Effectiveness matters in the fast world of business. Whether you’re managing customer orders, processing data, or maintaining communications, automation can drastically reduce the time and effort required to complete routine tasks. Make offers a powerful, user-friendly platform to automate nearly any process, allowing you to connect thousands of different apps and services seamlessly. Best of all, it’s completely free to start using.
This guide will walk you through the basics of Make, from setting up your account to creating your first automation scenario. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a solid understanding of how Make works and how to leverage it to streamline your workflow, saving valuable time daily.
1. Getting Started with Make
The first step in your automation journey with Make.com is to sign up for an account. Here’s how to get started:
Setting Up Your Account
Head to the Make.com website. Once there, you can easily sign up for a free account. With a free account, you’ll receive 1,000 operations per month plenty to start exploring the platform’s capabilities. You can subscribe to a Pro account, which offers 10,000 operations, extra features, and a free month if you find that you need more.
To sign up, simply fill out the required information. After completing the registration process, you’ll be directed to the main Make dashboard.
2. Navigating the Make.com Dashboard
The Make dashboard is your central hub for managing automation, referred to as “scenarios.” Here’s how to navigate the dashboard and explore what it has to offer:
Exploring Templates
On the left-hand side of the dashboard, you’ll find a menu with several options, including “Templates.” Clicking on this brings you to a page filled with thousands of pre-built templates. These templates demonstrate various ways to connect different apps and services. For example, you might find a template that collects data via a webhook and then feeds that data into Google Sheets. Or perhaps you’ll discover one that forwards new Telegram messages to Discord.
Templates are a great way to get inspiration for your own automation. You can use them as they are or customize them to better suit your needs. If you’re new to automation, templates can also serve as a helpful learning tool, showing you how different scenarios are built and how the various components interact.
Building on Existing Templates
If you find a template that closely matches what you need, you can click on it to learn more about how it works. From there, you can customize the template by adding additional steps or modifying existing ones. For example, if you find a template that forwards Telegram messages to Discord, you might want to add a step that also sends those messages to an email address.
This flexibility allows you to tailor each automation to fit your specific workflow, ensuring that it meets all of your requirements.
3. Creating Your First Automation Scenario
While templates are a fantastic starting point, creating your scenario from scratch will give you a deeper understanding of how Make works and what it can do. Let’s walk through the process of building a basic automation scenario.
Accessing the Scenario Editor
To start building your scenario, go back to the dashboard. Click on “Scenarios” in the left-hand menu. You’ll see that you don’t have any scenarios yet, but that’s about to change. In the top right-hand corner, click on “Create a New Scenario”, This will take you to the scenario editor, where you can start designing your automation.
Understanding the Scenario Editor
At first glance, the scenario editor might seem overwhelming, with a lot of different options and icons. Don’t worry we’ll break it down step by step.
In the center of the screen, you’ll see a large plus icon. This is where you’ll start building your scenario. The first action in your automation, referred to as the “trigger”, is represented by the plus icon. An event that initiates automation is known as a trigger. For example, when a customer submits an order via Google Forms, this can trigger a series of automated actions.
4. Selecting and Configuring a Trigger
To begin, click on the plus icon in the center of the screen. This will open a menu displaying all the different apps you can use to trigger your scenario. Make supports thousands of apps, so whether you’re using Google Forms, Gmail, Slack, or something else, you’re likely to find it here.
Example: Using Google Forms as a Trigger
Let’s say you run a small online bakery, the Kevin Cookie Company. Customers place orders through a Google Form. You want to automate the process so that when a new order is submitted, it automatically triggers a series of actions, such as updating a Google Sheet and sending a confirmation email.
To do this, start by searching for Google Forms in the app list. Once you find it, click on it to see the available actions. You’ll see options like “Get a Form”, “Search Forms”, and “Create a New Form.” For our purposes, we want to use “Watch Responses”, which triggers the automation when a new response is received.
Click on “Watch Responses.” This opens a dialog where you’ll need to connect your Google Forms account to Make. If this is your first time connecting Google Forms, you’ll need to authenticate and grant Make.com access to your account. Once connected, you’ll be able to select the specific form you want to monitor.
Finding the Form ID
Every Google Form is distinguished by a special ID. Open the desired form from your Google Forms page to obtain the Form ID. Examine the address bar URL in your browser. The string of letters in the URL that comes between “edit” and “D” is the Form ID. Select and duplicate this ID, then go back to Make and insert it into the relevant space.
Setting Data Limits
Next, you’ll see an option to set a limit on how much data to pull from the form. For testing purposes, you might want to set this to a low number, like 2, to only pull in a couple of responses. Once you’ve configured everything to your liking, click “OK” to save the trigger.
5. Adding Actions to Your Scenario
Now that you’ve set up your trigger, it’s time to decide what happens next. The steps that come after the trigger are called actions. For instance, after receiving a new order, you might want to log the details in a Google Sheet, send a confirmation email to the customer, and notify your fulfillment team.
Example: Logging Orders in Google Sheets
To add an action, click on the plus icon that appears after your trigger. This opens a menu similar to the one you saw earlier, where you can choose which app to connect. Let’s start by selecting Google Sheets.
Once you’ve selected Google Sheets, you’ll see a list of possible actions, such as “Add a Row”, “Update a Row”, or “Get a Spreadsheet.” Since we want to log new orders, choose “Add a Row.” This will open a dialog where you can configure the action.
Mapping Data from Google Forms to Google Sheets
Now comes the critical step of mapping the data. This is where you tell Make how to transfer information from the Google Form to the correct columns in your Google Sheet.
For example, the first column in your spreadsheet might be “Customer Name.” Click on the corresponding text field in Make to open a list of data fields available from the Google Form. Navigate through the options until you find the customer’s name, then select it. This tells Make to place the customer’s name from the form into the “Customer Name” column in the spreadsheet.
Repeat this process for each column in your spreadsheet, mapping data from the Google Form to the appropriate fields in the Google Sheet.
Connecting Google Sheets
Just like with Google Forms, you’ll need to connect your Google Sheets account to Make.com automation. Once connected, select the specific spreadsheet where you want to log the data. In this example, we’ll use a spreadsheet called “Kevin Cookie Company Order Tracking Sheet.”
Next, you’ll need to select the sheet within the spreadsheet (if there’s more than one) and confirm whether it contains headers. Headers are the labels at the top of each column, like “Customer Name” “Email”, “Shipping Address”, etc. If your sheet has headers, select “Yes.”
6. Testing and Running Your Scenario
Before you go live with your automation, it’s important to test it to make sure everything is working correctly. Make makes it easy to run tests and debug your scenarios.
Running a Test Order
To test your scenario, go back to Google Forms and submit a sample order. For example, fill out the order form as if you were a customer, then submit it.
Running the Scenario in **Make
Back in Make, click the “Run Once” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the scenario editor. This will execute the scenario, processing the test order you just submitted. As the scenario runs, you’ll see it progress through each step.
If everything is set up correctly, you should see the new order logged in your Google Sheet. You can also click on the completed steps in Make to view the data that was processed at each stage. This is a great way to verify that the data mapping is working as expected.
7. Enhancing Your Scenario with Additional Steps
Once you have the basic scenario working, you can enhance it by adding more steps. For example, you might want to automatically send a confirmation email to the customer or notify your team via Microsoft Teams.
Sending a Confirmation Email
After setting up the basic automation scenario, you can further enhance it by adding a step to automatically send a confirmation email to your customers once their order is received. This is a crucial part of customer service, ensuring that customers feel acknowledged and informed about their order status. In Make, you can easily add this step by selecting the email service you use, such as Gmail or Outlook, from the list of apps. Once selected, you can configure the email template, including dynamic fields like the customer’s name, order details, and any other personalized information. This not only automates the process but also adds a personal touch to your communications, enhancing customer satisfaction and trust in your business.
Conclusion
By following this step-by-step guide, you’ve taken your first steps into the world of automation with Make. You’ve learned how to set up your account, navigate the dashboard, create your own automation scenario, and even enhance it with additional steps. With this powerful tool at your disposal, you can streamline your workflow, save time, and ensure that routine tasks are handled efficiently and accurately.
As you continue to explore and experiment with Make, you’ll discover countless ways to connect different apps and services, creating automations that suit your specific needs. Whether you’re managing a small business, organizing personal projects, or handling complex workflows, Make provides a versatile and accessible platform to help you work smarter.
Remember, automation is all about freeing up your time to focus on what truly matters. With Make, you have the ability to simplify and enhance your processes, making your work life easier and more productive. So, dive in, start building, and watch how automation transforms the way you work.
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