Guide to automating screenshots with Zapier

With the PagePixels Screenshots Zapier app, you can automate the process of taking screenshots and sending the images to any of the 7000+ apps Zapier supports, such as:

Using PagePixels and Zapier together, you can also capture screenshots of your emails, have AI analyze your screenshots, and extract structured data from websites.

Both PagePixels and Zapier are free to try. To get started, create your free PagePixels account and free Zapier account.

Zapier (rhymes with “happier”) is a no-code integration platform for moving data and automating the manual repetitive tasks you do between multiple apps every day.

Workflow automations in Zapier are called Zaps and zaps operate on an "if this, then that" model of automation. In this model, if an event happens in one app then Zapier fetches data about that event to complete an action in a different app.

For example, if a new screenshot appears in your PagePixels' account, then upload that new screenshot to your Google Drive.

Zapier refers to the "if this" part of an automation as a Trigger app event and "then that" as an Action app event.

Below is a list of the Triggers and Actions available for the PagePixels Screenshots Zapier app.

Triggers

Actions

You can connect your PagePixels account to Zapier while you're creating a Zap or in the "My Apps" section of your Zapier account, as shown below.

1

Log in to your Zapier account.

If you don't already have a Zapier account, you can create a free one here.

2

Go to your apps connections page.

You can also get here by clicking “My Apps” in the left sidebar menu.

3

Click the “+Add connection” button.

4

Search for and select the PagePixels Screenshots app.

5

Authenticate your PagePixels account.

Once you successfully connect your PagePixels account to Zapier, you’re ready to start automating your screenshots.

Below are examples to help demonstrate how you can automate screenshots in Zapier.

TAKE A DAILY SCREENSHOT EXAMPLE

How to take automatic screenshots in Zapier

Using PagePixels "Take a Screenshot of a Web Page" Action, you can automate taking recurring screenshots of web pages within Zapier.

To demonstrate, we're going to create a Zap that takes screenshots of a website and sends the image in a Gmail email message on a daily schedule.

1

Create a new Zap

Click "Create", then select "Zap" from the list of options.

2

Set up your Schedule Trigger app event

Click the "Trigger" button.

Click Zapier's Schedule Trigger, and select the "Every Day" app event. This will trigger your screenshot automation at a specified time each day.

Set your preferred time and click the "Continue" button.

Click "Continue" again, and test your Trigger.

Click "Continue with selected record" to finish setting up your Trigger app event.

3

Set up PagePixels Take Screenshot of a Web Page Action app event

Search for "pagepixels" and choose the "PagePixels Screenshots" app.

Select the Take a Screenshot of a Web Page Action event.

Connect your PagePixels account and click the "Continue" button.

Add the URL for the page you want to capture into the "Website URL" field (required).

Finish configuring your screenshot and click "Continue".

Click the "Test Step" button.

Preview the test response.

4

(Optional) Send your screenshots to another Zapier app.

Click the plus "Add Step" button, and select your desired app.

As an example, we'll use the Gmail app to send an email containing the screenshot in the body of the message.

Select the "Send Email" Action event in the Gmail app.

Authorize or choose which Gmail account you want to use, and click "Continue."

Complete the required input fields. To add the screenshot image to the email:

1. Set the Body type field to HTML.

2. Add an img tag to the Body input field.

3. Use the plus button to add the Direct Link data attribute from the PagePixels app as the value of the src in the img tag.

Click "Continue."

Click "Test Step" to test your email message.

Click "Publish" to activate your Zap automation.

🎉 Your Zap is now active and will automatically run once per day.

NEW SCREENSHOT TRIGGER EXAMPLE

How to send new PagePixels screenshots to Google Chat in Zapier

The New Screenshot Trigger in the PagePixels Zapier app can watch for new screenshots generated in your PagePixels account and perform an Action on those screenshots.

As an example, let's say you have a recurring screenshot setup in PagePixels, and you'd like new screenshots for that configuration to automatically appear in your Google Chat space.

You can accomplish this using the Trigger app event "New Screenshots in PagePixels Screenshots" and the Action app event "Create Message in Google Chat", as detailed below.

REQUIREMENTS

• An existing screenshot configuration in your PagePixels account
• A Business or School account with Google
• An existing Google Chat space
• The Zapier app added to a Google Chat space
• If you're unsure how to add apps to Google Chat, this Google Support doc can show you how.

1

Go to your Zapier dashboard.

Click the "+ Create Zap" button.

2

Click on the Trigger button.

You'll find it below the AI generative option.

3

Choose your Trigger app.

Type "pagepixels" in the Trigger search box, and select the "PagePixels Screenshots" app.

4

Choose your Trigger event.

Click the Event dropdown menu and select “New Screenshot", then click the "Continue" button.

5

Choose or authenticate your app account.

Select which PagePixels account you'd like to use from the dropdown menu or authenticate a new account connection.

Then, click the "Continue" button.

6

Set up your New Screenshot trigger.

Select one or more screenshot configurations that interest you from the "Limit to Screenshot Configuration(s)" dropdown menu.

Once selected, click the "Continue" button.

Alternatively, if you'd like for the Zap to run for all new screenshots in your PagePixels account, you can skip this step.

7

Test Trigger

Click the "Test Trigger" button.

After a successful test run, click the "Continue with selected record" button.

If the test run fails, see this Zapier article on how to troubleshoot.

8

Choose your Action app.

Search for and select the Google Chat app.

9

Choose your Action event.

Select "Create Message" from the "Event" dropdown menu, and click the "Continue" button.

10

Choose or authenticate your app account.

Select which Google Chat account you'd like to use or authenticate a new account connection.

Then, click the "Continue" button.

11

Set up your Create Message action.

To create a Google Chat message, you'll need to complete the required fields (designated by an asterik *):

• "Hangouts Chat Room"
• "Message Title"
• "Message Text"

For this example, we're also going to add input the non-required fields:

• "Message Image URL"
• "Action Button Text"
• "Action Button URL"

The "Action Button URL" field is where we'll insert the new screenshot URL fetched during our Trigger event.

For more details on this step and why we chose to create our Google Chat message this way - see our notes here.

12

Test action

Click the "Test Action" button

(Note, your test results may look different from the image above, depending on which fields you completed.)

After a successful Action test, you'll find a test message posted to the Google chat room (space) you specified.

13

Publish

After a successful Action test, click the "Publish" button.

Then, click "Publish" one more time in the "Ready to publish your Zap" modal window.

🎉 Your Zap is complete. Now new screenshots for your configuration in PagePixels will automatically send to Google Chat.

📝 Notes

• Because of limitations with Zapier's Google Chat app, it's currently not possible to create a Zap that displays the full screenshot image in a Google Chat message. Instead, you can either add a link to the screenshot image or create a button that links to the screenshot. Our example does the latter.
• The "Message Image URL" field in the Google Chat action event displays an image at dimensions 24px width X 24px height (not ideal for most screenshot images). In our example, we use this field to display PagePixels' logo (via Google's favicon API), but please feel free to leave this field blank or use your own image.

CUSTOM HTML EXAMPLES

How to create screenshots of your emails in Zapier.

PagePixels' Take a Screenshot of Custom HTML Action makes it possible to convert HTML and data from other apps into screenshots, including HTML emails.

Below is a list of Zap templates you can use to take screenshots of your Gmail and Outlook emails using PagePixels in Zapier.

Zapier template

Take screenshots of new Outlook email messages with PagePixels Screenshots

Try template

→

Zapier template

Take screenshots of new Gmail email messages with PagePixels Screenshots

Try template

→

Zapier template

Take screenshots of new labeled Gmail email messages with PagePixels Screenshots

Try template

→

Have questions about the Take a Screenshot of Custom HTML Action in Zapier? Please feel free to contact us:

With PagePixels' Multi-Step Screenshot feature in Zapier, you can automate a set of user actions on a website before taking a screenshot. This means you can:

PagePixels Multi-Step works by making browser actions (click, input text, press enter, etc.) available for you to recreate the steps needed to go from a public web page to the content you want to screenshot.

PagePixels will then automatically run those actions for you prior to taking the screenshot.

You can access Multi-Step Screenshot functionality in Zapier using the "Multi-Step Actions" field in a supported Action app event.

Multi-Step Actions

Here's a list of available browser actions (aka "Multi-Step Actions"), and the expected format for Zapier.

{"type": "click", "selector": "#your-selector"}

{"type": "hover", "selector": "#your-selector"}

{"type": "redirect", "value": "https://example.com"}

{"type": "javascript", "value": "console.log('my javascript');"}

{"type": "evaluateJs", "value": "console.log('my javascript');"}

{"type": "css", "value": "#selector{ color: red }"}

{"type": "text_field", "selector": "#the-text-field", "value": "your-value"}

{"type": "select", "selector": "#the-dropdown-field", "value": "selected value"}

{"type": "checkbox", "selector": "#the-checkbox-field", "value":true}

{"type": "submit"}

{"type": "wait", "value": "5000"}

{"type": "wait_for_selector", "selector": "#your-selector"}

Multi-Step Example: Search

Suppose we want to create an Action in Zapier that does a search in Wikipedia for “hawaiian monk seal” and takes a snapshot of the resulting page.

To create this screenshot, you can use the Action app event "Take a Screenshot in PagePixels Screenshots", and the following inputs in your Action's configuration:

Website URL

For Multi-Step screenshots, the “Website URL” is the starting point of our step sequence and where the first Multi-Step Action takes place.

The URL must include "https://" or "https://" and be publicly available.

Multi-Step Actions

This action will input the text value "tardigrades" into the text field identified by a CSS selector (#searchInput).

This action simulates pressing the "Enter" key to submit a form. In this case, it submits our search to Wikipedia.

📝 Notes

• The left-side column under "Multi-Step Actions" you can leave as is. It will not affect your screenshots or be reflected in your PagePixels account.
• To add more Multi-Step Actions in Zapier, use the "+" button. To remove, use the "X" button.
• The screenshot generated in this example uses the default settings for "Page Width" (1920px), "Page Height" (1000px), and "Wait Time to Capture Screenshot" (1500ms). You can change these settings in Zapier as needed.

For more examples of creating Multi-Step screenshots in Zapier, check out our Multi-Step Help Guide.

Have questions about how to use Multi-Step Actions in Zapier? Please feel free to send them our way:

Using the PagePixels' Web Scraping and Data Extraction actions in Zapier, you can scrape, analyze, and extract structured data from domains and web pages guided by your custom AI prompts.

Web Scraping and Data Extraction is helpful for automating your website research and with use cases like:

With Web Scraping and Data Extraction, you can provide just the primary domain (example.com), and our system will crawl the website to find whatever information you need. Or if you want a more focused scrape and extraction, you can provide the full URL for the web page.

Once we've processed your scraping and data extraction request, you can access it in an easy-to-use, clean structured format for your Zaps. No web scraped mess.

You can try PagePixels Web Scraping and Data Extraction functionality for free. Free accounts gets 25 free monthly credits (1 domain = 1 credit). Paid subscribers get 125 free monthly credits.

To use PagePixels' Web Scraping and Data Extraction feature effectively in Zapier, you'll want to:

1. Submit a request containing the domains you want to scrape and the information you want to extract using the Create a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report action.

2. Allow enough time for your web scraping request to process with Zapier's Delay for action.

3. Once your request is complete, you can use Find a Web Scraping Data Extraction Report action to get your report's findings to use in another app.

Create a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report

The Create a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report Action in Zapier initiates the request to scrape and extract data from a list of domains or websites you provide.

Note: This action is asynchronous and puts your request into a queue for processing. Once finished, you can use the Find a Report a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report action to get the results.

To use this action, you'll need to provide the following information.

Domains (required)

Enter one or more domains or websites. You can use commas or new lines as delimiteres.

Data To Extract (required)

Enter a JSON object that describes the data to extract using data_type, data_field_name, and data_fied_prompt_description keys.

EXAMPLE

BREAKDOWN

Report Title (optional)

Give your report a name for easier reference and differentiation. This information is not used in the analysis.

Additional Notes (optional)

Add extra details about the report for you and your team. This information is not used in the analysis.

Example: How to automate qualifying leads in Zapier

Let's suppose you have a list of company domains and want to identify which ones are high-quality leads for your outreach campaigns and give them a score based on a set criteria.

For example, the criteria could be they need to operate in a specific industry, have a team over 50 people, and offer a cloud-based solution.

In addition, you want to gather useful contact details like email addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles.

To automate this entire process in Zapier, you can use PagePixels' Web Scraping and Data Extraction actions. Below is a step-by-step walkthrough to help you set it up.

Note: This example assumes you've already set up a Trigger event.

Step 1: Add the PagePixels' Create a Web Scraping and Data Extract Report app action event

Breakdown: Domains

You can add the domains you want to analyze manually (as seen in the image above) or you can use data from another app (e.g. Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel).

Please note, the list of domains must be separated by either commas or new lines.

Breakdown: Data To Extract

The AI will analyze the domain based on the provided criteria and determine what number between 1-100 best represents how close it matches the criteria (the higher the number the better the match).

Our system will scrape the domain and extract the email the AI thinks is best for sales or partnership inquiries. Example: email@example.com

Our system will scrape domain to find a phone number (if available) for business contact. Note: When the data you want is a phone number, you'll want to use string as the data type (not a number).

After submitting a successful Create Web Scraping and Data Extract Report request, you're output will look something like this:

The job_id from the response is what you'll use in the Find a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report action to retrieve your report.

Step 2: Add the Zapier Delay for Action

To allow enough time for our system to create your report, you can use Zapier's Delay For action, as seen below.

Note: You can increase the delay time beyond 5 minutes if needed.

Step 3: Add the Find a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report action.

Use the job_id from the Create action to find your completed report using the Find a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report action.

This action will return the data you requested for extraction (Step 1) in a clean format you can use in a subsequent app.

Need help using Web Scraping and Data Extraction actions in Zapier? Contact us: