Monthly Archives: February 2013

Papyrs Now Integrates With 150+ Web Services through Zapier!

Zapier is a great service that allows you to connect/sync between all kinds of web services. Best of all, it’s based on a concept we like a lot ourselves: simple drag & drop! Without any programming knowledge you can simply connect any of the – over 150 – services listed in their service directory. And today we’re happy to announce Papyrs is now one of them!

So how does it work? If you sign up for Zapier, you can start connecting Papyrs to other services, or the other way around. Zapier calls any integration between any two services a Zap. The possibilities are pretty much endless, but just to give you some ideas for example Zaps for Papyrs:

  • Post the text of a new email in GMail to a Papyrs page
  • Post a new Stripe charge to the Activity Stream
  • Post a message to a page when a new WordPress blog comment arrives
  • Post a HipChat message when a new Page is created
  • Create a page to which all new Facebook updates are automatically added
  • Post Tweets to the Activity Stream
  • Add a new Desk case to a Page
  • On a new GitHub commit, post a message to the Activity Stream

Let’s have a look at creating a Zap for the first example. Click on Create New Zap in your Zapier dashboard. Drag and drop the two services you want to connect. On the left side you drag a service which will trigger an action for the service you add to the right. We currently have a trigger for newly created pages, and actions to create a Textboxes and Headings on a Page and post new comments to the Activity Stream. We’re planning to add many more actions and triggers later on. For now, let’s set a new email in Gmail as the trigger (left), to create a new Textbox on a Papyrs page (right).

You need to enter your account information next. For Papyrs you need to enter your API key (go to Settings > Account in Papyrs to request one). Then, simply drag the fields from the email you want to add to the new Textbox.

That’s it. A new Textbox will now be added to the selected page once a new email arrives.

Go over to the Zapier.com home page and give it a spin (literally, the spinner shows you some examples of what’s possible).

New in Papyrs – Import Pages from Backpack

We’ve been getting a lot of requests from people if we can help them move their data from Backpack to Papyrs. Last year the people behind Backpack decided to start phasing it out (also see Why Backpack is getting phased out), so naturally a lot of people are looking to move to other products that are still in active development.

Today we’re launching Import from Backpack. A one-click way to transfer all your Backpack Pages directly into Papyrs (well, technically three clicks).

Page comparison: A Backpack Page Imported to Papyrs

As you can see in the image Below – Pages are imported pretty accurately! Papyrs imports Notes, Headers, Itemized Lists, links, and so on.


A Backpack page   —   Now in Papyrs (right)

So how does it work?

It’s pretty simple! First you go to Settings > Import from Backpack. Then you’ll get a page that will look much like this:

  1. Log in to Backpack. Click on “Settings” in the top right corner
  2. Click on “Export”
  3. Save the link “Export your data to XML format” to disk. You’ll get a file “export.xml”
  4. Log on to your Papyrs account and go to Settings > Account > Import From Backpack
  5. Click on “Browse” near the bottom of the page and select “export.xml”, the file containing your Backpack data.
  6. Click “Preview Import”. Here you can check if you want to import these pages into Papyrs.
  7. You’ll get a list of Pages that can be imported into Papyrs. Only you and other administrators will be able to access the newly imported pages. Click “Import!” and after a moment (or a few moments if you have a lot of data) all pages have been imported into your Papyrs account.
  8. If the Pages didn’t get imported right or if you want to get rid of the pages for another reason, just click on “Undo Import” (see picture) to delete the imported pages.

Limitations

Unfortunately we can’t import everything from Backpack. This is because Backpack’s XML export function is somewhat limited. Backpack doesn’t export all comments, doesn’t export permission settings, doesn’t export user information, doesn’t export writeboards, nor Journal information. Even images and attached files are sadly not exported from Backpack. And we can’t import to Papyrs what Backpack doesn’t export.

That’s it. Happy importing!