I use Zaps to automatically track communication w/ Insightly

[William F.]

So I built a way to automatically track SMS and voice messages with Insightly. If you aren't tracking your communication with people (or at least scheduling it) you're probably missing out. I use Insightly to manage my contacts and plan out/track prospecting. You can also track your leads' email, web and phone responses to your advertising.

This technique will probably work for Podio just fine, and it will have to be customized based on what you're trying to do. Insightly isn't as flexible, so this is a good general guide.

Here's a list of the technologies at work:

-Insightly: Great CRM, but not built for tracking phone communications. Not built for REI, either.

-Google Voice: Get text and voice messages in your email and on your phone.

-Zapier: Connects platforms (like Google Voice and Insightly).

Quick tutorial that's missing a ton of detail - get in touch if you decide to do this and you need help:

Step 1: Register for accounts. You'll need a separate account for Zapier's Parser (parser.zapier.com).

Step 2: Set up two email addresses on Zapier's Parser - one for voicemail and one for texts.

Step 3: In your Google Voice settings, direct your email notifications to a Google email address. Address voicemail notifications to the other. You will need to use either filters (personal GMail) or the Admin panel (G-Suite, formerly Google Apps) to do this. Search for how to redirect email or ask me, but you're looking to redirect anything from txt.voice.google.com to your SMS email address, and anything from no-reply-at-voice.google.com to your voicemail address.

Step 4: Create some contacts, leads and organizations out of your friends and get them to send you texts and voicemails to your Google Voice account. We need these to test. Make sure that the phone numbers you store for your friends are numbers only, no spaces or dashes or anything else. This is a limitation with Insightly's phone number storage system and API.

Step 5: Since you've got voicemail and text notifications, go to Parser and make templates. This will make sense when you do it, but make sure to name the phone number variable the same thing (ex: phone_number).

Step 6: Make your first Zap! Login to Zapier and create a Zap. Make the trigger a new email to the text-notification email address.

Step 7: In the next step, turn the phone_number variable into numbers only. Select Code as the app, choose Python, and run this code:

import string my_number = input_data['phone_number'].encode('ascii', 'ignore') all = string.maketrans('','') nodigs = all.translate(all, string.digits) number = my_number.translate(all, nodigs) output = {'number': number}

Step 8: Run a GET request using the Webhooks app on Insightly's API v2.2 to find the contact with phone_number = number (from the previous step). If you don't understand this, get help!

Step 9: Add a filter after Step 8: only continue to run if you find a contact (Contact_ID).

Step 10: Add a note! Select Insightly as the next app, click new note, and fill in the blanks! Link the note you create to the Contact_ID you found in Step 8.

Now all text messages from your contacts' phone numbers will be automatically added as notes!!

Step 11-20: Copy the Zap you just made three times. Change it up for Organizations and Leads first. Leads will need a POST call to the API for the previous Step 10 (instead of native integration). The third modification to the Zap is a little different. Search for Contacts, then Organizations, then Leads. Add a filter: if there is no Contact_ID, Lead_ID, or Organisation_ID, make a task instead!

Step 21-30: Copy all four of the Zaps you have once. Change and rename each to reference the voicemail-notification email address in Parser (see Step 6). Rejigger the note to make sense. Done!

Now you will have all texts and voicemails to your Google Voice number automatically added to Insightly!

Again, get at me with questions. I hope this helps... anyone.