Andrew Baisden

Posted on Dec 11

How I Automated My Workflow Using Zapier and Why You Should Too

#ai #career #productivity #webdev

The beauty of automation isn’t just in the time-saving; however, it’s about creating systems that work efficiently behind the scenes to support your work that you can constantly push forward in building your actual projects. And here in this article, I’m going to share a real Zapier workflow that I built for something I wanted to automate, tracking content across Google Sheets and Notion.

You will even understand how it all works: why decisions matter, what you can learn from the behaviour of Zapier triggers and polling, or row detection. If you are interested in automation or productivity, or if you are just trying to create a smarter workflow for yourself, I thought this breakdown might give you some more cool evidence of what's happening behind the scenes.

Prerequisites

We need to set up a few accounts before we can start. Most people already have a Google account and ChatGPT. So all that's left is creating an account for Notion if you don't have one already.

A Google account
A Notion account
A ChatGPT account
An OpenAI API key

Many tutorials show you how to create an OpenAI API Key; just be aware that billing is required to use the API Key with any app you build. Fortunately, it's not that expensive, and you only need to top up something like £10/$10 to get started, and for our usage, that's more than enough.

What We Will Build

We are going to build an automation content pipeline for generating content ideas.

Our Zapier Zap will automate our content pipeline by taking new ideas from one of our Google spreadsheets, followed by turning them into posts inside our Notion database, so we don't need to do any manual copying.

This is what our final Zap workflow will look like once it has been completed:

Our automation handles 3 major tasks as outlined below:

1. Detects new ideas we add to our Google Sheet

Whenever we add a new row (a new content idea), Zapier sees it instantly.

2. Send that new idea to our Notion database

It creates a brand-new Notion entry with our fields:

Name
Tags
Outline
Raw Idea
Created From

3. Updates the status in your spreadsheet

After the idea is successfully added to Notion, Zapier marks the row (“Processed”) so we know:

Which ideas have synced
Which ones still need action
What’s safe to edit or publish next

This prevents duplicates and keeps both systems in sync.

Setting Up a Zapier Account

The first step is to visit the Zapier website and create a free account by clicking on the sign-up button.

You can either sign up with an email of your choice or use your Google account to sign up.

You should now see the Zapier dashboard screen as shown here:

There are many ways to build an automation on Zapier. In this tutorial, we will start from scratch and create a Zap. So click on the Zap (automated workflows) button to begin.

The create Zap workflow automation screen should now be visible:

In the next section, we shall go through a build setup for our content pipeline.

Building Our Content Automation Pipeline

We can create our Zap in 4 steps! Let's get started with step 1 and go through them all.

Step 1. Trigger - New Spreadsheet Row

Google Sheets is going to be our event trigger. Anytime a new row is added to our Google Sheet, the workflow will update with the new data. So firstly, create a Google Sheet called "Idea Inbox" and then give it these column headings:

A: idea
B: status
C: notion_url

Now, inside Zapier, click on the Trigger button, and you should see a pop-up menu with extensions:

Select Google Sheets and on the Setup screen, add this event:

Trigger event: New Spreadsheet Row

Make sure that your Google Account is connected if it's not already.

On the Configure screen, add these values:

Spreadsheet: Idea Inbox
Worksheet: Sheet1

If you changed the names, then update accordingly.

On the test screen, test the trigger to make sure that it works. You need to create a row with some data in your spreadsheet first; otherwise, the test will fail. You can use this test data or create your own:

idea: Build a to-do app
status: pending

You don't have to put anything in the notion_url cell, as our Zap is not connected to Notion yet.

Congratulations, that's step 1 completed, now onto step 2.

Step 2. Action - Conversation

In this step, we now need to connect to ChatGPT so that we can use the API and LLM for our conversations.

Like before, click on the action button, but this time find ChatGPT. Add this action event on the setup screen, and of course, make sure that your ChatGPT account is connected:

Action event: Conversation

Now use this configuration here for our Conversation on the Configure screen. I'm using the current latest model; it could have changed depending on when you read this, so select whatever model you want.

Here's the User Message:

Turn the following raw idea into a clear, structured Notion page outline. Include:

Title
Description
Problem it solves
Proposed features or sections
Potential use cases
A short action plan for building or writing it

Raw idea:

Now, for the Raw idea, we have to connect our Google Sheet, and to do that, we must use a forward slash like this "/", which will open a context menu as seen here. Then you can select the idea column:

All the other values can remain as default. On the Test screen, go ahead and test the Action. If you see output data, then it worked!

Ok, don't publish yet, we have to do step 3 next, which is connecting to Notion.

Step 3. Action - Create Data Source Item

Notion database setup

Before we start, let's quickly create a database in Notion and also connect our Notion account to Zapier if it has not been done already. Create a Notion page like this one:

Name: Leave as default
Tags: Multi-select
Outline: Text
Raw Idea: Text
Created From: Text

You might also need the Notion Database ID for Zapier, alongside the Zapier Notion extension, which is definitely needed for the database page:

When you connect Notion to Zapier, ensure that you connect to the page you created.

There is a chance that you might encounter a scenario where Zapier can connect to your Notion account, but Notion is not permitting Zapier to access your database/page. In this type of situation, you have to check the sharing permissions for your Notion account and the page.

Zapier workflow setup

Click on the cross in the workflow to add another event, and this time find Notion. On the Setup screen, add Create Data Source Item as the Action event.

Now go to the Configure screen and add this information:

Data Source: Idea Vault
Template Mode: No template
Name: Use "/" to bring up the context menu and find the "idea" column for the Google Sheets extension
Outline: Use "/" to bring up the context menu and find "Output Text" for the ChatGPT extension
Created From: Automated Idea Generator
Raw Idea: Use "/" to bring up the context menu and find the "idea" column for the Google Sheets extension
Tags: You can leave it empty
Content: You can leave it empty
Content Format: Plain Text

Run a Test like usual, and this time you should see the data in our Notion database:

We are almost done; only one step remains.

Step 4. Trigger - Update Spreadsheet Row

To complete our Zap, we just have one last thing to do. Our spreadsheet needs to be updated every time we make changes, and the status has to change to "Processed". The notion_url for our idea in the database should be added to the spreadsheet automatically.

Start by creating another trigger in the workflow and add Google Sheets again. This time in the Setup, make the Action event Update Spreadsheet Row.

On the configure screen, if you see a "Possible Zap loop detected" warning, you can ignore it. It's just a warning, and our workflow trigger will be different this time, so it's fine.

Now add these values to the form on Configure:

Drive: Leave empty
Spreadsheet: Idea Inbox
Worksheet: Sheet1
Row: Click on the 3-dot menu on the right and select Custom. Use "/" to bring up the context menu and find the "Row ID" column for the Google Sheets extension
idea: Use "/" to bring up the context menu and find the "idea" column for the Google Sheets extension
Status: processed
notion_url: Use "/" to bring up the context menu and find the "URL" column for the Notion extension

That's it, the Zap should be ready to publish by clicking the publish button! You can go ahead and give your Zap a name so it's not untitled anymore. On the main dashboard for your Zaps, you can see their Status and choose to toggle them on and off.

Test your automated workflow by creating an idea in your Google Sheet. Zapier will run through the workflow and then put the data inside your Notion database!

Zapier Behind the Scenes: Triggers, Polling, and Row Detection

Once you get going automating workflows with Zapier, it’s good to know what’s happening behind the scenes. Your Zap is good, and your tests appear to work fine, but there are a couple of things going on behind the scenes that explain why deleted rows don’t re-fire, why it matters how quickly we poll, and why the tests took such unequal amounts of time.

Why do deleted rows not re-trigger the Zap

Zapier watches for new rows being added to your spreadsheet, not rows being changed, removed, or overwritten. After some time, Zapier finds a certain ID, which is in memory; it will never treat it as "new" regardless of deleting it from the list. It’s more to stop loops and triggers from being triggered multiple times, but it also means that if you delete the row, then those won’t come back into your automation.

How polling frequency affects workflow speed

Zapier is not actively watching your data in real time. It polls on a schedule, which means it checks in. Free and lower-tier plans take much longer; higher plans are checked more frequently. Quicker polling will result in your workflow being more reactive as opposed to having slower polling, which may lead to longer delays between triggers.

And this is why it can take a while for data to show up in Notion after we add it to the Google Sheet. For a production-level experience, a paid plan would offer a far better experience. For our simple testing, though, it's ok.

How Zapier detects new rows

Zapier doesn’t scan the entire spreadsheet every time. It simply looks for rows with IDs it hasn’t seen before.

When it finds one:

It captures the row data
Passes it to the next step
Stores that row ID so it won’t trigger again

This makes Zaps lightweight and efficient, but also means your workflow relies on predictable row creation, not editing or reordering existing ones.

Conclusion

The power of automation is gained when you know not just what works, but why it works the way it does. Polling frequency, triggers, and detection rules in Zapier might be invisible, but they impact everything from the speed of your workflows to which rows are skipped or ignored.

Once you get how the stuff works, you can create automations that are consistent, predictable and go along with what you are trying to achieve. Whether you are creating a content funnel, workflow productivity system or your first automated workflow process, the strategies I covered here will improve your thinking about the tooling you use and how those tools can work for you instead of the other way around.