Before we dig into this, if you haven't already read our articles labeled What is Zapier? and Connecting Your Instaproofs Account to Zapier, you may want to start with one of those articles first, and then come back here once you've got the basics down.

This is a LONG article. Possibly the longest we've created. However, we don't want you to get scared away because of it!

The reason that it's long is because the first time that you create a zap can be a little bit confusing. It's actually a fairly simple process once you've done it once or twice, but we have intentionally outlined every single click within the process, to make 100% sure that you can't get lost while setting it up for your first time.

In this tutorial, we're going to be setting up a "zap" that can automatically send you text messages every time you receive an order through your Instaproofs account. The service that we're going to use to send the text messages is a free service called "SMS by Zapier", and you'll need to connect your Zapier account to "SMS by Zapier", using steps similar to those outlined in this article, before we can go any further.

So, go ahead and connect your Zapier account to "SMS by Zapier", and then once you're connected, let's move on. :)

To begin creating this zap, click the Create Zap button found at the top of the menu, on the left side within your Zapier account.

On the top-left corner within the zap creation screen, there should be an area labeled "Untitled Zap"; click in that area to rename it to something a little more descriptive, like "Instaproofs Order to SMS Text."

In the middle of the creation screen, you will see two "untitled" steps. The top step represents the Trigger step, which, in this case, is going to be when an order is received through your Instaproofs storefront, and the second step is going to be the Action step, which, in this case, will be sending yourself a text.

Click on the first untitled step, and then type "Instaproofs" into the search box. Once the result for Instaproofs is displayed, click on it.

Next, click into the "Choose an event" box, select the "Storefront Order Received" option, and then click "Continue" when that button displays.

From there, it'll ask you for your Instaproofs account (which was previously connected), which you can select and then click Continue again to move on.

Next, Zapier is going to want to test the trigger to verify that everything is working correctly; click "Test Your Trigger" to view a recent order's details. If you don't have any orders yet, you may want to create a test order by creating a 100% discount code for yourself, and then placing a test order through your storefront before testing the trigger. Once the trigger has been tested, select a test record from the results, and click the final "Continue" button to finish setting up the triggering action.

Once the trigger has been defined, the last step is to define the action that you'd like to have happen each time the triggering step occurs. In this case, it'll be to send yourself a text message.

Defining the action is a process that's almost identical to defining the trigger. To get started, we'll search for SMS by Zapier, and then click on it.

For the event, select "Send SMS", and then click Continue.

Choose your SMS account (which was previously connected, above), and click Continue again.

Next, choose the number that you'd like the text message to come from, or select the "Random" option, and then define your message using the keywords provided through the message creation interface.

Note: Limit your message to ~150 characters or you risk it being cut off when it's sent.

After your message has been defined, click the next Continue button.

To test that the action works correctly, click the Test Action button to have a test text message sent to you. And, FINALLY, if all looks good, click the Publish button to finish creating the zap!

Congratulations! You did it! 🥳