Zapier - Invite with custom course access

One of the best uses of Zapier automation with Skool is inviting members with custom course access so they have a tailor-fitted experience upon joining your group. This can be convenient for courses you sell à la carte or courses meant for different categories of members.

We know many admins use a CRM platform to mange communities and courses, so for this guide I'll be using Hubspot (popular free CRM) as my "Trigger" app and having Skool send an invite with custom course access to any member added to my contact list. To start, I'm going to click to create a new Zap from my Zapier dashboard:

The first app I have to select is my "Trigger" app which is the initial event to kick things off. I'll search for Hubspot to select it:

For this use case, I select "new contact" as the event:

Next I need to connect my Hubspot account - clicking on new account in the dropdown brings up a modal to sign into a hubspot account then shows my connected ID:

Now Zapier scans your account for any contact lists and pulls up the relevant object properties/column headers that already exist in your list. 

Important note: at least for the case of Hubspot setup, I needed the fields/categories of my contact list in Hubspot set up in advance for the option to populate those fields to show in the "set up trigger" section of Zapier. A Hubspot contact list typically defaults to name, email address, and a few other standard fields. Before moving to the next step, I adjusted the fields in my list to mirror the data I'd be sending to Skool.  You can add fields in Hubspot by clicking on "edit columns" on the contacts page, then "create a property," and once that new property is created, you'll need to go to "edit columns" again and select that new property to add to your contact list. More from Hubspot here:

This is important to make sure your list is formatted correctly especially if you want to get creative with Zapier. For this use case, having the email address you want to send the invite + course access to is the only real necessity:

For reference, my Hubspot list in this example looks like this:

Click continue and then "test trigger," and Zapier will look for a recent contact in your list to make sure it can grab the necessary trigger data from Hubspot to send to Skool in order to automate the group invite with custom course access. If it's struggling to find anything, try creating a brand new contact in your list then repeating this step. Again, I care most that it's grabbing the contact's email address for this purpose:

Click continue and your trigger is all set! Next you'll be taken to your "Action" app, and here is where you'll want to search for and select Skool:

In the next step, choose "Invite Member" as the event and click continue:

Now just like with your trigger app, you need to link your Skool group account. In the dropdown menu, click the blue "connect new account" button which will display a pop-up window asking for your group API key and the back half of your Skool group URL - this will authenticate you to make the connection. As a reminder, you can grab your Zapier API key from your Skool group settings > Plugins > Zapier integration edit button (there is also a shortcut by clicking "integrate" on the Invite tab):

Click continue to set up the details of your action, in this case, which courses this person will get access to after accepting your email invite. Click in the box that says "email address (required)" and select the corresponding contact email address taken from your Hubspot list:

Next, click inside the "courses" menu. You'll see all your published private courses already pulled from your Skool group listed by course name and corresponding course ID. In my group, I have a total of three private courses I can grant special access to:

Note: if you only want Zapier to invite members to your group (no course access granted), you don't need to select any courses. The invite will work like any other email invite.

For this example, I'm going to give contacts added to my Hubspot list access to my first two Super Parenting courses. Select the first, then you'll see another box appear to select more courses. When I'm done, it looks like this:

Finally, before you test the action, you'll see the data Skool will use to complete the task - in this case, the user's email address and both course ID's they'll get access to:

Click "test action" to get an email invite with corresponding course access sent to the test address. If this works as intended, then you are ready to publish your Zap!

My test email looks like this when the user receives it (as will all the invites once the Zap is published):

When the user clicks "join now" and signs up, they'll already have those two courses unlocked when they visit your group's classroom. Now all you need to do is publish your Zap and rename it in the upper righthand corner and you're ready to rock!

You also see your published zap is "on" but you can toggle it off at any time:

Now anytime a contact is added to your Hubspot list, they'll get the proper invite + course access email! Note that with a standard Zapier account, the action typically takes about 10-15 minutes so don't be alarmed if potential members don't get instant emails.

For troubleshooting any issues that come up during your Zap build, the most important info to confirm from the Skool side is that your API key and group URL are correct.  Typically other issues will stem from the Zapier or third party app side with biggest culprits being: 

- Required fields in Zapier not populated (or populated with an incorrect data format)

- Third party app account or list not initially set up to accept all incoming data fields

- General formatting (Skool data did not arrive in your third party app as expected) and requires a little tinkering within the "action" setup portion

Some great resources to help you get the most out of Zapier are Zapier University, the Zapier Help Center, and my personal favorite (duh) - the Zapier Community.