google Meet recordings stored?

Google Meet recordings are automatically saved in the meeting host's Drive within a folder titled Meet Recordings.

Can you record both video and audio on Google Meet?

Yes, you can record both video and audio on Google Meet. You can even record shared screens and whiteboarding activities.

Are there any limitations to Google Meet recording?

Google Meet recordings have a maximum duration of eight hours, after which the recording will automatically stop. Probably for the better. You also won't be able to edit the recordings or manipulate them.

How can Google Meet recordings be shared or accessed after the meeting?

You can share a Google Meet recording using direct links to embed them or share them via messaging or email. Alternatively, you can download and share the video that way. If you use Zapier, you can automatically send the recordings to wherever they need to go.

Related reading:

• A guide to Google Meet vs. Google Chat vs. Google Messages

• The best video conferencing software for teams

• The best AI meeting assistants

Whatever it is you're selling in your Shopify store—from handcrafted furniture to Yoga classes—you're probably always looking for ways to make more sales. 

But successfully scaling your business takes a lot of work: you have to promote your products online, follow up with loyal customers, and log sales in your other apps for safekeeping. If you're doing this manually, it's easy to get behind. 

But there is a better way: With Shopify and Zapier, you can use automated workflows—called Zaps—to supercharge your Shopify store. Here are the best ways to streamline your eCommerce business with the Shopify integration.

Table of contents

• Track sales in a spreadsheet or database

• Promote new products

• Send team notifications

• Keep track of offline conversions

• Stay in touch with customers

• Chase down abandoned carts

• Create invoices for orders

Track sales in a spreadsheet or database

Part of keeping everything running smoothly is keeping track of sales. Send information about paid Shopify orders to a spreadsheet or database so you can analyze purchases and use that information to understand customer preferences and trends.

Promote new products

To have a successful retail business, promotion is essential. How else are people going to know about all the great stuff you're selling?

To save time and take the pain out of advertising your new products, these Zaps take new product information straight from your Shopify store, and automatically create new posts in all of your social media profiles.

Send team notifications

From crafting follow-up messages to asking for product feedback, you likely have a variety of team members who need to kept in the loop on new sales. Provide your team with the information they need, when they need it by automating your Shopify app.

With these Zaps, you can automatically send notifications in your team chat or via Gmail for new sales. Or if you have a high volume of transactions (go you!), you can get a summary of your Shopify transactions at a cadence that works for you.

Keep track of offline conversions

Having a holistic view of customer interactions is important if you want to successfully manage your advertising efforts. Connect your Shopify account to your advertisement tools so you can more easily gauge the success of your ad campaigns. Try one of these Zaps to get started:

Stay in touch with customers

Following up with your customer is one of the best ways to make sure they come back for more. Whether you use an email newsletter app like Mailchimp, or a customer relationship manager (CRM) like HubSpot or Salesforce, these Zaps can help you automatically add new customers to your email lists, so you can keep them notified of all your latest offerings.

Chase down abandoned carts

The phrase "abandoned cart" sounds so much more negative than it actually is. There are actually a lot of positives! It means that someone made it to your shop, liked something enough to add it to the cart, and just… didn't follow through.

It can happen for a lot of reasons, too. Maybe they don't have the funds just yet, or got distracted by something outside, or just forgot that they didn't check out! No matter the reason, following up on an abandoned cart can remind those potential customers what they're missing, and help turn those almost-sales into money in the bank. With these Zaps, you can take care of that whole process automatically.

Create invoices for Shopify orders

It's great news when your orders start piling up, but the paperwork involved can easily get out of hand. Make sure you're generating invoices on the go for both your tax files—and your customers. 

By connecting Shopify to your accounting tools, you can automatically generate an invoice the moment someone places an order. 

Streamline your store with the Zapier Shopify integration

You've already done the hardest part of making a successful online business: Starting it up. Zapier is here to help make the rest as easy as possible, so you can focus on what really matters.

This article was originally published in October 2018. It was most recently updated in March 2024 by Elena Alston.

Keap Max Classic (formerly known as Infusionsoft) has been in the running for more than 20 years. As one of the first CRMs out there, it's a popular choice for small businesses thanks to its comprehensive approach to email marketing and sales platform functionalities.  

And while Keap Max Classic has plenty of native automation features that help streamline parts of your sales funnel, Zapier connects with thousands of apps. That means you can automate workflows—what we call Zaps—that pull in all your business-critical apps. From automatically managing your contacts to adding leads to your marketing campaigns, here are the best ways to use our Keap Max Classic integration.

Table of contents

• Automatically create new contacts

• Back up important contact information

• Get notifications for lead activity

• Keep your leads engaged with email

Add and update contacts from anywhere

Are you manually downloading lead information to upload into Keap when someone clicks on an online ad or fills out a form? Not only is this process inefficient and unreliable—it's also error-prone.

Managing your leads manually is a big time-waster, and this problem multiplies with the more leads you have. Save time and increase efficiency by automating lead data sharing—building a faster and more scalable lead management program.

From ads

Adding leads from ads to your marketing funnel is an essential step in lead management. After all, advertising is expensive—don't waste any of those important ad dollars. With the Zap below, you can make sure new leads are added to Keap as contacts instantly so you can send them to the next step in your funnel as quickly as possible.

From a form

When reaching out to new leads, it's important to strike while the iron is hot. That is, it's important to reach out while they're still actively engaged. And if someone just filled out your form, now is the time.

Using the automated workflows below, you can create new contacts (or update existing ones) automatically each time someone fills out your form. This way, there's no lag between getting a customer's information and adding it to your CRM.

From a purchase

When a customer makes a purchase, you need to make sure that data is reflected in your CRM. This is how you can create better audience segments and re-market to them more effectively.

With the Zaps below, you can create new contacts for first-time customers or update contacts for existing customers, ensuring your customer data stays up to date.

From events and appointments

If you're using a tool like Zoom to host lead-generating webinars or a tool like Calendly to book appointments with potential customers, you can use automation to make sure none of that lead information gets lost in the shuffle.

From anywhere else

If you're gathering leads using a tool that doesn't have a Zapier integration, that doesn't mean you can't use Zapier to automate your lead management process. Using Webhooks by Zapier, you can still pass your lead information along to Keap by setting up a custom webhook. 

Or, if you have lead information going into a Google Sheet, you can connect that Sheet to Keap to add or update contacts for each new spreadsheet row.

Back up important contact data

One of the best things about using automation is that it eliminates the need to manually reformat and upload data into your CRM—it all just happens in the background.

That said, it can still be a good practice to back up important customer data somewhere in case an accident happens—spreadsheets are a great place to do it. With the workflows below, you can add tagged contacts to a Google Sheet or Airtable—giving yourself a reliable backup on the off chance something happens.

Get notifications for lead activity

The R in CRM is probably the most important letter of all. It stands for relationship, and that relationship is exactly what your CRM is here to help you build with your prospects and customers. Even if you're automating parts of it here and there.

With the Zaps below, you can keep your sales and marketing teams in the know on new lead activity by either sending them a Slack message or an email. This way, your team can act on activity when prospects are engaged, increasing the likelihood that you'll take that relationship to the next level.

Turning them into customers, that is.

Keep your leads engaged with email

New leads can go cold fast, so you'll want to make sure you're reaching out as soon as they show interest. One way of doing this is by subscribing your new prospects to your email newsletters and other email campaigns. 

But doing this manually isn't scalable when you're dealing with dozens of leads everyday—even if you do have a big sales team. 

Automation can help bridge that gap. These Zaps will automatically add leads straight to your campaigns so you can start marketing to them right away. You could even send welcome or transactional emails before your sales team have a chance to reach out:

Power up your lead funnel with automation

A CRM is only as good as the data that's in it. By automating how data gets into Keap Max Classic, you can have confidence that leads are being added to Keap quickly—enabling your team to follow up and sell more effectively.

This article was originally published in March 2016, with previous contributions by Carlin Sack and Will Harris. It was most recently updated in March 2024 by Elena Alston.

Built right into your Google Calendar, Google Tasks is a simple, streamlined task management tool that's easy to use. But, depending on your needs, Google Tasks may be a bit too basic (like when you want to share tasks across your team). And if the other apps you use are fairly robust, like Notion, you might find Google Tasks needs a little help to keep up. Fortunately, you can bridge these gaps through the magic of automation. 

Using Zapier, you can set up a Zap—our word for our automated workflows—that will automatically create a new entry in a Notion database whenever a new task is added in Google Tasks. That way, you can easily manage your and your team's tasks in one place, leading to faster and more efficient workflows.

Before you begin

Before you start, you'll need to have an active Google Tasks account with a defined list where you'll add your tasks. You'll also need a database in a Notion workspace with fields created for the task details you'll want to transfer over from Google Tasks. 

Add tasks from Google Tasks to Notion

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send your information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started.

If you'd like to start with a template, just click on it. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Google Tasks trigger

We'll start by adding the trigger first, which is the event that starts your Zap. If you're using the Zap template, these will be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Google Tasks for your trigger app and New Task for your trigger event. Then click Continue.

Connect your Google Tasks account, if you haven't already, then, click Continue.

Next, choose the task list you want to add to Notion from the Task List dropdown. Then click Continue. 

Now it's time to test your trigger. Make sure you have at least one task added to your Google Tasks list before testing. Then click Test trigger. Zapier will find a few of your recent tasks. Select the one you'd like to use to set up the rest of your Zap, then click Continue with selected record.

Set up your Notion action

Next, we'll set up the action, which is the event that happens after your Zap is triggered. If you're using the Zap template, these will be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Notion for your action app and Create Database Item for the action event. Then click Continue.

Next, connect your Notion account. If you haven't linked your account already, click Connect a new account. 

Then choose the workspaces that contain the database you want to work with and click Allow access to connect them with Zapier. 

After connecting your Notion account, click Continue.

Now we get to the heart of your Zap—connecting the Google Tasks data with your database. First, choose the database from the Database dropdown. 

All of your Notion columns will show up in your Zap as fields. If you want to create more fields, you can go back to your Notion database, add them, then use the Refresh button to update them in the editor. 

For this example, I'm going to add the Title from Google Tasks to the Task Name field and Notes to the Notes field.

I'll also add Due to my Due date field.

Once you're happy with the setup, click Continue.

Now, test your Zap by clicking Test step.

You can double check it's working correctly by opening your Notion database and seeing if your test entry was added. For our test, the entry looks like this:

We'd call that a success! You're now ready to use your Zap. Now any time a task is added to the particular Google Tasks list, it will automatically show up in the Notion database.

This article was originally published in November 2022. It was most recently updated in March 2024 by Grace Montgomery.

There's an old saying in business: if you can measure it, you can manage it. The problem? It's not always easy to measure how productive your time is. Maybe you spend five minutes here and seven minutes there—and by the end of the day, you have no idea what drove your productivity. If you did, you'd know where to focus your efforts tomorrow—and maybe earn yourself a Friday afternoon off.

Toggl Track is one of those rare productivity apps to remember there's a 4th dimension to manage: time. Sure, you could try one of those punch-card productivity apps, but they do nothing but add to your to-do list. Toggl Track is different. It can sync with Outlook and Google calendars for single-button time tracking. It can even auto-track what you do, spitting out results that tell you: hey, this is when you were most productive next week. Do more of that.

But like any app, Toggl Track only works best if it connects with your entire digital experience. Here's how you can automate Toggl Track to sync with databases, calendars, and even accounting software so you can finally measure the unmeasurable.

Table of contents

• Connect Toggl Track to your calendar app

• Connect Toggl Track to your database app

• Sync Toggl Track with your to-do and project management apps

• Bill clients from your time-tracker app

Connect Toggl Track to your calendar app

If you have a repeating Google Calendar meeting every Monday morning, adding a Toggl Track button on top of that meeting can feel like punching the clock. And that's no one's idea of fun.

The solution is simple: create a Zap. These Zaps can work in either direction. For example, you can create a Zap that will press the Toggl Track button for you, metaphorically speaking, when calendar events start. 

Or, if you want your calendar to accurately reflect where you spent your time all day, you can set Toggl Track entries to create events in Google Calendar or Outlook. 

The result is full synchronization between your favorite calendar app and your Toggl tracking data. You won't have to do any additional data entry to accurately measure where you spent your time.

Connect Toggl Track to your database app

You can go full productivity-nerd with Toggl Track if you want. But it helps to bring help from other nerd-friendly apps, especially if those apps are great at storing a lot of raw information. We happen to know a couple. 

Notion is great for storing, organizing, and collecting data—not to mention building the shortcuts and navigation to ensure it all makes sense. And Airtable records aren't only great for warehousing all of your raw data but also for processing however you choose.

Create a Zap between these apps and Toggl Track, and you can measure your long-term productivity, too. Maybe you want to see how much time you spent on a specific project over the past few months. You can set new time entries in Toggl Track to create new records within Airtable each time. Or, you can save your information to Google Sheets and process that data later. 

But if you want to know everything about how you spend your time, connecting these apps with Toggl Track will have you covered.

Sync Toggl Track with your to-do and project management apps

Maybe you're not so much about data collection as you are about getting things done. We salute your dedication. How can Toggl Track help you focus on your work while still effortlessly tracking your time spent on each project? If you use other apps like Todoist, Trello, or Asana, there's likely a Zap that has you covered.

For those relentless getting-things-done folks, it's not unusual to live in your project management apps. This can create a problem if you want to use another app, like Toggl Track, to measure how much time you spend. If you have to click a new button every time you set a new project in Asana or Todoist, are you really feeling more productive? Hardly. 

So set a Zap between your apps and let Zapier do it instead.

Bill clients from your time-tracker app

Time is money, right? If you're charging a client by the hour, you can use a Zap to save even more of your time by automating your invoice process.

Why bother? It's a much more convenient way to move from working to billing. And when you automate it, you won't have to remember that someone owes you money for time working—the time will be waiting for you in FreshBooks. 

Don't just measure your time, manage it

When you connect your time-tracking app like Toggl Track to your other business-critical tools, you can not only better measure where you spend your time, you can save even more of it by cutting out unnecessary tasks from your day.

And this is just the start of what you can do with Toggl Track and Zapier. What will you automate first?

If you're a small to mid-sized business, Zoho CRM can be your best friend when it comes to managing sales. The customer relationship management tool can help you track new leads, log customer engagements, and create personalized campaigns to generate more conversions. 

That data shouldn't live in a silo; you'll want to transfer it to your other apps so you can act on it. But your time is valuable and you'll want to avoid doing this manually as errors can easily happen. 

Enter: automation. By using Zapier to connect Zoho CRM to your other apps, you can create Zaps—our word for workflows—to automatically manage new leads, follow up with them, and notify your sales team. Here are the best ways to use the Zapier Zoho CRM integration.

Table of contents

• Add and manage new leads and customers

• Get notified about new leads

• Follow up with leads right away

• Back up important contact data

• Use webhooks with Zoho CRM

Add and manage new leads and customers

When it comes to converting leads, time is of the essence. The sooner you reach out to leads after they express interest in your business, the higher the chance you have of converting them into customers.

That's why it's important to add new leads to your CRM as soon as they click on an ad or fill out an online form. If you're doing this step manually, you're missing out on the very short window that your engaged lead expects a response. Plus, you risk making mistakes and adding the wrong information.

No matter where your leads come from—whether it's an ad, a website form, or a new payment—you can instantly add them to Zoho CRM with automation.

From ad & conversion tools

From forms

From payments and orders

Get notified about new leads

The hard part's done: You've managed to get an influx of leads through various sources. But your job's not over yet. 

Once those prospects land in your CRM, you need to know as soon as possible so you can act on the opportunity while their interest is fresh. But manually checking your CRM and triaging leads to the right members of your sales team takes time—and leaves room for error.  

Use these Zaps to get notified automatically in your team chat app or via email whenever you get a new lead. That way, you and your team can get to work right away. 

Follow up with leads right away

New leads are as engaged as they'll ever be, so you'll want to be sure to reach out right away—whether that's via email, SMS, or both. Use these Zaps to add leads to your marketing campaigns as soon as you add them to Zoho CRM.

Back up important contact data

One benefit of automatically adding leads to Zoho CRM is that you don't have to transfer and reformat your lead data from a spreadsheet to the platform.

Sometimes though, things break. And when they do, it's a life-saver to have that data backed up in one place.

Spreadsheets are a perfect place to save a copy of all your contacts' information. They keep a tidy, accurate record of your contact history. And, in the event of lost data in your CRM, they're easy to re-upload. With Zapier, you can add lead and customer data straight to your spreadsheet without worrying about manually copying the data from Zoho CRM.

Use webhooks to connect Zoho CRM to just about everything else

Zapier connects with a lot of apps. Like, a lot a lot. But if you use an app that doesn't have a Zapier integration, there's another option: webhooks. If your app has webhook functionality, you can use Webhooks by Zapier to connect it to Zoho CRM. 

Automate and streamline your sales

Automation is an important tool for delivering a more personal and effective customer experience. From adding new leads to subscribing them to campaigns to maintaining accurate and up-to-date records, Zapier can automate it all.

This article was originally published in August 2022. It was most recently updated in March 2024 by Elena Alston.

Google Docs lets you collaborate on documents; Gmail doesn't really let you collaborate on emails. But you can collaborate on Gmail messages in Google Docs—and then send the email straight from the doc or as an attachment. Let's take a look at all the ways you can email a Google Doc.

How to email from Google Docs

If you want to compose an email in Google Docs and then send it via Gmail, you're in the right place. Here's how to do it.

1. In your Google Doc, type @email.

2. Hit Enter or return, or click the Email draft option.

   

3. An email template will show up in your document. 

   

4. You can add recipients by clicking Person and finding them in your Google Contacts, or type @ and an email address.

   

5. You can now draft the email in Google Docs, complete with a subject line and whatever vitally important message you need to share. 

   

6. When you're done, click the blue Gmail icon in the top-left of the doc.

   

7. A new window will pop up with your email draft.

   

8. If you're ready to send, click Send. Or, you can close out of that window and then find it in your Drafts folder in Gmail whenever you're ready.

How to email Google Docs

If you want to email a Google Doc as a file or link instead, you have three options.

How to attach a Google Doc to an email

1. Click File > Email > Email this file.

   

2. Enter who you're sending it to, the subject, and the message you want to go along with the file.

3. From the dropdown, choose if you want to send it as a PDF, RTF, Open Document, HTML, Word doc, or Plain Text file. (You can't send it as a Google Doc because Google Docs aren't actual files—they're web links.)

   

4. Click Send. The recipient will get a message with your email as an attachment in whatever format you selected. (They'll be able to see that it was originally a Google Doc.)

   

If you need a different file type, or you want to send the email directly from Gmail, you can click File > Download and then select the type of file you want. Once it's downloaded, just attach it to an email the way you normally would.

How to share a Google Doc in an email as a file preview

I'm honestly not sure when you'd want to do this, but if you just want someone to see your file as a preview, you follow the same steps as above but with the checkbox instead of the dropdown.

1. Click File > Email > Email this file.

   

2. Enter who you're sending it to, the subject, and the message you want to go along with the file.

3. Check the box for Don't attach. Include content in the email.

4. Click Send. The recipient will see a preview of your message.

   

How to share a Google Doc in an email

If you want someone to be able to see the actual Google Doc—not a preview of it and not a downloaded version of it—you'll use the Share options.

1. Click Share in the top-right, and add the emails of the people you want to share it with.

   

2. Make sure the Notify people box is checked, and click Send.

   

3. The recipient will get a notification that they've been shared on the doc, and they can open it from that email.

   

You can do the same thing from Google Drive, too, by right-clicking a file and selecting Share. Then you can either copy a link or send the notification directly from Google Drive.

How to automatically email Google Docs

If you find yourself emailing Google Docs more than just once in a while, it's time to automate the process. You can use Zapier to connect Google Docs to Gmail and automatically email Google Docs in certain folders or matching certain criteria. Learn more about how to automate Google Drive and how to automate Gmail, or get started with one of these templates.

Related reading:

• How to add a signature in Google Docs

• 10 Google Docs formatting tricks to make your files pretty

• How to create and autopopulate a Google Docs template

This article was originally published in May 2022 by Justin Pot. The most recent update was in March 2024.

Google Docs lets you collaborate on documents; Gmail doesn't really let you collaborate on emails. But you can collaborate on Gmail messages in Google Docs—and then send the email straight from the doc or as an attachment. Let's take a look at all the ways you can email a Google Doc.

How to email from Google Docs

If you want to compose an email in Google Docs and then send it via Gmail, you're in the right place. Here's how to do it.

1. In your Google Doc, type @email.

2. Hit Enter or return, or click the Email draft option.

   

3. An email template will show up in your document. 

   

4. You can add recipients by clicking Person and finding them in your Google Contacts, or type @ and an email address.

   

5. You can now draft the email in Google Docs, complete with a subject line and whatever vitally important message you need to share. 

   

6. When you're done, click the blue Gmail icon in the top-left of the doc.

   

7. A new window will pop up with your email draft.

   

8. If you're ready to send, click Send. Or, you can close out of that window and then find it in your Drafts folder in Gmail whenever you're ready.

How to email Google Docs

If you want to email a Google Doc as a file or link instead, you have three options.

How to attach a Google Doc to an email

1. Click File > Email > Email this file.

   

2. Enter who you're sending it to, the subject, and the message you want to go along with the file.

3. From the dropdown, choose if you want to send it as a PDF, RTF, Open Document, HTML, Word doc, or Plain Text file. (You can't send it as a Google Doc because Google Docs aren't actual files—they're web links.)

   

4. Click Send. The recipient will get a message with your email as an attachment in whatever format you selected. (They'll be able to see that it was originally a Google Doc.)

   

If you need a different file type, or you want to send the email directly from Gmail, you can click File > Download and then select the type of file you want. Once it's downloaded, just attach it to an email the way you normally would.

How to share a Google Doc in an email as a file preview

I'm honestly not sure when you'd want to do this, but if you just want someone to see your file as a preview, you follow the same steps as above but with the checkbox instead of the dropdown.

1. Click File > Email > Email this file.

   

2. Enter who you're sending it to, the subject, and the message you want to go along with the file.

3. Check the box for Don't attach. Include content in the email.

4. Click Send. The recipient will see a preview of your message.

   

How to share a Google Doc in an email

If you want someone to be able to see the actual Google Doc—not a preview of it and not a downloaded version of it—you'll use the Share options.

1. Click Share in the top-right, and add the emails of the people you want to share it with.

   

2. Make sure the Notify people box is checked, and click Send.

   

3. The recipient will get a notification that they've been shared on the doc, and they can open it from that email.

   

You can do the same thing from Google Drive, too, by right-clicking a file and selecting Share. Then you can either copy a link or send the notification directly from Google Drive.

How to automatically email Google Docs

If you find yourself emailing Google Docs more than just once in a while, it's time to automate the process. You can use Zapier to connect Google Docs to Gmail and automatically email Google Docs in certain folders or matching certain criteria. Learn more about how to automate Google Drive and how to automate Gmail, or get started with one of these templates.

Related reading:

• How to add a signature in Google Docs

• 10 Google Docs formatting tricks to make your files pretty

• How to create and autopopulate a Google Docs template

This article was originally published in May 2022 by Justin Pot. The most recent update was in March 2024.

I dream of a day when my computer can act as my assistant: summarize my top email threads, queue up music playlists for work, and run a quick Google search in the background while I write—all through voice commands. That day may be closing in on us. After the boom of AI chatbots, AI has spread to other apps to offer a better, more integrated experience.

Microsoft Copilot isn't that yet—but it's a step in the right direction. Offering an experience powered by the GPT and DALL·E models, courtesy of Microsoft's close relationship with OpenAI, you'll now see new magic buttons and AI chat boxes spread throughout the Microsoft apps you use every day.

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Copilot is a set of new features that combine large language models (LLMs) with existing Microsoft products:

• Windows 11

• Bing Search's AI Chat

• Microsoft Edge

• Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams)

Copilot's AI features include generative AI (text and images) and text and data analysis, among other things. The objective is to save time as you search, write, and ideate your way to get your job done.

The features are spread out across the apps you use every day. When you ask Bing a question, start writing with AI in Word, or get into forecasting in Excel, a request flies out to the Microsoft Azure infrastructure. The AI models there compute the appropriate response and send it back to the app you're using. This means you'll need an internet connection to access Copilot, as most personal computers aren't powerful enough for LLM-level work.

How much does Microsoft Copilot cost?

Cool, but what's the price tag? Most of the AI features in Windows, Search, and Edge are free for now. But to unlock these add-ons in Microsoft 365, you need to subscribe to one of these paid plans:

• Copilot Pro Personal adds AI to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and basic features in Outlook if you have an @outlook.com account. As the plan name suggests, it targets personal users using the corresponding Microsoft 365 plan. It's currently priced at $20/user/month.

• Copilot Pro Business does the same for the apps mentioned above, while also unlocking AI meeting assistant features in Microsoft Teams, more email management tools in Outlook, and access to grounded AI chat for getting answers to questions about your business. You can get started at $30/user/month.

I tested these new features by signing up for the early-release channels and by purchasing the add-on subscription. As a long-time fan of Linux, I confess I'm excited by the prospect of using an AI-powered computer system. 

How to use Microsoft Copilot in Windows 11

Still in preview, Copilot for Windows 11 brings a chat experience into the operating system and a range of AI-powered features to Clipchamp, Photos, the Snipping Tool, and Paint.

If your system is up to date and you were part of the release wave, you'll find the Copilot icon in your taskbar. Alternatively, press the Windows key + C to check whether you have it installed.

Copilot chat

The Copilot chat in Windows 11 shows promise, but there's still a lot of ground to cover. Once you open it, it sits as a sidebar to the entire window, like when using a browser but at a system level. It looks and works like Bing Chat: you can ask it the same questions, run internet searches, and ask it to generate images.

It can't control your system. This cuts both ways: having AI technology running your computer can be dangerous; but it would be awesome to type what you want to do in Windows and have the chatbot do everything for you.

I asked it to open the Spotify app and play one of my playlists as a test. The best Copilot could do was offer a button in the chat that opens the app, but it didn't start playing anything. I then asked for steps to troubleshoot my Wi-Fi connection and, again, Copilot offers a button to open the network setting, along with a few general instructions.

If this keeps evolving, here are a few possibilities that I'm hoping will become true:

• Troubleshoot issues with Windows by running an AI agent that finds solutions in Microsoft's knowledge base, creates a unique action plan, and executes the entire repair process while providing updates.

• Run a chain of actions involving multiple apps: based on a Notepad file, send that text to Word and expand it, generate images in the Microsoft cloud, and add them to the file.

• Search for answers about a topic online and store it in multiple Word files, organized in a folder inside your computer.

This becomes even more interesting when you use your voice to talk to Copilot. The Windows dictation feature is excellent, sending what you're saying directly over to the AI. It replies in voice, making it feel like you're having a conversation with your computer. Now imagine doing all I've described above just by talking: you won't have to tab out to other apps to record a short note, do a quick fact check, or send a brief email—all this without leaving the task at hand.

Copilot in Clipchamp

Moving on from the chat experience, AI landed in Clipchamp too. The Microsoft video editing app offers a simple user experience to polish your content, and now you can start a new project with AI Auto Compose. Upload your source video, choose a style, and select a background song. You'll get a video ready with transitions, jump cuts, and colorful backgrounds right out of the gate.

If you need a voiceover but aren't up to recording it yourself, there's a text-to-speech feature available, offering a range of controls for how the voice sounds. The result is decent, a good option if you're tight on time to source it elsewhere.

Copilot in Paint

If you grew up in the '90s, I'm sure you remember Paint. It's making a comeback with the Cocreator feature, an AI image generation tool: start with your prompt, pick a style from the dropdown, and the result is pasted into the canvas, ready for editing. It can also blur the background of images, a feature that it shares with Photos.

Copilot in Snipping Tool

Finally, if you take lots of screenshots, consider taking the improved Snipping Tool for a spin. It can now extract text from images and quickly detect and redact sensitive information such as email addresses and phone numbers. As someone who takes dozens of screenshots every week, not having to plug each one into an image editing app makes me very happy.

How to use Microsoft Copilot in Bing Search's AI Chat and Microsoft Edge

Next up, Bing Chat and Microsoft Edge. I've grouped these since the best way to access Bing Chat is via Microsoft's native browser—and Edge doesn't have much else in terms of AI.

After the launch of ChatGPT, Microsoft was quick to integrate AI into Bing Search, a chat experience for searching the internet and generating natural language responses based on the results. Its most exciting update is the integration with DALL·E 3, OpenAI's image generation model. 

Start by stating that you want to generate an image, and type in the prompt. Four results will appear. While Bing suggests that you can regenerate parts of the image by adding additional prompts, this doesn't always work as expected. Keep trying to find what you're looking for.

While you can access Bing's AI Chat in any browser, it has a special integration in Microsoft Edge. It has a dedicated sidebar, offering a cute disclaimer in the footer: "Copilot is powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible." Indeed. 

But the surprises don't end here. Take a closer look at the top of the sidebar, and click on the Compose tab.

Here, you can use a prompt to write a quick email, brainstorm ideas, or draft a blog post. There are extra controls for zeroing in on what you want:

• Tone, anywhere from professional to funny

• Format (paragraph, email, ideas, or a blog post)

• Length (it's a bit biased for longer responses)

Once you get your output, you can paste the response into any website you have open: just click the Add to site button. This is a useful shortcut to paste AI-generated text in a new Gmail email, a new WordPress post, or any input field anywhere on the web.

How to use Microsoft Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

You can now write with AI in Word, analyze data in Excel, and generate presentations in PowerPoint with a set of prompts: just look for the Copilot icon within each app at the top-right of the toolbar.

Copilot in Word

Starting with Word, use the ALT + i shortcut to enter a new prompt on a blank document. I asked for an outline of an article on how to write with Copilot in Word (so meta): the results come fully formatted into the document, ready to edit. There are options to keep or discard the results, as well as to regenerate with or without a short prompt.

Next, you can click anywhere on the page and select the Copilot button on the left of the line. That will open the prompt input again, letting you add more instructions. The new text will appear there. The engine is aware of the cursor position: for example, I asked it to expand the introduction of the article—I didn't have to highlight any text on the document for it to know what I meant.

Not sure that paragraph will resonate with your readers? Highlight it and select Rewrite with Copilot: three new options will appear, and it's up to you to choose which one is the best rewording of the original.

When you're done with writing—or perhaps reading a document written by someone else—you can click the Copilot button on the top-right to open the sidebar chat. Here, you can ask questions about it, summarize it, or ask to analyze the text in any way you want. Be sure to click on the book icon in the input field: you'll find a versatile collection of prompts for common tasks.

All in all, much more pleasant than the copy/paste fiesta between ChatGPT and your writing software, right? 

Copilot in Excel

Moving on to the data-obsessed among you, the magic continues in Excel. Like Word, you can open the sidebar chat by clicking the Copilot button. I downloaded a personal budget template from the web and started prompting to see what it could do.

First, you have to select the range you want to analyze. Then, you can ask questions about that range: how much are my costs without cable? If you want to isolate this projection, you can send that data to a new sheet with a single prompt, and add or remove rows as you'd like.

Formulas are part of Excel's identity, and Copilot can suggest a few upgrades when you click on the prompt bubble at the top of the chat input. Be sure to take a look at these bubbles because they can help you understand what's possible as you select new data ranges. For example, "show data insights" will give you a quick breakdown of what's unique or useful to know about the range at hand.

Lastly, you can transform the data or formatting by chatting with the AI. You can add new rows with new values or bold the first column to help your eyes navigate the information on your sheet.

Copilot in PowerPoint

PowerPoint has some AI improvements, too. If your team shares a lot of slide decks, open the Copilot sidebar and ask to summarize the presentation. You'll get a short snippet of the main topics without going through everything closely.

When you're following a stream of ideas—or you're just so pressed for time that you're dumping everything onto each slide—Copilot can organize the presentation for you. Simply click on the prompt suggestion with that label. Your slides will be grouped by topic, and a few new ones will be generated to keep a coherent structure.

But if you're really, really without a shred of inspiration today, you can just generate it from a single prompt like I did for this test. It will grab relevant images and text, and organize it into a presentation, ready to edit. You can add or edit content with prompts—and, again, you can use the little book icon to access a prompt library for extra help. Just make sure that everything's accurate before calling the next company meeting.

How to use Microsoft Copilot in Outlook and Teams

The upgrades extend to Outlook and Teams, too. Communication is key, but the sheer amount is overwhelming and can drive you away from important tasks. Copilot features here focus on reducing time spent, while still extracting the important insights and following up fast with everyone involved. 

Copilot in Outlook

Outlook can summarize entire email threads. And once you have all the core information present in your mind, you can use AI to draft a response. If you need to write it by hand, Copilot also offers an option that analyzes the text to help you find the best tone, consider the reader's sentiment, and improve the clarity of your message.

For business users with Microsoft data services enabled, these responses can even retrieve file links, helping you provide everything your team needs to move forward.

Copilot in Teams

Teams has nearly everything that AI meeting assistant apps already offer. It transcribes meetings and has a Copilot button to summarize what has been said so far—and even who said what. You can ask questions as to what the group is feeling about the topics at hand, but the participants need to be talking in-depth for this to have real value.

Can't make it to a meeting? Click to follow it instead. Once it's done, you'll get a lot of data:

• The meeting's transcript

• Shared files

• A breakdown of topics and keywords

• A summary, notes, and tasks

To top it off, this meeting recap also has a chat window, so you can ask further questions to the data and get AI-generated insights based on the transcript. Heads up: only business users can access these features for the time being.

Copilot in Microsoft 365 Chat

Microsoft 365 Chat also deserves a mention here. It leans on the enterprise side for now, and it's closely associated with Teams, but I hope it'll become available for everyone at some point. It acts as an AI-powered search engine for all your data in your Microsoft account, especially OneDrive (and Microsoft Graph if you have it set up). You can use it to ask questions about all your files and data, understand the differences between each of them, and analyze their content.

More Copilots in other Microsoft apps

These are just the top places where you'll find Copilot. Enterprise users get a range of interesting features, letting them train AI on their company data and use it to assist employees in communication, generating content and finding more angles to look at information. These span more advanced apps such as Power Apps (create AI-powered apps), Power BI (analyze big data trends), and Business Chat (a tool to ask questions about your business data and get grounded, accurate answers).

Automate your Microsoft apps

To add even more power to your AI workflows, you can automate them—connecting your Microsoft apps to thousands of other tools you use at work. Learn more about how to automate Excel, Outlook, and Teams with Zapier, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

AI power everywhere

AI features are spreading across software like a web, connecting models to buttons and commands, offering you endless possibilities to complete each task—and it's up to you to choose and tweak the best ones.

While most of these are still in preview mode, Microsoft Copilot is improving quickly, so be sure to check it out from time to time if you're not a full convert—I definitely will.

Related reading:

• The best AI productivity tools

• The top AI art generators

• How to create a custom AI chatbot with Zapier Interfaces

This article was originally published in December 2023. The most recent update was in March 2024.

Fathom is a powerful—yet somehow free—AI notetaker service that records and transcribes your meetings automatically. It's almost like having a personal assistant who sits in on your meetings and keeps track of details so you can focus on the meeting itself. But while Fathom saves you time and energy during video calls, there's still the potential for a bottleneck when getting that information where it needs to go. 

The tool has plenty of built-in integrations with popular work apps (like Slack, HubSpot, and Asana), but you still need to manually sync each call record with the appropriate platform. In the moments after a meeting, there are plenty of potential distractions to prevent you and your team from following a data processing workflow consistently. 

That's where automation comes in. Zapier's automated workflows (called Zaps) let you create custom processes that start as soon as you finish a call. Easily send notifications, generate action items, update your CRM, and more—all without relying on manual processes. 

Table of contents

• Keep your team in the loop

• Add meeting action items to your to-do list

• Save transcripts to your files and databases

• Add meeting notes and action items to your CRM

Keep your team in the loop

There are several reasons you might want to send a message to your team once a video call ends. If you use Fathom to create summaries of sales calls, you might post to your team's Slack channel with updates on new qualified leads. Or maybe you're recording employee interviews, team meetings, and other internal calls. In that case, you might want to send a meeting summary in a direct message to all participants.

These Zaps trigger anytime a new recording is created in Fathom, automatically sending a Slack message or email to your preferred specifications. Your team will never miss an important notification, and you'll waste less time sending manual updates. Win-win.

Add meeting action items to your to-do list

One endlessly useful feature of Fathom is that it automatically generates action items from your meeting transcripts. But you know what would make it even more useful? If those action items automatically appeared on your to-do list.

With automation, you can avoid tedious copying and pasting between your meeting summaries and your task management app. By streamlining task creation, you save yourself time to actually get started on those key action items.

These Zaps instantly turn new action items in Fathom into tasks in Todoist, Trello, ClickUp, and more. You can even add a Formatter step to generate due dates (say, a week from the task's creation date) so you'll always follow up on key action items at the right time. 

Save transcripts to your files and databases

When you're in a lot of meetings, it's important to keep your notes organized. You might already have a process for manually saving Fathom files to Google Drive or turning them into a new Google Doc. That way, every transcript and meeting summary is easily searchable within your Google Workspace ecosystem.

But as your calendar fills up, it's easy to let that manual uploading slip to the back burner. And relying on your team to properly (and promptly) upload Fathom files to your shared folders can quickly become frustrating. Instead, these Zaps instantly turn new transcripts and recordings into Google Docs and Google Drive files—sorted and labeled to your specifications.

Or maybe you and your team use spreadsheets and databases to keep track of call notes. These Zaps instantly create detailed records or rows in Notion, Google Sheets, and Airtable whenever a Fathom recording is detected.

Add meeting notes and action items to your CRM

The best customer relationship management (CRM) systems are kept up to date to reflect every customer touchpoint. After each sales call or customer meeting, it's important to save copies of meeting notes to that person's file in your CRM. That way, you can easily access each customer's call history, action items, and conversation details in one place. 

But manually updating customer profiles after every call isn't feasible when your schedule is full. Instead, use these Zaps to create or update contact information, append recording transcripts, and add action items in your favorite lead management tools automatically. 

Save time by automating your Fathom call notes

The main benefit to using a tool like Fathom is that you save time and energy on taking notes and summarizing calls. You can be present during a Zoom or Teams meeting, then receive an accurate transcript with key action items highlighted for you.

But if you don't have a streamlined process for getting those notes and action items where they need to go, you still risk wasting time on manual data entry or—even worse—losing track of important information. Use automation to fill in the gaps between your tools.

And this is just the start of what you can do with Fathom and Zapier. What will you automate first?

Looking to send confirmation emails when customers register for an event or an online course? Or do you want to improve how you collect and analyze customer feedback by instantly letting a team member know when new feedback is shared? Then you should consider connecting Typeform to SendGrid.

With a Zap—Zapier's automated workflows—you can instantly send an email with your SendGrid account for each new response you receive in Typeform. Make sure every form response gets the right email notification automatically. Here's how.

Before you begin

For this Zap, you'll need to complete the sender authentication process in SendGrid for the email address you'd like to use to send automated emails. This process confirms to your email provider that SendGrid has your permission to send emails on your behalf. If you already have an authenticated email with SendGrid that you'd like to use, you don't need to do any further sender authentication.

How to send SendGrid emails for new Typeform responses

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send your information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started. 

If you'd like to start with a template, just click on it. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Typeform trigger

First, set up your trigger—the event that starts your Zap. If you're using the Zap template, the trigger app and event will already be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Typeform for the trigger app and New Entry for the trigger event.

Next, connect your Typeform to Zapier, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

In the Form field, select the form you'd like to use for this workflow. In this example, I'm building a Zap to notify people registering for an event that their registration has been received, so I've selected my Event Registration form. Each time somebody fills out this Typeform form, this will trigger the Zap.

Now it's time to test your trigger step. Click Test Trigger, and you should see a recent form entry from Typeform.

If you don't yet have any form submissions on this form, Zapier will automatically generate a sample submission with the fields from your form that you can use for testing. If you prefer to test with real data, please go to your Typeform form to submit a test record yourself, and then click Find new records to pull in that data.

Once you've selected the submission you'd like to use in your test, click Continue with selected record.

Set up your SendGrid action

Now it's time to set up the action—the event your Zap will perform once it's triggered. If you're using the Zap template, these will already be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select SendGrid for the action app and Send Email for the action event.

Next, connect your SendGrid account, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

Now, it's time to customize your action. In the To field, enter the email address you'd like to send an email to. In my case, this is an event registration notification, so I mapped the Email from my Typeform trigger by clicking in that field and selecting it from the data dropdown. You can also hardcode an email here by typing in a static email address.

In the From field, enter the email address you'd like to use to send this automated email. Note that this address must be an authenticated sender with SendGrid. You can also fill in a From Name, which is the name the recipient will see when they receive the email.

Below this, add your Subject line. Finally, include the Text you'd like to include in the email. 

Here, I personalized the text by mapping the First Name from my Typeform response. If you prefer, you can instead use the HTML field to create your email with HTML, including formatting and images. 

Once you're done customizing, your action step should look something like this:

Now, it's time to test your Zap. Click Test Step, and Zapier will send an email from your SendGrid account.

If everything looks right, you're now ready to use your Zap. Now, every time you get a new response to your Typeform, you'll automatically send an email from your SendGrid account.

At Zapier, we're all about accelerating the work that matters most. That means leveraging technology—especially automation—to help us get there. But for a while now, we've had a new co-worker in our midst: AI. 

Artificial intelligence is changing how we create things. From engineering to email ops and beyond, people everywhere are uncovering new use cases that are proving more and more disruptive—and have the power to change the way we work forever. 

But that doesn't have to be scary! Everyone can put AI to work, even if they're just starting out. To show you we practice what we preach, we reached out to different departments at Zapier to learn how our very own are leveraging AI to streamline their work. That includes building Zaps with AI apps, creating GPTs, and putting together Zapier Chatbots!

Here are some of the top ways we're embracing and experimenting with AI—which you can be a part of, too.

Table of contents

• Customer success operations

• Sales

• Onboarding and HR

• Technical support operations 

• Content and video 

• PR and social media

• User education

• Learning and development

• Engineering

• Accounting

• Revenue operations

Customer success operations

Carrying out customer calls helps both our sales ops and customer success teams get a detailed glimpse into the customer journey, see what's working, and better understand what Zapier users need. 

And now, thanks to AI, we can streamline this process from start to finish. Here's how:

One workflow allows team members to reduce the prep time before customer calls in Gong by having AI look at a record or deal in HubSpot, gather information about the company, come up with any automation challenges they may be experiencing, then share it with the right person in Slack. 

Another AI workflow pulls recordings of customer calls from the sales CRM, summarizes each call with a quick overview, then posts it in Slack, so the team can learn from the interactions. 

That includes using AI to analyze and share customer sentiments, giving us a comprehensive view of a customer's interaction with the platform so we can help improve our product. 

Sales

Determining which leads are most likely to convert can take up a lot of time and resources for Zapier's sales teams. That's why AI is used to bridge that gap. 

First up, our sales teams use AI and Zapier to generate transcripts of their sales calls with leads. AI then creates a summary of those meetings, and Zapier adds that information automatically to the right lead in HubSpot.

That way, sales managers have better insight into the deals that are nearer closing, and know who they should be spending time nurturing, without the administrative overhead.

Onboarding and HR

When it comes to sending out forms and surveys, our HR team deals with their fair share. There's a lot of ground to cover, from surveys that cover onboarding experiences to general employment feedback forms and retreat assessment surveys.  

That's why our onboarding team uses AI to help them collect and analyze sentiment ratings (positive, neutral, or negative) for every response received. It's a great way to save valuable time trying to understand the overall sentiment towards survey topics, so nothing ever falls through the cracks.  

Technical support operations 

Effective escalation management (dealing with technical incidents) is a pretty important piece of the puzzle when it comes to ensuring customer satisfaction, on top of managing a support team's regular workload. At Zapier, AI helps streamline some of these processes. 

One team member built a ChatGPT-powered bot and pulled it into a Slack support channel. It helps them troubleshoot issues with Zaps, get automation ideas, and learn how to use Zapier features more quickly. 

Another workflow involves using AI to create a formatted daily summary of all the previous day's activities in Slack. This includes all the escalated tickets and issues resolved and discussed for visibility, helping enhance team communication. 

Another nimble workflow that saves time? Creating the copy for status page updates based on templates and rules provided by the team. With the Zap below, whenever the support team specialists submit an entry in Typeform that describes an issue, ChatGPT will create a status page message and send it to Slack for approval. Then a webhook sends the approved message as a new update on Zapier's status page. Job done. 

Finally, the support team receives a lot of questions in Slack from other departments about common troubleshooting steps. To deal with these queries automatically, the support team built a Zapier support sidekick. 

This consists of a Zap that follows these steps: 

• When a member of the support team reacts to a question in Slack with a specific emoji, ChatGPT analyzes the message and generates a specific search term

• Webhooks then pulls together help docs or blog posts that might be relevant to that search query

• A ChatGPT assistant then reviews the entire history related to that search, including ticket messages, customer interactions, and troubleshooting notes

• Finally, the ChatGPT assistant responds in the Slack thread with hyperlinked steps to the most relevant help documentation and blog posts returned from the search

This is what a typical output looks like in Slack: 

Content and video  

We're big fans of AI on the content team. Whether it's using AI to summarize articles, create blog outlines, or write meta descriptions, it's proven to be pretty effective. 

For the most part, a lot of our writers' time is spent researching articles for this very blog. This workflow that has AI read and analyze articles before summarizing the key points and takeaways has proven pretty helpful for the team. 

On the editorial side, the whole team can save a lot of back and forth when providing feedback on first drafts. That's because writers can use the editorial bots the team created using Zapier interfaces and ChatGPT. From adding in a touch of humor to making first introductions more concise, these bots are a handy tool that saves time (and even helps us writers learn a thing or two). 

One of the best ways the video team leverages AI is to write rough scripts for YouTube based on article outlines they source from the blog team. Although not used as a final product, the team is sent the scripts in Slack and gets to review and refine them from there. 

Another handy way of leveraging AI to write content? The partnerships team built a workflow that watches for any changes external developers make to their integrations, then uses AI to rewrite the updates according to Zapier's style guide. Then we review and publish them inside our release notes!  

PR and social media

The PR team writes a lot of press releases. They're often quite templated, too, so it makes sense that AI can lighten the load. Their workflow takes basic information (like event details, company information, quotes, and key points), and turns it into a coherent and professionally styled press release, according to the rules they give the PR bot. That way, they can spend less time editing a mostly put-together piece rather than writing similar pieces from scratch over and over.

They've also created a range of other bots that employees can use to generate employee feedback with suggestions for improvement, strengths and weaknesses, and an overall evaluation. The way it works is simple: AI analyzes a piece of work (like a doc or a design) and generates constructive feedback based on predefined criteria and patterns. 

The social media team, on the other hand, uses a range of bots to automate various tasks on social media platforms. From posting content to responding to comments and messages to liking and sharing posts (and even following users), these bots can post content at optimal times for engagement and analyze data to understand trends and user behavior. 

User education

Zapier's video courses are designed to help our customers build their first workflows, develop their skills, and explore workflow solutions relevant to them. 

The only problem? They're all in English—which isn't exactly ideal for Zapier's international customers. 

To tackle this, the user education team came up with a brilliant idea: use ChatGPT to generate the closed captions for each video in ten popular languages. 

To do this, they added the English SRT (SubRip subtitle) file of each video course to a table. Then they built a Zap that pulls in ChatGPT and asks it to translate those captions into a specified language (while retaining the same timestamps). Here's a quick glimpse of the result:

Additionally, the team also leveraged the use of Chatbots to deliver a more tailored learning experience to their customers. These bots were intentionally designed to help customers discover automation ideas and use cases most relevant to their roles and their tech stack. 

Now, as customers complete modules in their courses, they can interact with AI:

Learning and development

Members of the L&D (learning and development) team at Zapier are big fans of bots and already use automation to help design learning and user experiences. 

But with the release of Zapier's Chatbots, the team has created dozens of chatbots to aid the learning experience. From bots that give employees coaching tips to others that generate ice breakers for training sessions and team meetings, the team has mastered prompt engineering. The trick is to provide AI with specific company context around Zapier, role context as a learning designer, and a clear purpose—so that the output is always directly related to Zapier. 

Here's an example of the result:

Engineering  

The engineering team at Zapier deals with a lot of Jira and Zendesk tickets for product-related tasks and sprint planning. 

The incorporation of AI into their existing workflows has proven a game-changer. For example, the team built a workflow that summarizes Slack messages, transforms that summary into a Jira ticket, then adds it to the next planned sprint. 

When analyzing customer interactions and key performance indicators, the team also leverages a workflow that takes every message within a Zendesk ticket, uses AI to categorize the conversation, and adds all the metrics (like number of replies) to an existing Google Sheet for metrics tracking. 

The engineering team has also built a number of automated workflows that allow them to collect their achievements over time. 

"Daily standups are the individual updates we post to our team that aggregate everything we've done for the day," explains Maggie Storino, a Frontend Engineer at Zapier. "But these accomplishments get logged across a great many systems and tools, like Google Calendar, Jira, Slack, or GitLab."

That's why the team uses Zapier to automatically collect them all in a table. A Zap then pulls from this information and uses ChatGPT to summarize and organize it into succinct messages or updates.

Full stack engineer, Jordan Raleigh, said he and his team also came up with an idea to create automatic "brag docs", a list of accomplishments and achievements each team member can share with their manager for their personal career development. 

That process is a simple Zap: Each team member can add a reaction emoji to a personal win or mention in Slack. That message then gets sent to a ChatGPT assistant. Then, using Zapier's business impact documentation as a framework, ChatGPT classifies that accomplishment and generates a summary that demonstrates the impact. Finally, that summary gets added to an individual table for safe keeping. 

"We can use these docs as reference during the company's goal cycles, promotion processes, and performance reviews. It's even been helpful to tackle imposter syndrome."—Jordan Raleigh, Full Stack Engineer at Zapier.

Accounting

Our accounting department has to keep track of an incredible amount of tasks throughout the week, so they've incorporated AI into the project management flows to make things easier. A favorite: they use AI to pull a list of tasks in Slack, prioritizing them in order of importance, along with an estimated time slot to complete them. 

Although used for personal finances, this is an interesting one: One employee set up a workflow with AI that lets them keep track of all their credit card transactions. 

It works like this: Whenever a user receives an email alert about an expenditure, ChatGPT extracts relevant information (like vendor and amount), then categorizes it and adds it to a Google sheet for further analysis. Pretty neat if you like an informative overview of expenses. In a business context, this could do wonders for financial planning and tracking. 

Revenue operations

When it comes to creating personalized emails at scale, every email ops team knows how time-consuming they can be, what with the amount of logic and personalization tokens needed to build effective marketing messages. 

That's why the Revenue Ops team experimented with AI, as they realized that ChatGPT could generate dynamic copy in any format. For example, they created a workflow that automatically builds trial expiration emails (including the copy) that highlight specific Zapier features that are most relevant to the user. How? The workflow pulls in user information from their marketing automation system, saving a massive amount of time—no if/then logic required. 

The team also built a bot in Slack that answers common questions from internal sales reps about lead stages, lead definitions, and how certain sales processes work. This workflow uses Zapier internal documentation to answer questions, so all answers are as up to date and accurate as possible. 

Stay on top with AI and automation

By using any of these workflows, you'll be freeing up whole departments to focus on more creative and strategic work.  

From customer support to content creation and engineering, AI and automation combined is a game-changer, with the potential to save time and money, improve efficiency, and increase productivity.  

This article was originally published in June 2023. It was most recently updated in March 2024 to showcase the latest AI use cases.

People love Mailchimp. And for good reason: it's one of the best email marketing platforms out there. So much so, in fact, that it made four of our best apps lists:

• Best email newsletter software

• Best email drip campaign software

• Best transactional email services

• Best free email marketing services

Of course, that doesn't mean it's the exact right tool for everyone, and you might be looking for Mailchimp alternatives.

Depending on what you're planning to use Mailchimp for—newsletters, drip campaigns, transactional emails, or just as a free email marketing service—you can take a look at those lists for dozens of paid and free alternatives for Mailchimp. But we've also done some extensive testing for head-to-head comparisons of Mailchimp and other email marketing software. Here, we'll share that list of Mailchimp alternatives with you to help you decide which one is best for your business.

9 of the best Mailchimp alternatives

• ActiveCampaign for more robust features and advanced marketing automation

• ConvertKit for creators

• Constant Contact for more templates

• HubSpot for longer buyer lifecycles and an all-in-one tool

• Klaviyo for eCommerce

• SendGrid for transactional email and deliverability

• Flodesk for a simple pricing structure

• Brevo for a free alternative

• MailerLite for a free alternative for advanced users

The best Mailchimp alternatives at a glance

A Mailchimp alternative for more robust features and advanced marketing automation

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign pros: 

• Extremely customizable 

• Advanced automation and testing for email, SMS, and website

ActiveCampaign cons: 

• No free plan available

• Steep learning curve (but lots of advanced features) 

ActiveCampaign has been on the block almost as long as Mailchimp (it's only two years younger), and it has some pretty advanced features. For example, its lead scoring options are extensive and give you much more control over personalization and segmentation than you get with Mailchimp.

But it's the marketing automation features in ActiveCampaign that really set it apart. You can do things like include SMS blocks and website messages as steps within your automated campaigns, which isn't possible in Mailchimp. ActiveCampaign's automation map is also nifty: it allows you to view multiple automated journeys on one map to see how they work together, giving you a much more holistic view of your campaigns.

Mailchimp offers a free plan and feels a lot simpler than ActiveCampaign, but with that simplicity, there are tradeoffs. So if you're ready to graduate from Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign is a solid next step.

ActiveCampaign also offers a number of native integrations. But you can unlock thousands more when you connect ActiveCampaign with Zapier. From there, you can automate your most repetitive ActiveCampaign tasks. Learn more about how to automate ActiveCampaign, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

ActiveCampaign pricing: starts at $29/month (billed annually) for Marketing Lite, which includes email and marketing automation for up to 1,000 contacts.  

Learn more about how these two apps stack up: ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp.

A Mailchimp alternative for creators

ConvertKit

ConvertKit pros: 

• Flexible tagging allows for easy search and segmentation

• Intuitive email editor that works like a web builder

ConvertKit cons: 

• A/B testing limited to only subject lines 

• Emphasis on minimal, text-forward newsletters can be limiting

Where ActiveCampaign is for Mailchimp graduates, ConvertKit is better for folks who don't yet need a tool as robust as Mailchimp.

ConvertKit is pretty barebones when it comes to email building, and more advanced marketers will probably feel like there's something left to be desired. It lacks advanced testing options, and compared to a tool like Mailchimp, it also doesn't offer much in terms of reporting. And its small number of template designs and customization options (unless you know HTML) are a bit limiting.

That's not to say it doesn't have its strengths, though. ConverKit offers flexible contact management, impressive automation capabilities (especially given the simplicity of the app overall), and a ton of landing page templates. And because the focus is really on solo creators and small eCommerce businesses, it offers some unique features that you won't find in most other email marketing apps (looking at you, tip jar.)

When you integrate ConvertKit with Zapier, you can automate even more of your email marketing workflows. Learn more about how to automate ConvertKit, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows. 

ConvertKit pricing: Free for up to 1,000 subscribers, unlimited landing pages and forms, and audience segmentation; cost of paid plan depends on the number of subscribers, but starts as low as $9/month (billed annually) and includes free data migration and other advanced features. 

To learn more about how ConverKit stacks up against Mailchimp, read this comparison: ConvertKit vs. Mailchimp.

A Mailchimp alternative for more templates

Constant Contact

Constant Contact pros: 

• Robust library of design templates, suitable for nearly every occasion 

• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder 

Constant Contact cons: 

• Can only A/B test subject lines 

• No free plan available

Compared to Mailchimp, Constant Contact is better for email marketing beginners who need simple features and ready-to-send templates. Even though its email builder isn't quite as robust as Mailchimp's new version—it's more comparable to Mailchimp's traditional email builder—it has about twice as many (over 200) email templates that cover nearly any campaign you're sending.

Constant Contact's automation features aren't as deep as Mailchimp's, but it can automate welcome, birthday, anniversary, and resending emails—and you can set up workflows for eCommerce websites. Similarly, the testing and reporting options aren't as advanced, but if you need only the basics, it has you covered. For example, you can test subject lines, and you can see opens, clicks, bounces, and conversion rates. 

Plus, Constant Contact offers live chat and phone support on every plan. If that's how you like to get your customer support, that could be the deciding factor.

With Zapier, you can also connect Constant Contact with your other apps. This way, you can automate every step of your email marketing workflows. Here are a few Zap templates to get you started. 

Constant Contact pricing: No free plan available; cost of paid plans depends on the number of contacts but starts at $12/month. 

Learn more about how these two apps stack up: Constant Contact vs. Mailchimp.

A Mailchimp alternative for longer buyer lifecycles and an all-in-one tool

HubSpot

HubSpot pros: 

• Generous free plan, which includes unlimited contacts and 2,000 email sends a month 

• AI features available across all platforms (Mailchimp's is limited to the email builder) 

HubSpot cons: 

• Sub-par email templates

• Full suite can be overwhelming

The main difference here: HubSpot is an all-in-one tool that combines marketing, sales, content management, operations, and customer service into one platform, while Mailchimp is purely email marketing software.

For example, the automations you can set up in HubSpot are highly advanced. This makes it much more suited for longer buyer lifecycles because you can trigger automated email sequences that nurture people all the way through the funnel and segment your list based on all sorts of factors, including their behavior and their stage in the customer lifecycle.

Having said that, it's not quite as easy to build an email in HubSpot. The builder is excellent, but Mailchimp has more templates and makes the process a lot smoother. Because HubSpot is very CRM-focused, there are a lot more moving parts—so it's natural that emails would be a bit more complicated.

Finally, you'll get more advanced analytics in HubSpot than you will in Mailchimp—again, it makes sense given all the integrated features you're working with.

HubSpot is just built to do a lot more than Mailchimp can do, so be sure you need all of its extra features before making the switch—it's harder to set up and, naturally, it'll cost you more.

When you use Zapier to connect HubSpot, you can practically set everything from your email marketing workflows to lead management on autopilot. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows. 

HubSpot pricing: Free plan available; cost of paid plans depends on which parts of the software you use—Marketing Hub starts at $800/month.

For a full breakdown of how these two apps stack up, check out Zapier's app showdown: HubSpot vs. Mailchimp.

A Mailchimp alternative for eCommerce

Klaviyo

Klaviyo pros: 

• Intuitive platform 

• Advanced features, including segmentation, automation, and analytics 

Klaviyo cons: 

• Marketing channels limited to email and SMS 

• Paid plans can get pricey fast 

The quick version: Klaviyo is more suitable for larger brands doing eCommerce email marketing.

For starters, you can add automated alerts for people shopping at your store—things like abandoned cart reminders, order updates, and alerts for price drops. And it's all a lot more customizable than in Mailchimp. You can also set eCommerce-specific benchmarks that help you compare how you're doing against other brands in the industry.

Klaviyo doesn't have as many digital marketing channels as Mailchimp, though—it's limited to email and SMS. Mailchimp, on the other hand, lets you do landing pages, postcards, social posts, ads, and surveys. 

Overall, Klaviyo offers more granular customization and more in-depth options for segmentation, automation, and analytics, with special attention to the eCommerce side of things. So if you sell products online and want to see a solid and fast ROI, Klaviyo is a great option.

Klaviyo also integrates with Zapier, allowing you to automatically do things like add leads and subscribers from forms and ads. Learn more about how to automate Klaviyo, or get started with one of these workflows. 

Klaviyo pricing: Free plan includes up to 250 contacts, 500 email sends, and 150 free monthly SMS/MMS credits; paid plans start at $20/month. 

For more details, check out Zapier's app showdown: Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp.

A Mailchimp alternative for transactional email and deliverability

SendGrid

SendGrid pros: 

• Drag-and-drop feature to create and design emails easily

• Deep reporting options, focusing on deliverability metrics 

SendGrid cons: 

• Steep learning curve 

• It might be expensive to scale after you cross the 200K email mark—price jumps from $89.95/month to $249/month

SendGrid focuses on high-volume sending, especially for transactional emails. For that reason, it tends to be more geared toward IT/developer folks, with words like "inbound parse" and "IP access management" popping up all over the place. You can choose no-code, low-code, or full-code, which is a serious amount of flexibility. That's not to say beginners can't use it—it'll just have more of a learning curve (though the documentation is great).

SendGrid is also known for its deliverability (reports will vary a bit, but you're looking at around 97% for SendGrid and 86% for Mailchimp). It has all sorts of important things happening in the background to achieve this level of deliverability, and if you're dealing with transactional emails, that number matters. You'll also get analytics focused on optimizing that deliverability.

In the end, SendGrid is more technical than Mailchimp and may require a steeper learning curve. If you're just working with a small list, SendGrid may not be the right choice. But if you're looking for a Mailchimp alternative to improve email deliverability, it's a great app to check out.

Connect SendGrid with Zapier to streamline even more of your email marketing workflows. Here are a few ideas to get you started. 

SendGrid pricing: Free for up to 100 emails/day; starts at $15/month for the Basic Marketing Campaigns plan, which includes up to 15,000 emails/month. 

Learn more about how SendGrid compares to Mailchimp: SendGrid vs. Mailchimp.

A Mailchimp alternative for a simple pricing structure

Flodesk

Flodesk pros:

• Minimalist, easy-to-use editor

• Option to add eCommerce features

Flodesk cons:

• Limited native automations

• High starting price with no free plan

Mailchimp's pricing structure can get complicated—and depending on how many subscribers and emails you have, the costs can increase pretty quickly. Flodesk offers a solution: a straightforward pricing plan of $35/month for unlimited everything.

Flodesk isn't quite as robust as Mailchimp simply because it isn't that same kind of all-in-one marketing tool. The focus here is on email, and it shows through things like its modern templates and an extensive selection of fonts. It also has some other really nice perks, like customizable and attractive signup forms.

If you don't want to have to worry about what to expect for your budget, and your focus is on email marketing, Flodesk is a great choice.

When you connect Flodesk with Zapier, you can automate everything from adding leads to building email lists. Learn more about how to automate Flodesk, or get started with these pre-made workflows.

Flodesk pricing: No free plan; email marketing plan for $35/month (billed annually), which includes unlimited everything. Add eCommerce features for an additional $24/month. 

For a full breakdown of how these two apps stack up, check out Zapier's app showdown: Flodesk vs. Mailchimp.

A free Mailchimp alternative 

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Brevo pros: 

• Good feature set for a free plan 

• Advanced reports, including standard heat maps, and conversion and deal tracking

Brevo cons: 

• Email templates are slightly outdated 

• Reporting features are limited and scattered throughout 

The first thing you'll notice is Brevo's generous free plan, so if you're looking for a free Mailchimp alternative, it's a good place to start. It offers unlimited contacts for free, and while it's not as robust as a true CRM, you can use it like one if you want. Plus, its segmentation options are impressive, and you can do transactional email—all on the free plan.

Brevo also allows you to create a customized live chat window to embed on your website, which you can then manage inside Brevo.

While Mailchimp offers a lot of channels that Brevo doesn't, if you're looking for an expensive (or free) marketing platform, it's a strong contender.

Brevo doesn't have as many native app integrations—65ish compared to Mailchimp's over 300—but when you connect Brevo with Zapier, you can unlock thousands more. Learn more about how to automate Brevo, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.  

 Brevo pricing: Free for up to 300 emails per day and unlimited contacts; from $25/month for the Starter plan, which includes 20,000 emails/month and unlimited daily sends. 

To learn more about how Mailchimp stacks up with Brevo, read this comparison: Mailchimp vs. Brevo. 

A free Mailchimp alternative for advanced email marketers 

MailerLite

MailerLite pros: 

• Pre-built content blocks make building emails super quick

• Generous allotments for segmentation and automation

MailerLite cons: 

• No pre-made email templates on the free plan

• Basic AI features 

If Brevo isn't quite doing it for you, or if you've been in the email marketing game for a while, MailerLite is another solid option. While it doesn't offer pre-made design templates like Brevo or Mailchimp, it more than makes up for this with dynamic, pre-designed content blocks. Your emails can include more than just text and images, too. There's a countdown timer that dynamically shows the time remaining until you launch a product or before a sale is over. You can add product details, embed a video, pull in your most recent blog posts with a dynamically updating RSS block, and more. It's a great way to send interactive emails instead of just digital letters.

Beyond email content, MailerLite also includes robust automation and audience segmentation features in the free plan. An intuitive builder makes quick work of mapping out automation workflows—or you can hit the ground running with one of the 15 new pre-built flows. Create both persistent and one-time segments and view aggregate statistics by segment, too.

Plus, MailerLite integrates with Zapier—meaning you can automate things like adding new MailerLite subscribers from Google Sheets. Here are more ideas for how to automate MailerLite, plus some pre-made workflows to get you started.

MailerLite pricing: Free for up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month; $9/month (billed annually) for the Growing Business plan, which includes unlimited monthly email sends and advanced features. 

Learn how these two apps stack up: MailerLite vs. Mailchimp. 

Which Mailchimp alternative should you use?

As ChatGPT might say, "ultimately, the choice between Mailchimp and another tool will depend on the specific needs and priorities of the user." I don't mean to sound like the robots, but it's true: figure out what your biggest pain point is with Mailchimp, and then take a few of these Mailchimp alternatives for a spin to see which one does the trick.

Related reading:

• How to set up marketing automation with Zapier

• Email marketing automation ideas to enhance your campaigns

• Ways to automate your email newsletters and drip campaigns

This article was originally published in January 2023. The most recent update was in March 2024, with contributions from Jessica Lau.

Start the new season by working smarter, not harder. Our Intercom and Pipedrive integrations have new actions to fine-tune your sales processes. Plus, our new GoTodo integration will keep your to-dos organized so you can prioritize what matters.

Here's the latest Zapier integration news.

Jump ahead 

• Updated integrations

• New integrations

Updated integrations

Intercom

Intercom has a new Send Message to Contact action, making it easier to automate first responses and follow-up messages to customers.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive has two actions to help you keep contacts and deals organized. Now you can add labels to contacts and search for multiple deals to improve your sales process from first touch to closing the sale. 

Salesforce

Our Salesforce integration has two new triggers and a new action to help you manage customer relationships more smoothly. Trigger Zaps from new contacts or leads, or automatically create new notes and attach them to a record. Track customer interactions in more detail and fine-tune your sales workflows with this latest update.

Microsoft Outlook

Our Microsoft Outlook integration now has a New Email Matching Search trigger, so you can automate processes based on specific email content, turn emails into action items, and spend less time organizing your inbox.

Stripe

Stripe has two new actions: Find Account Balance and Create Invoice. Automate alerts when your balance hits a certain threshold, generate invoices for services rendered, and stay on top of your business finances.

Klaviyo

Good news, email marketers: Our Klaviyo integration has eight(!) new actions to help you manage customer profiles, segment audiences, and send campaigns. Explore the latest updates and execute your marketing strategies more effectively. 

Microsoft Office 365

Our Microsoft Office 365 integration has four new features to streamline your email and calendar. Now you can automate workflows from newly-flagged emails or new emails in a folder, so you can effortlessly turn messages into action items. There are also two new actions that let you search for and delete calendar events so you can effortlessly manage your calendar.

Jira Software Cloud

Jira Software Cloud has rolled out a new Find Project action. Automatically access specific projects to update tasks, track progress, or review issues to keep production moving.

Pinch Payments

Pinch Payments has eight new triggers and a new action! From taking immediate action on real-time payment events to automating workflows whenever a customer subscribes to a payment plan, these updates will give your payment processing workflows a major upgrade.

Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM has two new triggers that let you start Zaps whenever a project or opportunity moves to a new stage. Keep your team on task and sales opportunities moving with this latest update. 

Keap

Keap has added three new triggers and four new actions to help you organize leads, automate deals, and close deals faster. Trigger Zaps from tag or invoice activity, send follow-up emails to leads, and more. 

Kiflo PRM

Kiflo PRM now has two new triggers: Team Member Added and Business Plan Objective Updated. Automatically introduce partners to their assigned manager, update progress on business goals, and keep your team aligned. 

SurveySparrow

Gathering customer insights just got easier with four new actions in our SurveySparrow integration. Share your net promoter score (NPS), customer effort score (CES), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys through WhatsApp and reach customers wherever they're at.

Rev

Rev's new Create Automated Caption Order action now lets you automate transcription orders within Zaps. Seamlessly send audio or video files for transcription the moment they're ready, so you can focus on content creation.

Recruit CRM

Recruit CRM's new action lets you automatically enroll candidates in a sequence, so you can keep contacts engaged through the pipeline with less manual effort.

Fathom

Our Fathom integration has a new trigger: New Video Download. Whenever your meeting recording is ready to download, you can automatically save the recording to cloud storage, notify teammates of new recordings, and more.

ClickFunnels

Our ClickFunnels' latest update now supports online courses. Now you can trigger Zaps whenever a contact enrolls, completes, or gets suspended from a course. Two new actions also let you search for contacts and apply tags. Target audiences more effectively and streamline your online course operations.

CustomGPT

CustomGPT's new action, Update Project Settings, lets you adjust your AI chatbot's behavior without stepping away from your work. Adapt your chatbot to changing business needs with CustomGPT's latest update.

Freshsales Suite

Freshsales Suite now lets you search for existing users by email. You can also trigger Zaps whenever contacts are added to a list, so you can automate your marketing efforts throughout the customer journey. 

Handwrytten

Handwrytten's newest action lets you enroll an address book contact into a multi-step campaign. Automatically send personalized, pen-written cards to customers and nurture relationships. 

Jackrabbit Class

Jackrabbit Class' latest update has four new triggers that make it much easier to coordinate instructor schedules, track student attendance, or schedule makeup classes. Stay organized and focused on what you love—teaching.

Urable

Urable has four new triggers: Completed Job, Fulfilled Order, Paid Job, and Paid Order. Automatically send thank-you emails after a job is completed, update your accounting software when orders are paid, and more.

Cobot

Cobot's new Event Published trigger makes it easier to build a thriving coworking community. Automate event announcements and ongoing promotions or set up reminders for community members to keep everyone connected.

Feathery

Our Feathery integration now lets you trigger Zaps from uploaded files and signed documents, so ​​you can automatically prioritize customer feedback, onboard new clients, or handle signed contracts without missing a beat. 

HOVER

HOVER has a new trigger that lets you trigger Zaps whenever there's a new material list. Automate team notifications, supply coordination, and much more to improve project planning and execution.

New integrations

GoTodo

GoTodo centralizes tasks, notes, and journals in one place so you can focus on what matters most.

Docmosis

Docmosis lets you generate custom documents from Microsoft Word templates. 

kiwilaunch

kiwilaunch is an online booking and scheduling software for service-based businesses.

Convolo.ai

Convolo.ai is an AI-powered communication platform for inbound and outbound sales campaigns.

Two Ladders

Two Ladders helps human resources teams convert leads into hires.

Street.co.uk

Street.co.uk is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform for UK-based real estate agencies.

Invox

Invox is a call-tracking and statistics platform for marketers and agencies.

Aliaddo

Aliaddo is accounting and data analysis software for small and medium-sized businesses.

LaunchList

LaunchList helps you create and customize waitlist campaigns for new products.

Google really wants you to use Google Meet. They added a Meet button in Gmail, and Meet is the default video conferencing app in Google Calendar.

It makes sense—Google is allowed to promote its own product—but it doesn't mean you have to stick with Meet. You can still use Zoom in Google Calendar, and you can even make it the default if you're a Google Workspace admin.

How to add Zoom to Google Calendar

To get started, you'll need to install the Zoom Google Calendar plugin. Here's how.

1. Click the settings icon that looks like a cog, then select Get add-ons.

   

2. The popover will offer you all kinds of third-party integrations for Google Calendar—search for Zoom, and then click the correct result.

   

3. Click Install.

   

4. Follow the prompts to install, including giving it all the necessary permissions. (Note that, if you're a Google Workplace admin, you can install Zoom for your entire domain.)

5. Click Done, and then close out of the Google Workspace Marketplace popover.

6. Refresh the page (or log out and back in to your account).

7. Now, when you go to schedule a meeting, you'll see a dropdown arrow next to Add Google Meet video conferencing. Click that, you'll have the option to add Zoom instead.

   

The first time you choose Zoom, you'll need to log in to your Zoom account, but once you do, you'll be all set moving forward.

How to make Zoom the default in Google Calendar

Want Zoom to be the default video conferencing app in Google Calendar? The only way I can find to do this is to disable Meet entirely. There's no way to do that for consumer Google accounts, so if you've got an @gmail.com email address, you're out of luck.

Things are different if you use Google's applications with a work account. Google Workspace admins can disable Google Meet for the entire organization, meaning whatever third-party app is installed will become the default. This is the only way I found to create Zoom meetings in Google Calendar in a single click (assuming Zoom is the only video conferencing app installed).

1. Head to admin.google.com, then, from the menu, click Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet.

2. Click the dropdown, and then select OFF for everyone.

   

3. Click Save.

Once you do this, the button in Google Calendar will change.

Add video conferencing now creates a Zoom meeting in one click (again, assuming Zoom is the only video conferencing app installed).

It would be nice if this was possible without disabling Meet entirely, but this method works, so give it a shot if you're tired of switching from one service to another depending on who makes the appointment.

Automate Google Calendar and Zoom

If you use Google Calendar and Zoom as core parts of your work, consider connecting them to all the other apps in your tech stack with Zapier. By using Google Calendar and Zoom with Zapier, you can do things like automatically share recordings, create events from tasks, and prepare for upcoming meetings. Learn more about how to automate Google Calendar and how to automate Zoom, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Related reading:

• 19 Zoom tips and tricks for better video meetings

• Google Meet vs. Zoom: Which is better?

• How to schedule a Zoom meeting and invite others

This article was originally published in October 2020 by Justin Pot. The most recent update was in March 2024.

None of us is as smart as all of us. At least, that's the guiding principle behind good collaboration. But putting your heads together in a digital space can often make for an uncomfortable fit. Without the right team collaboration tools to seamlessly support a real-time back-and-forth, it can feel as though everyone's trying to cram their noggins into the same thinking cap—at the same time. That's a headache just waiting to happen.

The right collaboration app can bring you all together in a way that's comfortable, efficient, and less likely to have folks butting those heads. Of course, the best app is going to depend on the kind of work your team does, as well as the ways in which each of you—and all of you—work most effectively.

Here, I'll give you a tour of collaboration software options designed to support you and your team so that your future collaborative efforts will come out…ahead (sorry).

The best collaboration software

• Team chat apps

• Video conferencing and screen sharing software

• Online whiteboards

• Mind mapping software

• Screen recording apps

• Project management software

• Collaborative workspaces

• AI meeting assistants

• Cloud storage apps

• Internal tool builders

• Password managers

How to choose online collaboration tools

Collaboration tech stacks are like fingerprints—each company has a unique one. If you want a glimpse into how varied tastes can be, just do a Google search for "tech stack." So how do you tailor a collection that works for your and your team? There are four key considerations. 

1. Does it fit into your budget? Your team's budget impacts which—and how many—team collaboration tools you can use. The lower your budget, the more you may want to opt for multi-purpose apps instead of niche options. 

2. Does it help with team-specific tasks? While there are some tasks that every team does, like sending messages to each other and collaborating on projects, you might have department-specific tasks, which will require more focused solutions.

3. Can it handle your team size and work volume? Team size and work volume can affect the pricing of your collaboration tools as well as the features you have access to. 

4. Does it integrate with your other tools? Unless you find a unicorn company that handles all of your collaboration (you won't), you'll need to work across apps. As your workload increases, integrations between tools will be essential, whether natively or through Zapier.

The best team collaboration tools at a glance 

Collaboration software for team chat

Slack

Slack pros:

• Every feature you could need in a team chat app

• Streamlined design that people love using

Slack cons

• Expensive and not part of an existing software bundle

You can't have collaboration without communication, and team chat apps are, at this point, an almost-necessary addition to email. Real-time communication is a quicker, more informal space that's useful for remote work and in-office collaboration. Your team can bond, share quick project updates, or ask questions in a chat app. You can also communicate externally with a lot of team chat apps.

Slack is a popular choice when it comes to business chat platforms, and for good reason. It ticks all the boxes on your team chat wishlist—for example, you can create team- or project-specific channels, organize conversations into threads, quote Slack messages to provide more context, and add your own custom emoji (you know, the important stuff). 

Slack also offers click-and-drag file sharing, a robust search feature, and video and audio calls that allow for informal, real-time collaboration. All of these features come at a price, however. If you're on a budget, you might want to consider alternatives. 

Want more out of your team chat app? With Zapier, you can connect Slack to thousands of other apps, so you can do things like automatically update your Slack status when you join a calendar event. Learn more about how to automate Slack, or get started with one of these pre-built workflows.

If Slack doesn't work for you, check out Zapier's list of the best team chat apps for more options. Microsoft Teams is a good option for teams that already live in Microsoft Office 365, as is Google Chat for Google Workspace users. 

Slack pricing: Free plan available; from $8.75/user/month (billed monthly) for the Pro plan, which includes unlimited message history and huddles, as well as Slack Connect to work with external collaborators.

Collaboration software for video conferencing and screen sharing software

Zoom

Zoom pros:

• Includes collaboration features and allows for video recording

• Makes it simple to add people outside your organization

Zoom cons:

• Not part of a software bundle, which can get expensive in large organizations

Some work needs to be done face-to-face, or at least screen-to-screen. For both of those options, Zoom makes good sense. 

It's safe to assume that everyone has already installed the software and configured it to work, so when you share a link to a Zoom meeting, you can feel confident that everyone will be able to join. You can record any call as a full-length video, share your screen, and use text chat during the call. Zoom also provides real-time transcriptions and closed captioning. On top of all this, Zoom is extremely reliable. It'll typically keep your video going even through a weak internet connection, just at a reduced quality level. 

Beyond its video features, you can share and annotate files, or enable co-annotation for an even more collaborative experience. Zoom's whiteboard feature supports diagramming, image sharing, and sticky notes for versatile input. All in all, it's a nearly perfect team video app. 

When you connect Zoom with Zapier, you can take the busywork out of meeting prep and follow-up. Learn more about how to automate Zoom, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows. 

There are plenty of other options, though. Check out Zapier's list of the best video conferencing software for teams or the best Zoom alternatives. Or, for other screen sharing options, check out these screen sharing apps.

Zoom pricing: Free for up to 100 participants for 40-minute meetings; from $15.99/month/user with the Pro plan, which includes AI features, 30-hour meetings, and 5 GB of cloud storage.

Collaboration software for online whiteboarding

Miro

Miro pros: 

• Available on the web and on any device

• Robust library of templates 

Miro cons: 

• Better suited for personal projects or smaller teams 

Not even the most effective conferencing platform can prevent conversations from stalling—or from being interrupted when someone can't turn off their cat avatar. For a more focused collaboration, you might want to cut the chit-chat and limit your work to just a whiteboard.

Even by themselves, whiteboards are powerful platforms that can support your research and planning workflows. Take Miro, for example. It provides you with a long list of templates to guide your project, or you can start from a blank slate if you prefer. Add shapes, text, and sticky notes using the intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Share screens and present your whiteboards in real-time. And stay updated as you go with Miro's management feature, which tracks changes, assigns tasks, and supports your conversations with team members. 

Need more features? Miro integrates with over one hundred apps. But when you connect Miro with Zapier, you unlock thousands more. Here are a few pre-made workflows to get you started. 

Of course, Miro is far from the only tool you can use for online whiteboarding. Here's a roundup of the best online whiteboards. Mural is a popular option. To discover how these two apps compare, check out Zapier's app showdown: Miro vs. Mural. If you have more specific needs—for example, designing a new website—you may want to check out the best wireframe tools. 

And for more on brainstorming apps in general, check these lists out: 

• The best brainstorming tools

• The best flowchart and diagramming software

Miro pricing: Free for three editable boards and five Talktracks (interactive video walkthroughs of your board); from $10/user/month (billed monthly) for the Starter plan, which includes unlimited boards, Talktracks, and custom templates.

Collaboration software for mind mapping

MindMeister

MindMeister pros: 

• Great collaboration features 

• Integrates with MeisterTask if you want more of an all-in-one tool

MindMeister cons: 

• Extra features make it a little less intuitive 

Another way to boost your online collaboration is via a mind map. While conferencing and whiteboards are great for supporting free-form discussions, a good mind map provides you with a ready-made template that will inspire your next brainstorm while allowing you to see how each idea fits together (hence a "map").

If that sounds useful to you, MindMeister is a solid choice for collaborating on a mind map. More connected than a sketch pad, more collab-friendly than PowerPoint, MindMeister allows you to build and connect ideas, leave comments for your team, and work together to brainstorm and present your big ideas. 

Then, because MindMeister is integrated with MeisterTask (a project management app), you can turn your brainstorm session into an actionable project, assigning individual items on a mind map to teammates. You can also use Zapier to connect MeisterTask with the rest of your tech stack, so you can automate the rest of your project management tasks. 

If MindMeister offers more bells and whistles than you need, there are more basic apps on the market. Coggle is a good option, especially for beginners. For even more options, check out the best mind mapping software. 

MindMeister pricing: Free for the Basic plan, which includes up to three mind maps and unlimited collaborators; from $7/month (for six months) for the Personal plan, which includes unlimited mind maps, version history, and PDF exports.

Collaboration software for screen recording

Loom

Loom pros:

• Super easy to use and works across devices

• Generous free plan

Loom cons:

• The mobile apps aren't perfect

If asynchronous collaboration is more your thing, a screen recording app might be the way to go. These tools allow you to demonstrate complex topics while helpfully narrating (or reflexively humming) to provide an added layer of engagement. 

Loom is a great example. This powerful platform allows you to record just your screen, your screen with a webcam video, or just the webcam video alone. You can do basic editing directly in your browser, and then share the link with others. Loom's free option allows you to store and share up to 25 videos (no longer than five minutes each). 

If you're planning on hosting more content, you'll need to upgrade to a paid model or outsource your file sharing. To do the latter, check out Zapier's roundup of the best video hosting sites—it includes YouTube, which lets you upload and host videos for free. Or if you're already paying for Dropbox, Dropbox Capture is a solid Loom alternative. 

If you'd rather not cobble apps together, there are lots of other great options. Here's a list of the best screen recording software, including Zapier's Mac-friendly one, Zappy.  

Loom pricing: Free for 25 videos of up to five minutes each; from $12.50/month (billed annually) for the Business plan, which includes unlimited videos, AI features, and video import.

Collaboration software for project management

Asana

Asana pros: 

• Flexible project management 

• Clean user interface

Asana cons: 

• Limited project views on a free plan 

Chat, conferencing, screen recording—all of these tools are great ways to research and plan a project. But when it comes time to dive in and get the work done, you'll likely be in the market for a project management app. Like a reliable bungee cord in a three-legged race, the right project management software can keep you and your team together to get your project over the finish line successfully. 

For collaborative project management, it's hard to go wrong with the feature-packed Asana. Its platform allows you to organize your projects into sections, as well as to-do lists that can be shared or private. Users get access to an in-app team chat feature to support collaboration, and paid subscribers can even use a workload manager to monitor team members' commitments. Keep track of everything with intuitive dashboards for a bird's-eye view of your progress. 

For even more flexibility, use Zapier to connect Asana with your favorite apps, like Gmail and Slack. For inspiration, take a look at the most popular Asana automations, or get started with one of these workflows.

Asana's free plan allows you to track unlimited projects for up to 15 users, which stacks up favorably when compared to other free project management software. If you're looking to scale up, though, you should review the best project management software for small businesses or the best enterprise project management software.

If Asana's features feel a bit overwhelming, you have other options besides a conventional project management app. For example, if you're a fan of the Kanban method, check out the best Trello alternatives. Another solid option is Zapier Tables—it provides you with a customizable database/project management combination that you can connect with your other apps. 

Asana pricing: Free for up to 10 team members, unlimited projects and tasks, three project views, and basic features; from $10.99/user/month (billed annually) for the Starter plan, which includes more views, custom project templates, and automated workflows. 

Collaboration software for a shared workspace

Notion

Notion pros:

• Best-in-class collaboration and team note-taking features

• Packs in lots of features, like task management, databases, and pretty much anything else you care to think of 

Notion cons:

• Offline functionality isn't the best 

If alternative approaches to collaborative project management work better for you, check out Notion. A database platform that's so much more than a database, you might think of Notion as project management plus—the "plus" in this equation meaning a whole slew of customizable functionality.

Notion's intuitive, clean interface allows you to build boards, generate lists, manage calendars, stock galleries, and lay out timelines—everything you need for seamless workflow management. You can use Notion AI to summarize and pull action items from meeting notes, transcriptions, and anything else you like. 

Notion's document sharing, comment, and note-taking features provide you with all the collaboration you'll ever need for a successful, team-friendly project. At the same time, you're able to build searchable databases, both inline and full page, to track and manage all your key data. 

Notion integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to thousands of other apps to do things like automatically generate GitHub or Jira issues from new Notion database items. Learn more about how to automate Notion, or check out these templates for inspiration.

If Notion isn't right for you, though, here are the best Notion alternatives. And if it's just the note-taking aspect that you're after, be sure to read about the best note-taking apps. 

Notion pricing: Free plan includes unlimited blocks and a 7-day page history; from $8/user/month (billed annually) for the Plus plan, which includes unlimited file uploads and a 30-day page history. Add Notion AI for $8/user/month (billed annually).

Collaboration software for managing meetings with AI assistants 

Fireflies

Fireflies pros:

• Has generative AI features (AskFred)

• Can automatically send meeting recaps 

Fireflies cons:

• Some screens are too cluttered

A note-taking app is great, but when you're actively engaged in a meeting or brainstorming session, it's easy to forget to take notes in the first place. That's where AI meeting assistants come in. 

Fireflies, for example, transcribes meeting audio, offers a list of topics tracked, and isolates information such as metrics, tasks, and questions, making it easy to filter them later. It also offers a list of everyone who spoke, including a word-per-minute statistic and percentage talked in relation to others. 

When you need this information in your other apps, Fireflies offers a range of native integrations with giants like HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, and Dropbox. If your favorite app isn't listed, however, you can integrate Fireflies with Zapier, helping you connect Fireflies to thousands of other apps. Here are a couple of examples.

If you're looking for a more focused AI meeting assistant—perhaps one that emphasizes talking time for more inclusive meetings or conversation analytics to coach sales teams, here are the best AI meeting assistants. If all you need are meeting transcripts, check out the best transcription services.  

Fireflies pricing: Free plan available, with a total of 800 minutes of meeting storage; paid plans start at $18/user/month (billed monthly), which includes unlimited AI summaries and 8,000 minutes of storage/user. 

Collaboration software for cloud storage

Google Drive

Google Drive pros:

• Deep integration with Google Workspace apps

• Can store files in the cloud and access them on any device to save hard drive space

Google Drive cons:

• Can be pricey in comparison to other apps

For a more file-centric approach to collaboration, you can't go wrong with the titan of cloud storage: Google Drive. Google Drive allows you to share and manage your all important project files. And for those times when your Wi-Fi router suddenly conks out, it even gives you the power to work offline by mirroring your files to your local machine and updating your changes when you jump back online. 

What's more, Google Drive works with a ton of third-party apps to support seamless, customized workflows. For more flexibility, use Zapier to connect Google Drive with thousands of other apps. Learn more about how to automate Google Drive, or get started with these automated workflows.

If you don't already use Google's suite of apps, there are lots of other solid options. OneDrive, for example, is great if you're an existing Microsoft Office 365 user. For even more, check out Zapier's roundup of the best cloud storage apps. Or, if you're looking to store only documents—not videos and photos—check out the best document management software. 

Google Drive pricing: Free for up to 15 GB. Drive storage alone starts at $1.99/month for 100 GB; Google Workspace, which includes Drive storage, starts at $6/month for 30GB.

Collaboration software for building internal tools 

Zapier

Zapier pros:

• Integrates your app with over 6,000 apps (and counting)

• Allows you to set up complex step-by-step logic

Zapier cons:

• Takes longer to build in comparison to ready-made solutions

If none of the apps mentioned above meet your exact needs, consider building your own app. Wait, come back—it's not as scary as it sounds. 

Zapier Interfaces lets you build your own apps to collaborate better with your team. You create your own personalized solution—from request forms to project management trackers—all in one spot. There's also a library of templates to help you kickstart the app-building process. 

Whether you're building a formal collaboration tool or just creating a quick portal that makes cross-team collaboration easier, Interfaces will get the job done. And you don't have to ditch your existing apps, either. You can connect Interfaces with over 6,000 apps, so your new app can be a starting point for complex automations. 

Zapier pricing: Free plan available; from $20/month (billed annually) for the Premium plan, which includes five interfaces and file uploads up to 10 MB. 

If Interfaces doesn't hit the spot, there are plenty of other options, too. Here are the best internal tool builders.

Collaboration software for password management

1Password

1Password pros:

• Easy to use across any device

• Very transparent about its security

1Password cons:

• No free option

Of course, none of these options will help your team's collaboration if someone gets locked out of an app due to a lost or forgotten password. To make sure things run smoothly, and to keep your stakeholders connected without having to resort to a list on a wrinkled Post-it, we recommend investing in a secure and stable password manager.

1Password is a good choice for an easy-to-use tool that keeps track not only of your passwords, but also your credit card details, addresses, and up to 1 GB of other vital information that you can't risk losing. Manage both your personal and professional data with separate vaults, and take advantage of 1Password's notifications to stay on top of hacks, weak or duplicate passwords, as well as ones that could be strengthened via two-factor authentication. 

All this functionality will cost you, though—$36 per year per account, to be exact. For the peace of mind that comes with it, I'd say that's money well spent. If you'd like to do some comparative shopping, however, you can check out the best password managers.

1Password pricing: $36/year for a Personal account; $60/year for Families with up to five accounts.

Other collaboration tools

Any or all of these tools can help your team get—and stay—on the same page when it comes to collaboration. For even more support keeping things together, you can take advantage of these other categories of collaboration software.

• Meeting schedulers help you avoid the endless emails when setting up your next get-together. Take advantage of a conventional scheduler, or opt for an AI-powered scheduling assistant.

• If you want to leverage AI across specific departments, there's no shortage of options. Here are our picks for the best AI productivity tools, many of which will help you work better together.

• If your work involves marketing or sales—or marketing and sales—then you'll want to take advantage of CRM software, including these free CRM tools and CRMs for small businesses.   

• If your focus is more on team-built or team-delivered presentations, be sure to review the best presentation software.

Connect your collaboration platforms

Collaborative tools for business can make singular tasks, like scheduling meetings or sharing documents, easier. But the more tools you use, the more you may find yourself switching between tabs to complete your work. Connecting your collaborative apps and setting up automations for repetitive tasks ensures no data falls through the cracks—and lets you use your time on more human activities.

Here are a few ideas for how to connect your tech stack and automate your collaboration.

Related reading: 

• What is brainwriting? The 6-3-5 technique, explained

• How to brainstorm remotely

• Common problems caused by collaboration (and how to fix them)

This article was originally published in October 2018 by Jill Duffy and has also had contributions from Steph Knapp and Toby Peterson. The most recent update was in March 2024. 

Gmail launched on April Fool's Day 2004 with an entire gigabyte (GB)—1,000 megabytes (MB)—of storage. People thought it was a joke. 

Microsoft's Hotmail, at the time, offered 2 MB of storage. Yahoo offered 4 MB. Now Google was going to offer 1,000? How could anyone ever fill up all of that space? Well, now it's two decades later, and my Gmail is using more than 100 times that. One hundred times.

I have no idea what's taking up all that space, and I bet your situation is pretty similar. Google offers subscriptions for more storage ($2.99/month for 200 GB, which is what I have), but you might not need to pay for that extra room.

Odds are, most of the files taking up space are ones you don't really need. With a few well-placed clicks, you can find out what's taking up all that space—and how to free some of it up. 

See an overview of what's taking up space in Google

Your Google account storage is split between three main apps: Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. You can see which of these hogs the most room at one.google.com/storage.

In my case, Google Photos is the main culprit (I have a cute dog—what can I say?). Your situation might be different, though, so let's break down how to find and delete large files in each of these services. 

Back up your Google account

If you're worried about losing anything, you can back up your files first. Google Takeout makes it easy to export everything stored in your Google Account. It can send files directly to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, or Box, or you can download everything to your own hard drive. Here's how to do it:

1. Go to Google Takeout.

2. Select all the data you want to download (there are dozens of Google apps you've probably never heard of, so just select the stuff you actually care about).

   

3. Select the Destination (where you want your export to go), the Frequency (is this a one-time thing, or do you want it to happen on a schedule?), and the File type & size (I recommend a .zip file).

   

4. Click Create export.

This is going to be a lot of space, of course, so make sure you have room before you start the process. That might be worth it, though, so you can delete your files from Google without worrying about losing anything. 

How to free up Google storage using Storage manager

Google makes it easy to clean up space in your account with the Storage manager.

1. Go to Storage manager.

2. You'll see Clean up suggested items: Files in Trash, Spam emails, Unsupported videos, and Large photos and videos. These are all categories that can take a lot of space.

3. Click Review under any category to see what's in there.

4. Select any items that you want to delete, and click Delete (all) or Move to trash (you can also choose to download them first if you haven't done so already).

5. If you moved anything to the trash, go to Trash, and select Empty trash.

Alternatively, you can click into Google Photos, Gmail, or Google Drive under Clean up by service, and use the filters to make your decisions from there.

If you'd rather dig deeper into the apps themselves, keep reading.

How to clear Google Drive storage

You can quickly find the biggest files in your Google Drive by clicking the Storage button in the sidebar, which will open the Storage view of your drive. 

This shows every file in your drive with the biggest at the top. If there are any you don't care about, delete them.

1. Right-click, and select Move to trash. (You can select multiple items at once using the Shift key; or use the command or Ctrl key to select multiple items that aren't next to each other.)

2. Once you're done moving everything you don't want to the trash, click Trash in the sidebar (right above Storage).

3. Click Empty trash in the top-right.

Give this a shot—you might have uploaded a large video to Google Drive in 2012 and forgotten about it. Delete something like that, and you'll have plenty of extra space quickly. 

How to clear Gmail storage

It's a little harder to find the biggest files in Gmail. Attachments, obviously, take up the most space, so the simplest way to find large emails is to search for those. The most common tip is to search for has:attachment larger:10MB. 

This will show you every email that's larger than 10MB—you can change this number to be as high as you want. Run the search, and you'll see icons for filtering by file type, as shown above. 

Only you know which emails you do and don't want to keep, but these tools can help you find some large ones. It's not as slick as the Google Drive option above, though, which is why I suggest using a third-party email client to really find the biggest messages. 

IMAP email clients, such as Thunderbird or Mac Mail, allow you to sort your entire archive by file size. Just head to the Archive folder, then sort your emails by size by clicking the header. Here's what that looks like in Mac Mail.

That 251MB message was a birthday thread from 2014. The first message had a large GIF in it, and every reply also included the GIF. I'm sure there are similarly large emails in your inbox that you no longer need. Delete them, and you'll free up a lot of space quickly. 

There's more you can do. Emptying the trash and spam folders can free up some space, for example, and you could search for emails from particular newsletters and delete those. 

How to clear Google Photos storage

Google Photos used to provide unlimited space for compressed photos, but that's no longer the case. This means, for most users, files uploaded after then count toward your storage space. Many Android phones are set up to sync with Google Photos, and that could be filling up your account.

You can review this using Google Photos' quota management tool, which provides a breakdown of what's taking up space. It'll also tell you how much time you have before you run out of storage.

I'd recommend:

1. Reviewing Large photos & videos and deleting any duplicates or "when will you actually watch this?" videos.

2. Reviewing Screenshots. If you take screenshots for quick lolz (just me?), you probably don't need 782 MB of them in your storage.

3. Reviewing Blurry photos and deleting anything that's not a dog.

Remember to empty your Trash when you're done (or wait 30 days and it'll happen automatically).

If that's not enough, consider downloading older photos to your computer and deleting them from Google Photos. Not everything needs to be in the cloud, after all—just make sure you have a backup.

Or just add more Google storage

Lest I listen to my own advice, I caved and started paying for more Google storage. The Google One pricing page shows you your options. For reference, I have two young human children and a perfect dog, and I'm only about halfway through my $36/year plan. According to Google, I have two years to go before I need to move up to the next tier.

As files get bigger and we have more of them, these plans are likely to change, but for now, you can decide if it's worth a few extra bucks to just not have to think about it for a while.

Automate your Google apps

If you're using Google apps enough that you need to free up space, you probably also need to free up time. By using Gmail and Google Drive with Zapier, you can connect them to thousands of other apps to automate your work. Learn more about how to automate Gmail and how to automate Google Drive, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Related reading:

• How to send email newsletters from Gmail

• The Gmail shortcuts you should actually be using to manage your inbox

• Google Drive vs. Google Photos: What's the difference?

• How to recover deleted files from Google Drive

This article was originally published in April 2022 by Justin Pot. The most recent update was in March 2024.