How to power up your Google apps using automation

Google makes some of the most popular—and powerful—software on the web. But automation can make it even more versatile.

Zapier connects to most of Google's best-known apps. You can build automated workflows that connect these apps to each other and to thousands more. This means you can do even more with Google Workspace—and every Google application. Here's how you can automate Google applications right now.

Automatically send information to Google Sheets

Google Sheets is the most popular integration on Zapier, which makes sense: It's one of the most flexible tools on the web and the perfect place to collect information. But manually entering data into sheets—especially if you have a lot of it—can quickly eat up most of your time.

Zapier makes it possible to collect information from the other apps you regularly use and add it to the Google Sheet of your choice. For example, maybe you use social ads like Facebook Lead Ads or LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to find potential customers. You can use a Zap—what we call our automated workflows—to automatically collect those leads in a spreadsheet for easy tracking and reference.

You can do this for all kinds of applications, including your favorite survey tool.

A Zapier automated workflow can also help you track registrants or ticket sales for events, meaning you won't have to compile the guestlist yourself.

You can also automate Google Sheets the other way around, pushing information you add there out to your other apps. For example, new rows in a spreadsheet can be sent to Trello where you can easily track your tasks.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Google Sheets integrations to see more and to learn how to build your own.

Get updates from thousands of apps in Gmail, or push emails to other places

It's easy to miss notifications that don't come in through email, especially if Gmail is where you spend most of your work life. With Zapier, you can change that, creating email notifications for just about anything.

For example, you can get email notifications when new leads come in.

You can also automatically send information from incoming emails to other applications. For example, you can save incoming attachments to Google Drive or Dropbox so files are always right where you need them.

A lot of emails are people asking you to do things. If you tend to lose track of these requests, consider setting up a workflow that sends starred messages over to your to-do list.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Gmail integrations to see more and to learn how to build your own.

Automatically add events to Google Calendar

Time is the most valuable resource you have and Google Calendar is a great tool for keeping track of it. You can add even more context to your calendar by setting up automations that pull in information from other applications.

For example, you might allow your customers to fill out forms and schedule an appointment. With the following Zap, you can have those appointments show up on your calendar, without you having to do anything.

You can also automatically add tasks from your to-do list to your calendar, so that you can keep track of what you plan on doing when.

Of course, not everyone has their calendar open constantly, which is why notifications about events are useful. Google Calendar doesn't offer SMS reminders anymore, but you can set them up yourself using Zapier. That way you'll never miss a meeting when you step away from your desk. If you're always the one herding cats to get your team to meetings on time, you can also send notifications about events to other applications, like Slack.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Google Calendar integrations to see more and to learn how to build your own.

Push Google Forms responses to other apps

Google Forms is an extremely flexible tool for collecting information, but what do you do with the responses after people fill in the form? With Zapier, you can instantly send that information to thousands of other apps so the information you're collecting ends up where you actually need it.

For example, you can find out immediately every time someone fills out your form. This is great if you're collecting leads you need to follow up with quickly or if you're using a form to collect any kind of information that benefits from a quick response. Notifications can be sent to Slack, your email inbox, or even to your phone.

Or you can collect contact information from forms and automatically add it to your mailing list or contact database.

You can also send all form submissions to your task manager or to-do list so you remember to follow up later.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Google Forms integrations for more and to learn how to build your own.

Automatically keep your Google Contacts up to date

We all know it's important to keep track of our contacts, but manually adding new connections to Google Contacts is time consuming. Zapier can do the work for you, grabbing information from a variety of apps and adding it to others.

For example, you can automatically add leads to your Google Contacts.

You can also automatically add contacts when people fill out a form on your website.

Do you use both Outlook and Google Contacts? You can set up a workflow to grab new Outlook contacts and send them into Google Contacts.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Google Contacts integrations for more and to learn how to build your own.

Create new Google Docs using data from other applications

A lot of great writing starts with a blank page, but you don't have to start that way. With a little automation you can automatically create new Google Docs that already have the information you need to get started.

Maybe you regularly write documents in response to something in your email inbox or using information that comes in through a form. You can set up a workflow to automatically create new documents with that information pre-filled out.

Now that you have your docs ready to go, you may need your teammates to take the next step. Use this Zap to alert your team in Slack so they know when it's time to jump in and work on them.

You can also send every new Google document over to other applications, automatically.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Google Docs integrations for more and to learn how to build your own.

Automatically create new Google Tasks

Google Tasks lives in the Gmail and Google Calendar sidebar, and there's also a mobile app. It's not the most powerful to-do list on the market but it's a handy one if you're a serious Google user. And you can add your own power user features using Zapier.

For example, you can automatically create new tasks by starring a message in Slack. This is a great way to remember to follow up on something.

Maybe you take notes in an application like Trello or Evernote and need to convert those into tasks for later. You can set up a workflow that does that for you.

Or maybe you prefer some other to-do list to Google Tasks but like how easy it is to add tasks while in Gmail. You might consider setting up a Zap to add all new tasks to your preferred app.

These are just a few examples. Check out our Google Tasks integrations for more and to learn how to build your own.