The 17 Best Meeting Scheduler Apps and Tools

There are few tasks in the professional life as tedious as scheduling meetings. Finding a time that works for everyone can be a losing battle of long email strings and accidental double-bookings.

Scheduling a meeting time shouldn't be hard. Fortunately, there are dozens of online meeting scheduler apps available—each with pros and cons— and while some work with a range of calendar applications, others are narrowly focused to just one or two. What they all have in common is that they're a lot easier than playing email tag.

Editor's Note: This post was originally written in 2014, and has been updated to reflect new and improved meeting scheduling apps in 2017.

What Makes a Great Meeting Scheduler?

Ideally, a meeting scheduler works with a range of calendar apps, such as Google Calendar, Outlook and iCal, but those full-featured schedulers are few and far between.

The best app, then, is the one that's compatible with your calendar, but doesn’t limit your guests, either— you can't control which calendar service your guests are using, so it's better if your meeting scheduler doesn’t assume invitees are using a specific calendar app. Bearing this in mind, many of the scheduling apps that we discuss will be dependent on a specific calendar service, but your guests will have more options when responding to your requests and adding your events to their own calendars.

When choosing apps, we looked for a range of meeting schedulers that provide extra functionality beyond just creating event invites. While many of the apps double as conversion tools that set appointments with potential clients or manage online registrations for things like workshops and classes, the focus of this list is on schedulers that make easier to connect with your colleagues.

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The Best Meeting Scheduler Apps

Icon:	App	Best for:	Pricing:
	Assistant.to	Scheduling detailed meetings in Gmail	Free
	Boomerang Calendar	Scheduling group meetings within Gmail	Free
	Calendly	Finding availability for recurring meetings	Free; Premium features from $8/month
	FreeBusy	Schedule meetings with people inside or outside your company	Free; from $12/user/mo for premium features
	Google Calendar	Businesses using Google apps	From $5 per user per month
	Meekan	Scheduling with Slack	Free
	Meetin.gs	Meeting management and preparation	from $12/month
	MeetingBird	Scheduling frequent meetings via email	Free for up to 25 meetings/mo; unlimited meetings from $9/mo
	NeedToMeet	Collaborative scheduling	Free; from $12/mo for advanced features
	Pick	Scheduling group meetings from your iPhone	Free
	Rally	Voting on meeting times	Free
	TimeBridge	Inbound and outbound meeting scheduling	Free
	Time Zone Ninja	Finding the best hour to meet with international colleagues	Free
	Vyte.in	Seamless scheduling in Google Calendar	Free
	x.ai	Personal assistant with artificial intelligence	Free; from #39/mo for Pro features
	Xoyondo	Taking quick polls for your meetings	Free
	YouCanBook.me	Accepting appointments with Google Calendar	$10/calendar/month

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Assistant.to (Web)

For quickly scheduling detailed meetings in Gmail

Once installed, Assistant.to adds a widget to all "Compose New Message" windows in Gmail. Simply choose the meeting times that work for you, and Assistant.to will add them to your email with a note asking the recipient to choose one of the meeting options.

Assistant.to works best for people who already use Google Calendar, since the extension uses data from Google Calendar to flag potential time conflicts, but your recipient can accept your invite using any calendar app. One of the app's most valuable features is its key integrations with meeting tools like GotoMeeting, ReadyTalk, and Join.Me, which allow it to automatically generate and add meeting links for these tools.

While Assistant.to is compatible with both personal- and business-grade Google accounts, it only works for one-on-one meetings and can’t schedule meetings with more than one guest. So the app works best for individuals, but may have limited use for larger businesses that schedule team meetings more often.

Assitant.to Pricing: Free

Boomerang Calendar (Web)

For scheduling group meetings within Gmail

Boomerang Calendar is another browser extension that relies on Gmail and Google Calendar to function, but this one is compatible with both Google Chrome and Firefox. This option supports group meetings of several people on its website, making it perfect for coordinating groups, and because it accesses your Google Calendar account, Boomerang Calendar will let you know when potential meeting times overlap.

You can also use Boomerang Calendar to share your availability for the next several days with a single click, without sharing access to your calendar or details. This preserves your privacy while simplifying scheduling.

Boomerang Calendar Pricing: Free

Calendly (Web)

For finding availability for recurring meetings

Calendly provides a clean, simple way to let people schedule meetings with you when you're available. Set up your availability for various meeting types, then send sales leads, clients, or coworkers a link that will show them your availability. All it takes is a couple clicks on their end, and your meeting is set!

Natively integrated with Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, and Office 365, Calendly automatically syncs scheduled appointments with your calendar of choice, as well as your invitee's calendar. (You can also send invitees custom reminders, just to make sure they don't forget.)

Calendly saves multiple meeting types, so you can clone weekly or monthly meetings, keeping your preferences for length of meeting and available time-slots intact without affecting your default settings for new meetings. While Calendly works well for scheduling meetings with individuals or team members within an organization, its custom events and outgoing links make it ideal for sharing events with clients and customers, too.

Calendly Pricing: Free; from $8/month for Premium features like integrations and customized branding and reminders

See Calendly integrations on Zapier

FreeBusy (Web, Outlook)

Best for quickly scheduling meetings with people inside or outside your company

If you want to use the same handy tool for scheduling meetings with people inside and outside your company, FreeBusy is the app for you. With deep integration into all the major calendars, and a guided process to create your meetings, it's easier than ever to quickly set up a meeting.

With FreeBusy, you have two options for scheduling a meeting. You can create a specific meeting, add participants (either by email or from a list of contacts you regularly meet with), and suggest a time when you're free. If the suggested time doesn't work for your invitees, they can pull up a table view of your availability over the next week and suggest a new time based on your schedule.

Or, if you don't wish to suggest a time yourself, you can share your FreeBusy page, which will show viewers all the times you're available for a meeting and allow them to schedule a meeting with just a click. You have full control of these appointments—not only can you accept or reject these meeting proposals, but you can also adjust settings to give yourself buffers between meetings, and restrict the list of people who can schedule you via your link.

FreeBusy Pricing: Free; from $12/user/mo to use Freebusy directly from Google Calendar or Outlook, and other premium features

Google Calendar (Web, iOS, Android)

For businesses using Google apps

If you’re using Google Calendar and just need to schedule meetings with colleagues in your organization, that functionality is built into the app.

The "Find a Time" tab on the "Edit Event" screen allows you to view your guests’ calendars as you invite them to the meeting. If your guests have shared their calendars with you, Google Calendar will show you when your guests are busy, and when they’re free. Because most users don’t share their calendars publicly, this is going to be a good option for businesses running Google Apps and already sharing their calendars internally.

For a deeper look at Google Calendar's features and pricing, see our Google Calendar review.

See Google Calendar integrations on Zapier

Meekan (Web, Outlook, iOS, Android)

For scheduling meetings through Slack

Many teams use Slack as central command for communication, file sharing, and alerts. Meekan makes it possible to schedule meetings from Slack with just a few keystrokes. After installing Meekan's Slack Bot, you can direct it to set appointments for you by starting a message in any channel with "Meekan." Meekan offers the same functions for Microsoft Teams and Hipchat

Meekan understands human-readable requests—like "Meekan, we want to have lunch next Wednesday"—and analyzes each party's calendar to find the ideal meeting time. Then, attendees can vote on which time works best. You can even send a message to Meekan so that the app will alert meeting attendees if you're running late.

Meekan also offers scheduling apps for iOS, Android, and Outlook, so it can help you organize appointments from anywhere.

Meekan Pricing: Free

Meetin.gs (Web, iOS, Android)

For meeting management and preparation

Meetin.gs is an all-in-one meeting tool. Schedule meetings by providing a personal scheduling page, or by setting up a meeting with contacts from Google Calendar or Outlook. Meetin.gs even integrates with several live communication tools, such as Slack, so you can include teleconferencing information right in your meeting invite.

The app's dashboard allows you to organize and view all scheduled meetings in a timeline view, so it's easy for you to see what's next. One of Meetin.gs' best features, however, is its in-app agenda and action-item tool, to help you manage meetings before, during, and after they happen. Meetin.gs synchronizes with Google Calendar from the web app, but its iOS and Android mobile apps help everything sync up with nearly any calendar, including Outlook, Yahoo, and AOL.

Meetin.gs Pricing: from $12/month per meeting organizer

Meetingbird (Web)

For scheduling frequent meetings via email

Ideal for those with frequent meetings, such as salespeople, Meetingbird is an elegant meeting app and calendar management tool. Thanks to the Meetingbird Chrome Extension, a quick-view of your calendar sits next to your Gmail inbox.

Use this extension to quickly find available meeting times, quickly generate calendar invites, and share a link of all your available meeting times—all without ever leaving your inbox. Meetingbird can even recognize email content and add relevant information to your calendar invite, to keep all the details in one place.

Blocking time in Meetingbird

One of my personal favorite features in Meetingbird, however, was the ability to block time and hyper-schedule when I wanted to be available for meetings. This is especially useful for those looking to use time-blocking as a productivity method.

Meetingbird Pricing: Free for up to 25 meetings a month; from $9/mo for Pro features, including unlimited meetings and custom forms to gather more info from people scheduling meetings with you

NeedToMeet (Web, Outlook, iOS, Android)

For collaborative scheduling

NeedToMeet creates a meeting event page to share with your invitees, and from there they can register for any of your the open slots you defined in advance. What sets NeedToMeet apart, though, is that everyone visiting your registration page can see everyone else's availability. If most of the guests who have already RSVP'd are only free for a limited span of time, all guests following will see that and can potentially adjust their own schedules to suit the group. This limits the back and forth and removes you as schedule moderator.

The Outlook add-in means that you can create events from the Outlook application without visiting the NeedToMeet web app. There are also iOS and Android apps for creating and managing events. Though it won’t sync automatically with Google or iCloud calendars, NeedToMeet will add events to your calendar with a click from the web app.

NeedToMeet Pricing: Free; from $12/mo for advanced features and unlimited meetings

Pick (Web, iOS)

For scheduling group meetings from your iPhone

Sometimes the effort spent on choosing a meeting time eclipses the meeting itself. Pick allows for simple scheduling among a group of Google Calendar users, either via browser or iOS mobile app.

Pick automatically finds and books meeting times by tapping into your contacts and calendar in Google. Choose someone to meet with, suggest a time from your own schedule, and the app allows them to do the same. If all users are on Pick, then their availability will be automatically updated, making scheduling even easier. Pick arrives at an agreeable time for everyone without the obnoxious back-and-forth, so you can save your energy for the actual meeting itself.

Pick Pricing: Free

Rallly (Web)

For voting on meeting times

Show of hands: who can meet at 1:30 p.m.? That's the mechanic behind the very simple Rallly app, which helps you vote on times and start discussions, all on one page. Instead of hunting around for agreeable times and hoping that attendees come with an agenda, Rallly lets you deal with everything in one place.

This app doesn't have many management or advanced scheduling tools, but it is quick to use and easy to share.

Rallly Pricing: Free

TimeBridge (Web)

Best for both inbound and outbound meeting scheduling

TimeBridge is a web app that will coordinate all your meetings for you. Schedule meetings with a coworker or a group of individuals by typing in some emails (or choosing from imported contacts), then simply select up to 5 times that you're available to meet, and let TimeBridge take over the rest. TimeBridge will email everyone, take everyone's meeting preferences into account, then confirm the meeting with all attendees.

Compatible with Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCloud, TimeBridge syncs your calendars with its scheduling app so that you're always up-to-date. You can even set some default meeting options, such as black-out times when you’re never available.

Want to provide your availability to a client or sales lead? You can also build an availability page with TimeBridge. Just send the link out, and let recipients schedule a meeting during one of your available time slots!

There are some pretty great reminder features included in TimeBridge, too. With a mobile number saved in your TimeBridge account, you have the option to receive an SMS notification five minutes before a planned meeting. Plus, TimeBridge's Daily Brief email can provide you with a few details about your day, including maps, directions, and weather forecast for your meetings.

TimeBridge Pricing: Free

Time Zone Ninja (Web)

Best for finding the best hour to meet with international colleagues

Time Zone Ninja is a very simple tool, but it makes international scheduling much, much easier. The interface is about as easy as it gets: simply type in your location and the location of up to eight other attendees, as well as meeting date and an initial time you'd like to meet. Then hit Find the Ninja Hour—that magical time of day that will be best (or at least, not terrible) for all your attendees.

Clicking this button will generate a table, where you can see all attendees' time zones displayed, as well as a color-coded indicator of how good or bad the suggested meeting time is for your colleague. Time Zone Ninja will display three different times for your meeting: your suggested meeting time, and meeting times both an hour before and an hour after that meeting time.

Time Zone Ninja use this three-hour range to try to find the best possible time for all attendees. But sometimes, that may just not work. To adjust times and try to find something better, simply drag the slider under your location to adjust the table below.

Time Zone Ninja Pricing: Free

If you wish Time Zone Ninja would take it a step further and let you schedule a meeting directly from the app, you may be interested in World Meeting Time. This app's $5/mo pro plan will let you find attendee's time zones, schedule meetings from the interface, and save regular meetings. The major downside of this app is that there's no way to add locations except by dragging a pin to your colleague's general location—an imprecise method that takes more time than Time Zone Ninja's auto-populated location searches.

Vyte.in (Web, iOS)

For seamless scheduling in Google Calendar

Vyte.in is a group scheduling app that combines all the utility of polls and surveys with sleek, fast scheduling functions. Email invites are quick to send, then your invitees can vote via email for the most convenient meeting times, and Vyte.in will track who chooses which time without requiring a login for your guests.

If your coworkers also use Vyte.in and Google Calendar, the app will display their availability next to yours when you look for meeting times to suggest. Vyte.in even blocks off your suggested meeting times in Google Calendar once you propose, to avoid potential double-booking. Once everyone's confirmed the time and place, Vyte.in will automatically schedule the meeting on your calendar and send invitations to attendees. And with Vyte.in's Slack bot, you can do all this with just a few keystrokes.

You can also use Vyte.in to set up a booking page for yourself. The availability preferences are easy to set, then all you need to do is share your unique page with anyone who wants to have a meeting with you. This way, they can choose a time that works best for them and then just book a time that works well for you.

Vyte.in Pricing: Free; $10/mo for branding, team, and advanced scheduling features

x.ai (Web)

For a personal assistant with artificial intelligence

x.ai is a game-changer in the meeting software space. To use x.ai, all you have to do is CC amy@x.ai (your literal virtual assistant) on any email and she'll handle the tedious email ping-pong that happens whenever you try to coordinate a meeting time.

"Amy" knows your appointments, phone number, Skype username, and everything else that a colleague or client might need to schedule time with you. The AI then uses that information to correspond with other meeting attendees via email, sounding surprisingly human, and when a date and time are set, she adds the appointment to your calendar and sends an invite to other attendees.

Amy's responses sound very human, and she picks up on people's natural speech patterns in order to respond to their requests for meeting times (ie, "this Tuesday morning"), so you won't have to worry about frustrating yourself or your colleagues trying to get her to work.

x.ai Pricing: Free for a max of 5 meetings per month; from $39/month for unlimited meetings, a customizable signature for Amy, and other Professional features

Learn how x.ai uses Zapier to do improve their user research and experiences.

Xoyondo (Web)

for taking quick polls for your meetings

Xoyondo must roughly translate to: find meeting times fast. It's a browser-based app that lets the meeting organizer suggest times to get together, then generates a page where attendees can vote on which time works best.

But the democratic process doesn't stop there. Xoyondo also gives meeting organizers the tools to poll their attendees with customizable, multiple-choice surveys. Now you won't need to guess if chocolate chip or blueberry muffins are more likely to coax your co-workers into the conference room—just ask the crowd.

Xoyondo Pricing: Free

YouCanBook.me (Web)

For accepting appointments with Google Calendar

If you’re a Google Calendar user, YouCanBook.me is a seamless way to let individuals schedule meetings or appointments with you. Simply connect your Google account, tell YCBM a bit about yourself, and create a personalized webpage where you can accept meetings based on your calendar. You can link to that webpage from your social media accounts, feature it on your business website, or send it to sales leads, customers, or clients directly.

There are also lots of advanced features that you can set up, like HTML-formatted booking pages, meetings of varying lengths, and recurring meetings. But while YCBM works well for one-on-one meetings and inbound scheduling, it doesn’t have a feature that can coordinate groups to find an agreeable time, and it’s not ideal for sending invitations.

YouCanBook.me pricing: $10 per calendar per month

For a deeper look at YouCanBook.me's features and pricing, see our Youcanbook.me review.

See YouCanBook.me integrations on Zapier

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Set Up Meeting Reminders for You and Your Team

Now that you've found a better way to schedule a meeting with your colleagues, take this one step further and set up an easy way to remember each one. To do this, use app automation tool Zapier, which will trigger a notification in the app of your liking—Zapier integrates with over 300 apps—when a meeting is approaching. So, 10 minutes before your weekly team meeting, for example, you could automatically post a reminder for your co-workers in Slack or HipChat.

To get started setting up a meeting reminder notification, just click on an automation below or visit the Google Calendar integrations page on Zapier.

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The back-and-forth headache of scheduling will never disappear completely, but these tools will help you decide on a meeting time and iron out the details in a much more efficient fashion. Give these apps a try, and opt out of email tag once and for all.

What does your scheduling process look like for meetings? Let us know in the comments.

For more reviews of top apps for your team, check out our roundups of the best team chat apps, form creators, CRMs, CRMs with built-in marketing automation, Powerpoint alternatives and drip email marketing apps.

Zapier content marketers Emily Irish and Joe Stych contributed to this post. Calendar icon courtesy of Edward Boatman on The Noun Project.

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-meeting-scheduler-apps/

CST/Berger TLM100 Review: Handheld Laser Distance Measure

The CST/Berger TLM100 is a hand-held laser distance measurer that is well-suited for use around the home, for basic DIY tasks and for hobbyists. Like other laser measures, it allows you to quickly get a highly accurate reading when measuring distance and works by using a laser. Here, the laser is projected from the front of the device and will then travel in a straight line to your chosen end point. Once it makes contact with the wall, the pillar or whatever else you are trying to measure, it will be reflected and bounce directly straight back. The device will time how long this process takes and that way, you’ll be given an accurate measure of the distance!

This can be useful for tiling estimations, for making window fittings considerably easier, for painting, for hanging wallpaper, for laying carpets and for measuring gaps for furniture. There are plenty more options and applications for laser measures too, but is the CST/Berger TLM100 a good pick?

Product Description: Basic Specs With Good Performance

The CST/Berger TLM100 has a range of 100 feet, meaning that you can use it to measure distances 100 feet long and no larger. This in turn means it is really best for indoor applications. The minimum distance is 2 foot, meaning that it may not be precise enough for some woodworking applications.

Within that range, it has a good accuracy of 6mm (meaning that it will be accurate to within 6mm). This is not industry leading but it is a good number for the price.

The device does have some other decent bells and whistles. For instance, it comes with a graphical LCD screen and has a decent case with rubber grip to ensure that a) you don’t drop it and b) it won’t break if you do drop it.

The device is light at 12.8 ounces and small enough to be slung in a bag or even to slip into a pocket (with definite, noticeable bulge).

Pros and Cons: Not the Most Powerful or Functional but Good for What it Does

• The pros of this device revolve largely around the convenience, the small size and the price. On the other hand, the cons tend to revolve around the lack of advanced features.
• This device is very quick and simple to use. In our testing, we found it to be quick to pull out and very accurate with just the touch of a button. That’s good news of course because it saves a lot of time and means that you aren’t waiting for things to boot up or find your way around complicated interfaces. The battery life is good too and the exterior – though not particularly attractive – is great in terms of ergonomics and durability.
• This is better than the comparable product from Stanley and anything cheaper is likely not a true laser measure but rather an ultrasonic measure – these aren’t as accurate and you need to be very careful when buying!
• On the downside though, there are really no bells and whistles here. There is no fold out attachment which means you’ll have to hold it in place and rely on your steady hands. There’s no on-board memory, 100 foot isn’t a huge range and there’s no attachment for a tripod.

Conclusion: What do You Want From a Laser Measure?

As is always the case, the suitability of this device for you is going to depend entirely on your intended use case scenario and the kind of work you do. It ultimately comes down to what you expect to get from a laser measure and what you’re using right now.

If you’re comparing this to a top of the range laser measure, then of course it’s going to lack advanced functionality. But if you’re currently using a tape measure and a pencil, then this will be a huge step up that will improve your accuracy and your productivity. It saves time and makes more accurate measurements.

It’s not over-designed and it really is the bare minimum in terms of what you can expect to get from a laser measure. But for the right kind of user, that’s going to be perfectly fine and possibly even desirable. A great choice in 2017 and 2018!

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/cstberger-tlm100-review-handheld-laser-distance-measure/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/165846979045

The Zapier Formatter Guide: How to Automatically Format Text the Way You Want

So near, and yet so far. That's the feeling more often than not when trying to get apps to work together. You export data out of one app, try to import it into another—and it looks perfect, right until it doesn't. Turns out, the text is in the wrong format or order, names are together when they should be split into first and last, dates and phone numbers are in the wrong format, and so on.

Back to the drawing board. You could manually edit everything, splitting first and last names by hand or typing in each date in the correct format line by line—but that'd take forever. The better option is to get your apps to do the work for you.

There are often several ways to do that. You could reformat the text on your computer, or you could speed things up with Zapier's Formatter tool that can automatically, well, format your text the way you want. Here are some of the most popular ways to reformat text—with tutorials on how to do each in Zapier as well as in spreadsheets and other apps on your computer.

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• Split Names and Other Text
• Extract Email Addresses, Website Links, and Numbers From Text
• Capitalize Text the Way You Want
• Find and Replace Any Text
• Format Dates and Times
• Convert Markdown Text into HTML

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What is Zapier Formatter?

Text in the wrong format? Formatter can help.

First off, a quick intro. You wanted to move data—your contact list, say—from one app to another, right? Zapier's the tool for that. It's a workflow automation tool that connects 750+ apps—from Airtable to Zoho CRM and everything in between—so when someone new buys your products or fills out your form or anything else, Zapier can copy that data and add it to the correct app.

Sometimes getting the data in the right format needs a bit of help, which is where Formatter comes in. Formatter's a Zapier tool that tweaks your data to get it working the way you need.

Say you need to copy PayPal customers into a MailChimp mailing list. PayPal shows your customers' full names and the detailed time and date they bought your product—but all you want is their first name and the day of the week. Just add Formatter to your Zap, and Zapier can format text the way you want before adding it to MailChimp.

See, for example, how you could use Formatter to split first and last names from Facebook Lead Ads to then add them to MailChimp:

Easy, right?

Now let's go use Formatter to edit your text so it's just right:

How to Split Names and Other Text

You have all the data you need from one app—but it's all in one field, and you need to split it up before you can add it to another app. You don't need a full name; you need first and last names. You don't need the whole address; you just need the postal code and country.

Zapier's Split Text formatter can help. Add a Formatter step to your Zap, select the Text action, then choose the Split Text transform. Add the text you want to split to the Input field, and the delimiter that's splitting up the text to the Separator field.

Now, select if you want the first, second, last, or next to last part of the text—and test your action to make sure it works the way you want. Want all of the segments? Just add more Formatter steps, each time selecting the correct segment you want. And finally, add the action steps you want to put your newly split text to work in your other apps.

Here's a pre-made Zap to try it out with Facebook Lead Ads and MailChimp:

→ Learn more about How to Split Text in Excel, Google Sheets, and Zapier.

How to Extract Email Addresses, Website Links, and Numbers

Zapier Formatter can automatically extract emails, links, and numbers anytime something new is added to your apps.

Someone emailed you a link, and you'd love to copy the link and save it somewhere—only you'd like to do that automatically without copying. Or maybe you need to pull phone numbers out of a document or email addresses out of a note.

Formatter can help there, too. It includes Extract Email Address, Extract URL, Extract Phone Number, and Extract number transforms to find those items from your text. Select the transform for the item you want to find, then select the text you want to find that item in from the + menu beside the Input field.

Test the action, and Zapier will find the first URL, email address, or number it comes across in your text—and you can use it in the next Action app to save the URL, send an email, add the number to your inventory, and more. And if you need to find the next links, emails, or numbers in that text, just add a Formatter Text Replace step to remove that first item you found, followed by another Formatter Text Extract step to find the next item.

Try it out with this Zap Template that can find your contact's phone numbers from their email signatures and use them to add new contacts to your address book:

→ Learn more about How to Extract Email Addresses, Phone Numbers, and Website Links with Regex and Zapier.

How to Capitalize Text the Way You Want

Zapier can automatically capitalize your text

You're rushing to write a blog post, and everything looks great at a quick glance, so you hit Publish. Only later do you notice that your entire title is in all caps—apparently you hit Caps Lock instead of Shift. Or maybe it's something simpler. Perhaps you just want to automatically share blog posts to Twitter and Facebook, but want to make your post title look like a real Tweet instead of a standard capitalized title.

Formatter's got your back. Add a Formatter Text action to your Zap, then select the Capitalize, Lowercase, Titlecase, or Uppercase transforms to format your text the way you want. Zapier will then automatically check your text capitalization, fix anything that's off, and then send the formatted text to your other action apps. It's like spell check for your style guide.

For a handy way to test it out, try this Zap that will make sure your RSS feed post titles are lowercase and include some intro text like "New post:" before sharing them on Twitter, so they don't look automated:

→ Learn more about How to Capitalize Text in Word, Google Docs, macOS, Sublime Text, and Zapier.

How to Find and Replace Text

Keep misspelling a word over and over, and want to check everything you write before you publish it? Need to make sure you don't accidentally put last year's date in next year's documents? Or just want to split a comma-separated list of items into separate columns?

Zapier's Formatter Replace function can do that for you. Add a Formatter Text action to your Zap, select the Replace transform, and tell Zapier what text you want to search through. Then tell the Zap what you want to find—anything from text to spaces to line breaks. Finally, add what you want to replace that text with—or leave it blank to have Zapier just remove that text.

It's a great way to always clean up your text before things get published or added to your other apps.

→ Learn more about How to Find and Replace Text in Windows, macOS, Google Docs, Word, and Zapier.

How to Format Dates and Times

PayPal says your customer bought your product at 13:47:28 Sep 08, 2017 PST, but you'd rather know that they bought your product on Friday, September 8th. And when you're trying to schedule appointments with your customers, your US-based calendar app might have trouble figuring out what date your customer means when they type 12/08/2017 in international format.

Zapier's Date/Time Format tool in Formatter can help. This time, add a Date/Time action from the Formatter App to your Zap, and select Format as the Transform. Add the date that needs tweaked to the Input field, then select the date style you want in the To Format field.

You can get as specific as you want. Zapier includes a number of default date/time styles such as January 22, 2017 or 01-22-2017 that you can choose from. Or, select Use a Custom Value and type in the date and time format you want. Just want the day of the week? Type dddd in the field. Want 01/Jan/2017? Type YY/MMM/YYYY instead. Check Zapier's Date/Time documentation for all the custom date and time formatting you can use.

Zapier will typically guess the original date and time format you're converting from, but you can set that as well if you need. You can also set original and new timezones as a quick way to switch those Pacific times from PayPal to Eastern if you'd like, too.

→ Learn more about How to Format Times and Dates in Spreadsheets, WolframAlpha, and Zapier.

How to Convert Markdown Text to HTML or a Document

Write in Word or Google Docs' rich formatting and copy it over to your blog, and you'll likely lose some formatting in the process. Write in HTML, and it's all too easy to forget a </a> closing tag or some other tiny character.

Markdown is the best of both worlds. It's easy to write in, with *single asterisks* for italics or - dashes for bullet points. You can write Markdown text in any text editor or word processor, even from your phone, and include all the formatting easily.

All that's left is to convert that text to HTML and publish it on your site—or to convert it to a formatted PDF and perhaps print out. Zapier's Formatter to the rescue again. Add a Formatter Text action to your Zap, select Convert Markdown to HTML, and add your Markdown text—perhaps from an Evernote note, email, or even a note in your CRM or project management app. Zapier will then turn that Markdown into standard HTML you can use anywhere. Have Zapier add that to WordPress or save it as an HTML file in Dropbox that syncs to your site. Or, for a PDF document, add the HTML to Google Cloud Print, and have it "print" as PDF to Google Drive for a sharable copy of your work.

Here's a pre-made Zap to help you print out formatted documents or make PDFs from Evernote automatically with the Markdown formatter:

→ Learn more about How to Automatically Convert Markdown to HTML or a Formatted Document.

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That's not all. Formatter can also trim whitespace, truncate text, pluralize English words, format currency and phone numbers, add or subtract time from dates, run standard spreadsheet functions, and much more.

When you're trying to automate anything in Zapier, and can't figure out how to get two apps to fit together, Formatter's the tool that's most likely to help. Just add it to your Zap, and with a little tweaking you should be able to get your text the way you need before sending it to the next app.

Formatter's not the only powerful built-in Zapier feature—there are dozens of other handy features included, from tools to send SMS messages or emails to filters to sort through your data. Learn more in our Getting Started with Zapier guide.

source https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-formatter-guide/

How One Company Built a Thriving Community with Email and WooCommerce

"Diet" is a scary word. Most times, it's associated with depriving yourself, perhaps cutting out entire food groups, to lose weight. But if you think of the big picture definition of diet, you're looking at everything you eat. That's your diet.

Some of us keep it healthy. Some of us, for any number of reasons, can't or don't. Simple Green Smoothies founder Jen Hansard found herself in the latter group after the birth of her second child. "Our family meals got quicker and less healthy," she says. "It got to a place where I felt like all the energy had been sucked out of my body, yet I still had to get up in the morning, make meals, run errands, work, take care of the kids and survive the loooooong day."

Raise your hand if you can relate. (You can put your hand down now.)

Jen's fix? A simple, green smoothie shared by her friend, Jadah. Jen and Jadah shared recipes on Instagram starting in 2012, launching Simple Green Smoothies. Their popularity took off and Simple Green Smoothies released their first recipe book. They now have several different recipe books, including a 7-day and 21-day cleanse, an app with over 100 smoothie recipes that lets you add the ingredients to a shopping list, a blog, a free seven day experience, and a thriving community.

Simple Green Smoothies founder Jen Hansard spending time with her family instead of wasting time with manual, repetitive workflows.

The folks behind Simple Green Smoothies help their community along with new recipes, products, and content precisely when their customers need it. Using email software Autopilot, Dan Mottayaw, Community Experience Manager at Simple Green Smoothies, crafted a high-level email marketing strategy that keeps customers engaged after a purchase, so they aren't one-and-done.

How do Dan and Simple Green Smoothies get customer information into Autopilot? It all starts with the power behind their online store, the WordPress-based eCommerce platform WooCommerce. With WooCommerce, Simple Green Smoothies gives their customers an easy, intuitive shopping experience and provides the information Dan needs to grow a thriving, healthy community.

"This gives the customer an experience that makes sense and continues to fuel their healthy eating journey," Dan explains.

But there was a problem that needed solving first: Dan had to connect their WooCommerce shop to their email system.

More than just smoothies, Simple Green Smoothies provides recipes for smoothie bowls, too. Like this gorgeous, tasty Cherry Pineapple Smoothie Bowl.

Bringing WooCommerce and Autopilot together—and Simple Green Smoothies with its customers—is app automation tool Zapier. Dan built a powerful Zap, a bridge between two or more apps, to pull customer information from new WooCommerce orders into Autopilot.

"This Zap allows us to automate the delivery of digital goods, and also unique emails based on products purchased through WooCommerce," Dan says.

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Building a relationship with their customers is essential work for Simple Green Smoothies. Pulling customer data from WooCommerce into Autopilot through Zapier means Dan connects with customers more efficiently and exactly when the customer needs an email. Maintaining a healthy community is as important to Jen, Dan, and the Simple Green Smoothies team as maintaining a healthy body.

Just like trying new recipes before offering them on their site, Dan and Simple Green Smoothies test and test to build better workflows. "I knew nothing about sending info from one database to another when I started. I didn't even know what "API" meant," Dan says. "But you can figure it out if you just start making Zaps. Test them. Stay calm if a Zap doesn't work. There's almost always a way to automate."

All images courtesy of Simple Green Smoothies.

What's your story? Tell us how you use Zapier to do more. You can also read even more customer stories and find new ways to improve your workflow.

source https://zapier.com/blog/add-woocommerce-customers-autopilot/

How to Automatically Convert Markdown to HTML

Formatting text should be easy. Often, however, it's not. If you've ever opened a Word document in an earlier version of Word or in a different word processor app and then spent half an hour getting your formatting looking perfect again, you know how annoying rich text can be. Even websites aren't perfect—open the same site side-by-side in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, and you could easily make a Spot the Differences game.

Markdown formatting avoids that by using just plain text. Instead of clicking B in a toolbar to add bold text, you add two asterisks around text like **this**. Add links with [brackets for the link title](and parentheses for the URL), blockquotes with > greater than symbol, bullet point lists with - dashes, and with that and a few more options you can format text almost any way you want right from your keyboard. It's similar to the basic formatting one would add with a typewriter a few decades ago.

But you can't exactly send management a page covered with asterisks and brackets the next time they ask for a status report. You need to turn that Markdown into formatted text. Here's how.

New to Markdown? Check out our Markdown manual for a crash course on how to format plain text with symbols, or check the original Markdown syntax documentation at Daring Fireball for more info.

How to Export Markdown Text Online

Dillinger is a quick way to turn Markdown text into standard formatting

All you need to write Markdown is a plain text editor. Notepad or TextEdit would do. Heck, you could type out Markdown text in an email or a chat app. As long as you can type text and symbols, you're good.

Turning that text into a formatted document is another story. Windows and macOS don't come with built-in Markdown tools—not yet, anyhow—so you'll need something extra.

The easiest option is a quick web app, and there are a number of great choices:

• Dillinger (pictured above) is one of the best because it's a full-featured online writing app that also makes it easy to export Markdown. You can write Markdown online in its editor or just paste in your completed text, then preview the formatted version on the right. Copy the formatted text for a quick export—or click the Export as menu to save your document in HTML, PDF, or plain text formats.
• Markdown Web Dingus is the original online Markdown exporter from Markdown's creator, John Gruber. Paste your Markdown in the main text box and click Convert to get a rich text and HTML version. There's a Markdown reference guide on the right for a quick refresher, too.
• Try pandoc! is the most full-featured converter—and it works with more than Markdown. Paste your Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, or other formatted text on the left, then convert it to the format you want on the right. That way, you could turn your finished HTML back into Markdown if you want.

Or, if you use Google Docs, you could just install an add-on to export Markdown text right from your word processor. Google Docs doesn't natively support Markdown—you can write in it, adding symbols yourself, but it doesn't preview the formatting by default.

For that, add the free Preview Markdown add-on. Open its sidebar, and you'll see a live rich text preview of your formatted text. You can then copy that rich text into a new document for a quick way to format text. Or, install the gd2md-html add-on to download an HTML copy of your Markdown writing.

Find more great Google Docs add-ons in our roundup of the 32 best Google Docs add-ons.

How to Export Markdown Text on Your Computer

Markdown writing apps like iA Writer include tools to export your text, too

Web apps are handy for one-off conversions. If you're writing in Markdown every day, you'll want a tool built just for Markdown. Many of the best plain text writing apps are designed just for that. They let you write in plain text with Markdown formatting, typically showing the formatting along with the Markdown characters as you type. Then, you can preview the finished text, copy it as rich text, or save the whole document in the format you want.

The best option is with a writing app. There are more than we could possibly list, but some of our favorites include iA Writer and Byword for Mac, and Caret or MarkdownPad for Windows. Or, for longform writing, apps like Ulysses and Scrivener are great both for organizing your thoughts and for exporting Markdown in the format you want.

Want to just export Markdown to the format you want? There are two great options for just that, too, without a writing app. Marked is the best for Macs since it makes exporting text so simple, with beautiful templates and options to save your documents in PDF, Word, HTML, or other formats. Or, for more powerful converting tools, you can install Pandoc on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer to convert Markdown text into the format you want from Terminal.

Automatically Convert Markdown to HTML and PDF with Zapier

What if you want to write in Markdown all the time, perhaps from apps that don't support Markdown natively, and you don't want to have to manually export your text every time? App automation tool Zapier is just what you need. Zapier can watch your favorite app—Evernote, Salesforce, or even your email app—for new Markdown text, and then put it to work for you.

Here's how:

• Log into Zapier or create a free account.
• Click the "Make a Zap" button to set up a Zap.
• Connect the app that has your text to Zapier, then add a Formatter Text action to your workflow.
• Select Convert Markdown to HTML from the Transform menu.
• Click the + icon beside the Input field and select your Markdown text from the trigger app that you want Zapier to convert.

Now that you've got your text formatted in HTML, you can use it any way you want. Add it to WordPress and publish your thoughts as a blog post. Save it to a Dropbox text file, and sync it to your website for a simple flat-file site. Copy it to Gmail and send a formatted email powered by Markdown.

Want a formatted copy of your Markdown text? Just 'print' it to Google Drive for a PDF copy.

Need a formatted PDF document from your Markdown-formatted text instead? Just add a Google Cloud Print action to your Zap. Google Cloud Print is designed to let you print documents from anywhere, turning any printer into an online smart printer. That'd work if you want to actually print out a copy of your document. But it also can save a copy of your text to Google Drive as a PDF or Google Docs file—which is a handy way to put your Markdown text to work.

Just add Google Cloud Print to Zapier with your Google account, then add the formatted HTML text from the Formatter step to the Content field. Select Save to Google Drive from the Which Printer menu, then turn on your Zap, and whenever you add new Markdown text to your trigger app, Zapier will format it and save it as a PDF to your Google Drive.

Publishing online or making a finished document, Markdown and Zapier are good for both.

Here's a pre-made Zap to help you do just that:

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Markdown formatting is easy to write, but you still can't submit your next quarterly report or university essay in pure Markdown. You don't have to. Whether you're writing in a Markdown app designed for exporting or use a Zapier workflow to automatically turn your Markdown text into a finished blog post or document, you can write the way you want and still get your text in the format people expect.

Markdown's so flexible, we use it at Zapier for everything from writing our internal documentation and blog posts to publishing our full eBooks. Here's how.

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Do More With Zapier Formatter

Want to automate more of your work with text? Check out the other tutorials in this series for more ways to use Formatter—along with handy tips for other apps you might already be using:

• How to Split Text in Excel, Google Sheets, and Your Other Favorite Apps
• How to Extract Email Addresses, Phone Numbers, and Links From Text
• How to Automatically Capitalize Text the Way You Want
• How to Find and Replace Any Text in Your Documents
• How to Change Date and Time Formats in Your Text Automatically

source https://zapier.com/blog/markdown-html-export/