Make.com Automation for Beginners: Step-by-Step Workflow Tutorial

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today we're going to  learn how to use Make to automate just about   anything. If you're tired of boring and repetitive  tasks at work, this video is for you. So, what is   Make? Well, let's start with an example. At the  Kevin Cookie Company, our customers submit orders   for cookies using a Google Forms order form. We  then have someone manually add the order into our   tracking spreadsheet. And when I say someone, that  person is usually me. Okay, who am I kidding? It's   always me. I then email the customer to let them  know that their order is coming soon. And then I   message the Fulfillment Team channel in Microsoft  Teams to inform them of the new order so they can   start shipping it. Now, as you can imagine, this  takes up a big chunk of my day. And sometimes I   include the wrong details in the email. Ideally,  I like to automate all of this. Now, this is just   a simple example, but you can automate just about  anything with Make. You could connect thousands of   different apps and services. And best of all, it's  completely free to start using. In fact, if you   want to follow along, feel free. I partnered with  the Make team to show you how all of this works,   so let's get started. First, head to the following  website. You could click on the card right up   above, and I've also included a link down below  in the description. Once you land on this page,   you can set up a free account. And with a free  account, you get 1,000 operations per month   and you can start automating your work. If you  decide to go pro, you get a free month, 10,000   operations, and you also get additional features.  Fill out all of this information and then you can   set up your free account. Once you finish signing  up for a free account, you'll land here on the   main Make dashboard. Over on the left-hand side,  let's start by clicking on templates. This now   drops us on a page with thousands of different  templates that show you how you can connect   together various types of applications. Right up  here as an example, we see the most popular at   the top. You can collect data via a webhook and  then feed that into Google Sheets. Or over here,   maybe you'd like to take all of your new Telegram  messages and you'd like to forward them on to   Discord. You can do that. Now, you may very well  find the exact automation scenario that you're   looking for, in which case, congratulations. Or  you could click into any one of these examples to   learn more about how they work. That way it Makes  it easier to build your own. And in fact, you can   take any one of these scenarios and build upon it.  Maybe you'd like to add another step after this   Telegram bot. You could do that. To understand how  Make works and how you can use it, we're going to   build our own scenario. And this will give you a  really good feel for the fundamentals of what's   possible. Over on the left-hand side, let's  now click on scenarios. And here you'll notice   that we don't yet have any scenarios. And that's  because we haven't built anything yet. In the top   right-hand corner, let's change that by clicking  on create a new scenario. This now drops us into   the scenario editor or the designer. And this is  where we can start building our automations. And   at first glance, it might look like there are a  lot of different options here, but don't worry,   we'll Make sense of them. Now, right here in the  center of the screen, you'll see this large plus   icon. This is the first step of our scenario.  We need some type of trigger, and this will kick   off the scenario or the automation. And over  here, we can see all the different apps that   we can use to kick off our scenario. And like I  said, there are so many different apps that you   can connect to. This list goes on and on and on.  There are thousands of different options. At the   Kevin Cookie Company, our customers submit their  orders via Google Forms. So right down below, you   can also search for different apps. So here, I'll  search for Google Forms. And what do you know?   There it is. That's one of the apps that I can  connect to. Now, within Google Forms, you see all   sorts of different actions that you could take.  You could get a form, you could search forms, you   could create a new form. And here, I could click  on show more. And here we see all the different   options. Now, in my case, a customer is going  to submit a new order. And that's going to be   the trigger for this automation. And then I want  to take other steps after that. So right here,   there's an option for watch responses, triggers  when a new response is received. That's exactly   what I want, so I'll click on this. This now opens  up a dialogue where you'll need to establish a   connection with Google Forms. Now, anytime you  want to connect to an app or a service, you'll   have to establish a connection. This allows Make  to access the data that's stored on all of these   different services. Now, I've already added my  Google account, so I see it here. But if this is   your first time, you'll have to click on add, and  then Make sure that you authenticate and connect   to your account. If you have any difficulties  with that, right down here, you can click on this   link that says online help. And it's a very rich  resource that'll walk you through step by step,   how you can connect to a wide variety of different  services. Right down here, there is another   configuration field. We need to provide the form  ID that we would like to work with. Now, chances   are you have many different Google Forms. You  need to tell Make which one you want to work with.   Let's jump over to Google Forms to see how we can  get that. Here I am now in Google Forms. And here   you can see our cookie order form. Right down  here, we collect information like the customer's   email address, their name, the shipping address  where they would like us to send these cookies,   the cookie type, the quantity, and also any  special instructions. But I'm here to get the form   ID. So right at the very top in the address bar  of your browser, you'll see the URL for this form.   And right here in the middle in between the D and  edit, you'll see this ID. This is the form ID.   And this identifies this specific form in Google  Forms. I'll Make sure I highlight all of this and   then press control C to copy, and then let's go  back to Make. Back within Make, I can now paste   in the form ID. Here, I'll type in that exact  value that I just copied. Now, alternatively,   you can also try searching for your form. But  I like picking out the exact ID, that way I   know that I'm getting the exact form that I'd like  to work with. Down below, we also have something   called the limit, and this is how much data you  would like to pull out of the form. So, let's say   that you have 10 form responses and you'd like  to pull in all those different responses. Well,   then you'd have to set a higher limit like 10  in that example, but I'm just testing this out,   so I'll leave it set to the default of two. And  then down below, I'll click on okay. Now that we   have successfully connected to Google Forms and we  configured it exactly the way we'd like it to be,   let's Make sure that we save this scenario. Down  at the very bottom, we have various controls.   Over here, let's click on the option that says  save. And in the bottom right-hand corner, I can   now see that this scenario was saved. Perfect.  Over on the left-hand side, let's now click into   scenarios. Here I can now see all the different  scenarios that I've saved. Now currently,   I just have one scenario. This is my integration  with Google Forms. Now there's not much there yet,   but soon we'll have a nice automation set  up. Especially if you start adding lots of   different automations and lots of different  scenarios, over on the left-hand side, you   can add additional folders and you can organize  all of your different automations. But for now,   I just have one, so I don't need to do that.  Let's now jump back into our scenario. Over here,   let's click into integration Google Forms. And  on this page, let's click on this option in the   center of the page. And this brings us right back  to the scenario designer where we started. I now   want to test to Make sure that this is all working  as expected. But before we do that, we need to   submit a sample cookie order. So, let's jump over  to Google Forms and do that. Here in Google Forms,   I've filled out the cookie order form. Down at  the very bottom, let's click on submit. And look   at that, the response has been recorded. Back  now within Make, to run this scenario, down   in the bottom left-hand corner, you'll see this  button that says run once. Let's click on this.   And it looks like it just successfully ran. Now  right over here with the Google’s Form trigger or   module in the top right hand corner, you see this  one icon. And this indicates that it just consumed   one operation. With a free account, you get 1,000  operations, which is plenty to test and experiment   with how it work, and you can set up a number  of scenarios with that. When I click on this,   we can see the bundle that came back, or the  output data from Google Forms. Right up above,   we see that there was one bundle or basically one  form submission. Here we see the email address.   And then if I expand answers, here I can see  all the different answers to the different   form questions. For example, select cookie type.  And when I click into this, we can expand it all   the way down. And here I can see that the value  was oatmeal raisin. And I can do that for all   the other categories. Now, one of the great things  about Make is I can use all of this bundled data,   and I could use that now in any other application.  So, I could feed that elsewhere. And that's where   the power of Make comes from. You can manipulate  and work with this data elsewhere, and you can   bring it to and connect with other applications.  In the top right-hand corner, let's close out of   this view. Let's now bring the data from Google  Forms into another application. To do that,   within the scenario designer, you could simply  right click on the canvas, and here you have the   option to add a module, or what's even easier, in  my opinion, you could click right over here to add   another module. And this opens up that same screen  that we saw before. Here we see Google Forms,   we've already used that. And here we can  now take the data from the Google Forms,   and we can feed that into any other application.  So hopefully you're starting to see some of the   power of being able to take data from one location  to a different location. Now at the very top,   here I saw the option for Google Sheets. And I  would like to add that to our tracking spreadsheet   within Google Sheets. I'll click on this  option. And here, just like we saw with Forms,   you have all sorts of different actions that you  can take with that bundle of data. And right here,   I see the option to add a row. I would like to  add a new row to this spreadsheet with the data   from that form. I'll click on this option. This  now opens up a dialog, and similar to what we   saw with Forms, first, you'll need to establish a  connection with the service that you would like to   feed the data to. In this case, I'm using Google  and I've already set up a connection. Down below,   we need to identify the file that we would like  to add the Forms data to. Here I have it set to   select by path, the file's in My Drive, and down  below, I can now find the spreadsheet ID. I’ll   click on this and this will pull together all the  different contents within My Drive. And here, I   see a spreadsheet called the Kevin Cookie Company  order tracking sheet. I'll select this option   right here. And next, I can select the sheet name.  Now there's only one sheet within the spreadsheet,   so I'll select sheet one. And next, it also asks  me if my sheet contains headers and it does. So,   I'll set it to yes. Let's have a quick look at the  spreadsheet just to see how it's formatted. Here I   am now in Google Sheets. And it's a very simple  spreadsheet. Here I have a header row. And each   one of these different columns corresponds  to one of the questions in the form. So,   I have a column for the customer name, the email  address, the shipping address, the cookie type,   quantity, special instructions. And then we  also have a column that's not on the form called   shipped. And this is what our order fulfillment  department uses. So, once they ship an order,   they'll put down yes. And if it hasn't  been shipped, it'll simply be blank. So,   let's now jump back into Make to see how we can  get that data from the form into the spreadsheet.   Back within Make within the configuration panel,  here we see a section for values. And here I see   the customer name, the email, the shipping  address. For the customer name, this is the   first column within the spreadsheet or column A.  So, there I can see that. And you'll notice that   all the different columns show up here. We now  need to map the data from the Google Form to the   Google Sheet. So over here, let's click into the  text field. And when I click into that over here,   I can see all the data that I'm getting back  from the Google Form. So, I can decide what   data I would like to use from the form and where  I want it to show up in the spreadsheet. So,   for the customer name, I want to take the customer  name from the form, and here we see that bundle   with all the data. So right down here, let's click  into answers. And here I see all the data that's   coming back. And here I see a field for your name.  Let's click on that to expand it. And then let's   expand this, expand this. And over here, I can see  the value for the customer name. There's Cookie   Monster. He ordered cookies and I think he's  very hungry. So over here, I'll click on this,   and this will now take the form value or the  customer name and it'll place it into this row   within this column. So right down here, we can now  click into the email and I'll do the same thing.   Here I see a field for the respondent email.  I'll click on that. And now I could go through   all these different text fields and I could fill  in the details. So, the shipping address, again,   let's expand all these different categories. And  here I see a value. So, I'll click on that. And   for the cookie type, we're going to do the exact  same thing. Here, I'll expand all these different   sections of the bundle and let's insert that. And  here for the quantity, we'll do the same. I now   finished going through telling Make what data I  would like to take from Google Forms and where I   want it to show up within Google Sheets. Now that  I've successfully mapped all the data, down at the   very bottom, let's click on the button that says,  okay. Back now within Google Forms, here I'll now   submit another cookie order form. I filled in all  the details and down below, let's click on submit.   Back within Make, let's now run this scenario  and you should see it show up immediately within   Google Sheets. So right down below, I'll click on  run once. Here, the scenario is now running and   over on the left-hand side, we should now see it  show up. And look at that. Right up on top, we now   see the Google Form show up directly within Google  Sheets. That's perfect. We're doing great so far.   We've now connected two different applications and  we're feeding data from one application to another   application. And soon we'll connect even more.  But before we do that, I need to Make one tweak   to this scenario. We also sometimes get orders  outside of the United States. And unfortunately,   we don't yet have the capability to ship outside  of the US. I know it's a big missed opportunity,   but I want to make sure we don't confuse our  fulfillment department. I can set up filters.   Right within or between these two different  modules, let's click on this icon. And right here,   we have the option to set up a filter. Let's click  on this. This now opens up a dialogue where I can   set up a filter. Right up on top, I can give it a  label. I'll type in US orders only. And over here,   I can set a condition. Now, I want the shipping  address to contain United States. If it does,   then it's a valid order. So over here, I'll expand  this category. Let's go down to text answers,   answers, and right down here, I see the value for  the shipping address. I'll click on that. So here,   it'll check this value to make sure that it  contains the United States. Within text operators,   let's click on this dropdown and I have all sorts  of different options. I can filter on so many   different things, but I just want to know, does it  contain the United States? Here's the option for   contains, and I want it to be case insensitive.  That way, if maybe they have a lowercase u,   it'll still catch that. I'll click on this and  down below, I'll type in United States. Again,   in the future, we'll have to look at supporting  more markets, but for now, this is the reality   of our business. In the bottom right-hand corner,  I'll click on okay. And I now have that filter.   Now again, if I get an order from outside the  US, it'll simply cut it off at this stage and   it'll never add it to our order tracking sheet.  If it does contain United States, then it'll be   added to this sheet. It's perfect. Now that we  have the order details in our tracking sheet, we   need to thank the customer for their order. Let's  set this up. To thank a customer for their order,   we're going to send out an email. And to do that,  we need to add yet another module. And to do that,   we'll do it just like we did before. Over here,  I'll click on this icon to add another module.   And here I could search through all the different  apps. Again, you could connect so many different   apps. I want to send an email. So here I'll type  in mail and I have all sorts of different options,   but here I see email. I'll click on this.  Here I see all the different actions that   I can take with mail. I want to send an email to  our customer. And here I see an action for send   an email. Let me click on this. This now opens up  the configuration dialogue. Up at the very top,   first, you'll need to connect to the service.  And I've already done that. And then you have   various options that you can set. For example,  do you want to save the message after sending?   I'll set it to no. Right down here, you can also  identify the recipient. And when I click on this,   here I see email address one. Let's click into  there. And now I can use any of the data from any   of the preceding steps in this scenario. So here  I see all the different values I get back from   Google Sheets and all the different values that I  get back from Google Forms. Now the email address   is right here, the respondent email in Google  Forms. I'll click on that and that will take that   data from Forms, and in fact, when I hover over  the respondent email, you'll see how Google Forms   is expanding over here. That's letting me know  the data is coming from this step in the process.   Now that I've indicated the email address, down  below, I need to enter in the subject. Here, I'll   type in your cookie order is confirmed. Right down  below, I can also indicate the content type, HTML   or plain text. I'll go with plain text. Nothing  fancy, just going with straight communication.   Right down below, I can also enter in the  content. Here, I'll enter in my message. And I   say dear customer name, but I want to insert the  actual customer name here. So, I'll remove this   placeholder. And right over here in the Google  Form, again, we have the customer name. Let's   expand this and go all the way down. We're going  to drill down until we get to the customer name.   And I'll insert that customer name into this  email. So, this is a dynamic value. It'll take   whatever the customer's name is from Google Forms  and it'll insert it into my email. That's perfect.   Also, we call out cookies ordered. So over here,  let's remove that. And if I look down here,   it says cookie type. Let's expand this. And here,  I'm going to insert the value for the cookie type.   I'll insert that. That's a dynamic value. And  again, I need to insert the quantity. So just   like we did with the name and also the cookie  type, let's expand this or drill down and then   insert that value. This will now be a customized  email based on all of this information. Right down   below, I'll click on okay. And look at that, a  very simple way to create a mail merge. Along   with sending a thank you email to our customer,  I also want to make sure I let our fulfillment   team know that there's now a new order that they  need to ship out. Over here, I'll right click and   let's add another module. I'll click on that and  let's click on this plus icon. And down below,   I'm going to use Microsoft Teams. And right  here, I see Microsoft Teams and let's click on   show more. Here, we have all sorts of different  options. I'll look through these actions and I   want to send a message to a channel. Right here, I  see the option for send a message, sends a message   to a team's channel or to a chat. That's exactly  what I'm looking for. I'll click on this. Now,   currently, this is just sitting here on its own,  but I want to connect it to Google Sheets. So,   I needed to route to both email and to Teams. So,  this is a visual interface that I could use. So,   I could click over here and drag it and now pull  it over to Google Sheets. And when I do that,   it sets up a router. What that means is the data  from Google Sheets will be sent to both the email   and onto Microsoft Teams. So, it'll go to both  places at once. Here, I could pull these around   so I could adjust the visual layout so I could  see what's happening with all of my data. Now,   I need to configure Microsoft Teams. Over here,  I'll right click and let's click on settings. This   opens up a dialogue and up on top, you'll need  to establish a connection with Microsoft Teams.   And I've already done that. Right down here, I  can indicate what type of message I would like   to send. You can send a channel message or a chat  message. I would like to send it to the channel,   so I'll select that option. And next, it asks  for the Team ID and the Channel ID where it   should post this message. Let's jump over to  Microsoft Teams to see how you can get this   information. Here within Microsoft Teams, over  on the left-hand side, I see all of my different   teams and the associated channels. I would like to  post a message to the order fulfillment team and   the general channel. To get the Team ID and also  the channel ID, here I'll simply right click on   the channel. And then here's the option to get a  link to the channel. When I click on that, I get   this very long URL. And right within here, here I  see the channel ID. And if we go towards the end,   here I have the Team ID. You could simply  pull this information out of this link and   then bring it into Make. Back within Make, here  I'll paste in the Team ID and also the channel   ID. And right down below, I can now type in my  message to post to this channel. And here I have   some placeholders. We have a new order from, and  here it says customer name. But I want to insert   the customer name. I'll remove this. And over  here, I see the bundle of data I get back from   both Google Sheets and also Google Forms. Now  I want to insert the customer name. So here,   let's look for customer name. Here I see your  name, we'll expand this and let's go down and   get the value for the customer name. And that'll  now insert it into my message. And next, I'll   do the same for both the quantity and the cookie  type. Now that I've customized my message to send   to this channel, down below, let's click on OK.  Now that I finished setting up my scenario, I'm   ready to test it. And there are a few different  approaches that you could use to test it to Make   sure that everything is working well. Perhaps you  only want to run one individual module. Over here,   I could right click on a module and here's  the option to just run this. Or alternatively,   maybe you just want to test out one of the  branches of your scenario. Over here, you   could right click on the connection and you have  the option to unlink. That way you could just test   out one of the branches on its own. So, there are  many different ways that you could test it out to   make sure that it's working as you expect it to.  Let's now jump into Google Forms and I'll submit   an order and we'll see it go through this entire  scenario. Here, I now filled out my order form   with all of my different details. Of course, I'm  ordering 985 cookies. They are so good. And right   down here, please deliver by pigeon. I find that's  the quickest method to get them. Let's now submit   it and see this go through the scenario. Back  within Make, I'll now click on run once. And look   at that. It looks like it successfully ran through  my scenario. Over here, we used one operation to   collect the data from the Google Form. Then we  used another operation to add it to the Google   Sheet. Here we have our router and it sends out  the email with one operation. And then it uses one   more operation to send the message to Microsoft  Teams. Let's have a quick look to Make sure it   went through all these steps properly. Here I  am in the order tracking spreadsheet, and here   I see the new order that I just delivered, and  looks like it came through perfectly. And I also   just received an email and it's customized to the  specific order, and that also came through just as   expected. And lastly, here we have Microsoft Teams  with a message for the order fulfillment team. We   have a new order from Kevin Stratvert for 985  chocolate chip. Please ship ASAP. It looks like   everything worked just as expected. Now that we  confirmed that this scenario is working properly,   the next step is probably to schedule it. I mean,  I don't want to have to come in here and have to   manually run this every time I think an order  arrived. Down in the bottom left-hand corner,   we can press this toggle and this turns scheduling  on. And over here, we can configure the schedule.   Currently it's set to every 15 minutes. But when  we click on this, we have a few different options.   Currently it's set to at regular intervals, but  here I could set it to every day, on certain days   of the week, or certain days of the month. And  here we have some additional options where we can   configure how often this runs. Now keep in mind,  the more often it runs, the more operations your   scenario will consume. So, think of a reasonable  interval to run this at. And just like that,   we've automated our way to extra free time. Keep  in mind, your automations can connect to thousands   of different services and can be far more complex  than what we looked at today. You could have   multiple steps and stages to your automations.  You can add filters, aggregate data, parse text,   branch your workflows into separate paths, and  so much more. Feel free to browse through all the   different templates to see what all is possible.  In the comments below, let me know how you plan   to start automating your tasks and how much  time you think you'll get back in your day. To   watch more videos like this one, please consider  subscribing and I'll see you in the next video.