Guide to automating screenshots with Zapier

Learn how to automatically take screenshots and extract data in Zapier with the PagePixels Screenshots integration.

Introduction

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.

Understanding Zapier

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.

A Trigger app event

  • Is always the first step of a Zap,
  • Is what triggers the automation to start,
  • And you can only have one Trigger per Zap.

An Action app event

  • Comes after a Trigger event (or another Action),
  • Uses data from a Trigger event in one app to create, update, or find an item in a different app,
  • And you can have one or more Actions in a Zap.

PagePixels Triggers & Actions

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

Triggers

New Screenshot

Triggers when a new screenshot is taken, optionally limited to specific screenshot configurations.

New Screenshot Configuration

Triggers when a new screenshot configuration is created.

New Change Notification

Triggers when the content of a page has changed since the last screenshot, optionally limited to specific screenshot configurations

Actions

Take a Screenshot of a Web Page

Creates an instant screenshot of a URL.

MULTI-STEP

Create a Recurring Screenshot of a Web Page

Creates a screenshot configuration. The configuration can include a recurring schedule and change notifications. You will receive the Embed URL as a part of the response. The Embed URL will always display the latest screenshot image taken for the configuration, so it can be used on public websites, dashboards, and internal systems without worrying about API keys or any other configuration parameters.

MULTI-STEP

Take a Real Geolocation Screenshot of a Web Page

Captures a screenshot from real geolocations around the world. Screenshots are taken through a proxy network within the geographical location you specify. Choose from hundreds of countries and any US State for your geolocation testing needs.

MULTI-STEP

Take a Screenshot of Custom HTML

Create a screenshot of any custom HTML. This is Perfect for screenshotting new emails, creating custom reports, and more.

MULTI-STEP

Take a Screenshot of a Web Page and Analyze the Image With AI

Captures a web page screenshot and runs an AI visual analysis based on your prompt. Useful for extracting data, generating summaries, or querying the website’s content. No OpenAI keys or additional setup required.

MULTI-STEP

Analyze Any Image With AI

Generates an AI visual analysis of any image guided by your text prompt. Submit up to 5 images and 5 prompts. Useful for comparing multiple images, tracking changes, monitoring visual regressions, and extracting text. No OpenAI keys or additional setup required.

Find Latest Screenshot

Finds the latest screenshot on the account or from a given Screenshot Configuration

Create a Web Scraping And Data Extraction Report

Initiates a new Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report request. This action can help automate web scraping and structured data extraction from domains and websites. Provide a list of URLs and request up to 100 custom data fields for extraction (e.g. email, company details, product info) guided by your AI prompts.

Check a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report Status

Retrieves the status of a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report request. Returns progress and completion details.

Find a Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report

Retrieves a completed Web Scraping and Data Extraction Report. Returns the name, status, and results for the report.

Find All Web Scraping and Data Extraction Reports

Retrieves all Web Scraping and Data Extraction Reports for your account (up to 1000). Optionally limit results by created at date.

Get HTML Code of a Website

Download the raw HTML source code of a website (instead of taking a screenshot)

MULTI-STEP

Find Latest Screenshot

Finds the latest screenshot on the account or from a given Screenshot Configuration

Connect PagePixels to Zapier

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.

How to automate screenshots in Zapier

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
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

An arrow pointing to the Test action button in Zapier

(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.

A new message from the Zapier app displaying in the Google Chat app.
13

Publish

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

An arrow pointing to the Publish button in the successful Test context

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

An arrow pointing to the final Publish button

🎉 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.

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

support-tickets@pagepixels.com

Multi-Step Screenshots in Zapier

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:

  • Fill out a password login form,
  • Perform a search,
  • Apply filters,
  • Navigate to another page,
  • And more.

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.

Action Example
Click
{"type": "click", "selector": "#your-selector"}
Hover
{"type": "hover", "selector": "#your-selector"}
Change Notification {"type": "change", "selector": "#your-selector", "send_to": "webhook", url: "https://example.com/webhook-url"}
Goto URL
{"type": "redirect", "value": "https://example.com"}
Run Javascript
{"type": "javascript", "value": "console.log('my javascript');"}
Evaluate Javascript
{"type": "evaluateJs", "value": "console.log('my javascript');"}
Insert CSS
{"type": "css", "value": "#selector{ color: red }"}
Text Field Input
{"type": "text_field", "selector": "#the-text-field", "value": "your-value"}
Dropdown Field Selection
{"type": "select", "selector": "#the-dropdown-field", "value": "selected value"}
Checkbox Field Input
{"type": "checkbox", "selector": "#the-checkbox-field", "value":true}
Press Enter (to submit hidden forms)
{"type": "submit"}
Wait X milliseconds
{"type": "wait", "value": "5000"}
Wait For Selector
{"type": "wait_for_selector", "selector": "#your-selector"}

Multi-Step: Escape special characters

Make sure to escape special characters (e.g. quotes "", '') in your Multi-Step Action inputs. Otherwise, you may get an invalid_multi_step_actions error or your actions will not work as intended.

Not Escaped

❌ {"type": "wait_for_selector", "selector": "input[type="email"]"}

Escaped

✅ {"type": "wait_for_selector", "selector": "input[type=\"email\"]"}

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

https://www.wikipedia.org/

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

{"type": "text_field", "selector": "#searchInput", "value": "hawaiian monk seal"}

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

{"type": "submit"}

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:

support-tickets@pagepixels.com

Web Scraping and Data Extraction in Zapier

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:

  • Data enrichment,
  • Lead scoring,
  • Market and investor research,
  • Business intelligence,
  • Competitive analysis,
  • And other business research workflows.

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
{"data_type": "string", "data_field_name": "primary_contact_email", "data_field_prompt_description": "The main email address listed for sales or partnership inquiries."}
BREAKDOWN
Key Description Example
data_type The data type you expect. Value must be a string, number, boolean, or array. "data_type": "string"
data_field_name The name for the field. Max 100 characters (no spaces). "data_field_name": "primary_phone_number"
data_field_prompt_description An AI prompt describing the data you want to extract. Max 2000 characters. "data_field_prompt_description": "The main email address listed for sales or partnership inquiries."

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
{"data_type": "number", "data_field_name": "compatibility_rating", "data_field_prompt_description": "A score between 1 and 100 indicating how well this company aligns with the following requirements: target industry, team size over 50, and offering a cloud-based SaaS solution."}

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).

{"data_type": "string", "data_field_name": "primary_contact_email", "data_field_prompt_description": "The main email address listed for sales or partnership inquiries."}

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

{"data_type": "string", "data_field_name": "primary_phone_number", "data_field_prompt_description": "The primary phone number listed on the website for business contact."}

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).

{"data_type": "array", "data_field_name": "social_profiles", "data_field_prompt_description": "List of public-facing social media profile URLs linked from the site (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)."}

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:

support-tickets@pagepixels.com

Support

Questions? Contact us anytime by email:

support-tickets@pagepixels.com

Or send us a message through our Support page.