Zapier made easy: Understanding IDs

In this post (2-minute read), you’ll quickly learn when IDs are used in
Zapier, how to master a concept that will make all apps on the internet make
more sense and save you time.  

Software ID's

We’ll start with an example.  
 
Every contact in Google Contacts has a name. Let’s take a contact named “Beth
Smith.” So maybe you’ve got an automation set up where every year you email a
survey out to your contacts to double check that their phone number hasn’t
changed. If Beth responds, the automation searches for the contact card “Beth
Smith” and then updates her phone number.  
 
But what happens if Beth gets married and changes her name to “Beth Jackson”?
Your automation is going to break because it won’t find that name.  
 
Apps (and Zapier) know this would be an issue.  
 
So, what apps do to bypass this problem is give “Beth Smith” a unique ID.
Maybe the ID is “768.” Even if Beth changes her name, the ID stays the same:  
 
Beth Smith — ID 768  
changes to…  
Beth Jackson — ID 768  
 
If the automation references the ID instead of the name, then you’re golden!
It will find Beth’s Contact card and it can update the phone number even if
her name changes.

Custom Values

I’m going to be honest. Zapier could make this process way more intuitive. It
would save you and them time if they did!  
 
Alas, Zapier allows you to reference an ID by using something they call
“Custom Values.” Don’t check out just because of the name. I’ll explain.  
 
When you’re setting up a Zap for that yearly survey example (see above), Beth
would respond with her new phone number. Then you have to tell the Zap to go
to Google Contacts and update Beth’s contact card.  
 
You’d see a Contact dropdown and just select “Beth”:  
 

Except that would be wrong.  
 
You’d notice that Beth would be the only contact whose phone number would
update no matter who fills out the survey.  
 
BLAST! Email Support. Waste a bunch of time. Search Community. Give up.  
 
OR  
 
Understand that you need the contact to be updated every time the Zap runs and
you press that cleverly placed “Or add search step” button which would solve
50% of your problem.  
 
You add a search step. You map in the name of whoever filled out the survey
and it finds that person’s contact card.  
 
THEN  
 
You have to use “Custom Values”  
 

This is your moment. This is where those fingerprint IDs come into play.  
 
To make the Zap work, you tell this step to use the ID field of the contact
that you had searched for and found. Not the name field or any other field
(because they can change).  
 
To recap:

• Every software object has an ID
• Other things change, IDs do not.
• Reference IDs to foolproof your Zaps and save yourself some headache

‍
That's all for this week!  
 
 
Happy Building,  
Bryce