Zapier and webhooks

Zapier covers the integrations most teams need without writing code. Webhooks cover the rest.

Zapier

Connect EasyChatDesk in Zapier and use events — a new conversation, a captured lead, a form submission — as triggers for whatever you already run.

The zaps that earn their keep, in roughly the order teams build them:

1. Lead captured → CRM record. The single most common one. Stops leads living only in a support inbox.
2. Lead captured → spreadsheet. Cruder, but if you do not have a CRM yet this is better than nothing and takes two minutes.
3. Form submission → project tool. For teams where a chat can turn into a task.
4. New conversation out of hours → email or SMS. A blunt but effective way to cover evenings.

Webhooks

For anything Zapier does not cover, configure a webhook endpoint and receive events as JSON POST requests.

Practical advice for the receiving end:

• Respond quickly. Acknowledge with a 2xx as soon as you have the payload and do the real work asynchronously. Slow endpoints cause retries and duplicates.
• Be idempotent. Assume you will occasionally receive the same event twice and design so that is harmless.
• Verify the source. Do not accept POSTs from anywhere — check that the request is genuinely from us before acting on it.
• Log the raw payload while you are building. It is much faster than guessing at the shape.

Choosing between them

Use Zapier when the integration is standard, the volume is modest, and you would rather not maintain code. Use webhooks when you need low latency, high volume, custom logic, or you are pushing into an internal system Zapier has never heard of.

The REST API

If you need to read data rather than react to events — pulling conversations into a reporting warehouse, for instance — that is the API’s job rather than webhooks. See REST API.

Next: REST API.