Example: Payment workflow to expire files

Introduction

This example works by setting up two seperate Zaps.  The first to record new "Sends" in Digital Pigeon to a Google Sheet worksheet.  The second will listen for changes to the "Paid" column being updated by ticking a checkbox.  Zapier will then perform an action in Digital Pigeon to expire the upload.  This can be useful for you to manage storage in Digital Pigeon in a simple way.

Requirements

• Zapier account
• Digital Pigeon set up to work with Zapier (see Introduction to the Zapier Integration)
• Access to Google Sheets

Overview

1. Create a Zap to save new sends into a google worksheet
   1. Have a "List uploads" action in Digital Pigeon.  Zapier will check in with Digital Pigeon periodically to see if there are any new uploads
   2. Set up an action to add the information from the new upload into a Google Sheet
2. Create a Zap to listen to updates for the worksheet 
   1. Have a "New or Updated Spreadsheet Row" action in Google sheets. This will be set to trigger when the "Paid" column is updated
   2. Add a Zapier filter to only allow the Zap to proceed if the value of "Paid" is "TRUE"
   3. Add a "Update expiry date" action from Digital Pigeon to update the expiry date to a date in the past.
3. Turn on both Zaps to enable the full workflow

1. Create a Zap to save new sends into a google worksheet

This is the first step of the process.  The main details we need to record are the ID of the upload and the name to allow us to identify which row to update in the subsequent steps. 

1.1. List Uploads Action in Digital Pigeon

• Create a Zap and choose the Digital Pigeon application which you have been granted access to.
• Select the "List Uploads" action as shown below
  
• Select your account which will have access to Digital Pigeon.  You should already have one set up from your initial Zap setup.
• Under the "Customise Upload" step select the type "Send" or "Share" depending on your workflow.  If both are used then two seperate Zaps will be required. See image below:
  

1.2. Update a Google Sheet with the information from Digital Pigeon

• Add a "Create Spreadsheet Row" action event
  
• Choose/setup your account access information in Google Sheets
• Set up a spreadsheet in Google sheets that you want to add rows to for new Digital Pigeon uploads. In the screenshot below we have added the following columns into our sheet.
  • Creation Date
  • Name
  • Id
  • Uploader
  • Uploader Email
  • # Files
  • Filenames
  • Expiry Date
  • Paid: For this column we have chosen to insert a checkbox via "Insert > Checkbox" in Google Sheets. This will make it simpler to control the input values for later Zaps.
• Populate the corresponding values with the example data coming from Digital Pigeon. The screenshot below shows some example data
  

2. Create a Zap to listen to updates for the worksheet

This is the second part of our workflow where we listen for updates to the "Paid" column in the sheet used for the first Zap.  The process relies on someone manually updating this value to trigger the Zap.  You could consider automating this via a different Zap if that works for your process. 

2.1. Set up an action to listen to updates in Google Sheets

• Add a "New or Updated Spreadsheet Row" action event
  
• Choose/setup your account access information in Google Sheets
• As part of the "Customize Spreadsheet Row" select the same Spreadsheet and Worksheet that we are populating data into from the first Zap.  We want to also set the "Trigger Column" to be "Paid" as this will be the one that has the checkbox in it being updated. See below:
  

2.2. Set up a Zapier filter to only trigger when "Paid" is true

• Add a "Filter by Zapier" action event to proceeding only when the checkbox value is "TRUE" or in Google terms ticked.
  
• In the "Filter Setup & Testing" step we want to only continue if the value is true.  This will be the value hidden behind the checkbox added to the spreadsheet.
  

2.3. Update the expiry date of the upload in Digital Pigeon

• Add a "Update expiry date" Digital Pigeon action event. 
  
• Select your account which will have access to Digital Pigeon.  You should already have one set up from previous steps.
• In the "Customize Expire" step populate the fields using the Id from the spreadsheet column and a relative date in Zapier which is 1 hour prior to now.  See this Zapier article on how to add the current time into a field. Zapier allows you to subtract time from that by shortcuts as outlined in this other Zapier article.
  

3. Turn on both Zaps to enable the full workflow

This is the last step.  Turning on both Zaps means that new rows will be added as you create uploads in Digital Pigeon and they will be expired when the "Paid" field is ticked. You could consider replacing the Google Sheets functionality in this workflow and set values directly into your Billing system.  Hopefully this inspires some ideas of alterations that may work for your own situation.

For further guidance, check out our short tutorial video below.