Build one automation, start to finish

This course follows one worked example. Not ten examples, not a tour of every tool out there. Lesson by lesson, it shows how a new-starter form can trigger a welcome message and a checklist record, with a test before anything reaches a real new starter.

Here is what we are building. A hiring manager or someone in People fills in the new-starter form. The new starter gets a welcome email with their start date, first-day plan and the documents to read. Their details land on an onboarding checklist, including the accounts and equipment they need, so nobody gets forgotten. No developer, no code, and you will be doing the clicking as you read, with no nodding along from the sidelines.

Why this one, out of everything you could build

There are hundreds of things you could automate. This course picks new-starter onboarding on purpose, for three reasons.

Every business with staff has one. Whether you hire two people a year or two a week, someone is chasing IT for a laptop. Someone is sending the same documents again. Someone is wondering whether the manager remembered to say hello. You do not need a special setup to follow along, you almost certainly already have the raw material.

It has a clear next step. A new starter who has accepted an offer should know the start date and who to ask. A welcome message sent the day they are hired does that, without pretending a person has already sorted the laptop.

It teaches the full pattern in one build. This one automation touches every idea you need for the next hundred: a trigger that starts things off, an action that does something useful, a filter that adds judgement, and a proper test before it goes anywhere near a real person. Learn this shape once and you can point it at almost anything, from leavers to training bookings.

What the worked example contains

The example connects a form submission to a welcome email and a new row on an onboarding checklist spreadsheet. Lesson 3 builds the trigger, lesson 4 the welcome email, lesson 5 the filter and the checklist row, and lesson 6 runs a fake new starter through the whole path before you decide whether to use it for a real hire. By lesson 6 you will have watched one person move from “offer accepted” to a welcome in their inbox and a row on the People and IT checklist.

How it moves

The whole build: a new starter, from form to checklist

Five stages, each built in one lesson, and each one something you can see working.

Comes inA hiring manager fills in the form

1. 01

   New-starter form

   Name, personal email, start date, job title, manager and the accounts and kit needed.

   New-starter formScreen

   Name

   Jo Parker

   Start date

   2 November

   Starting as

   Permanent employee

   Equipment

   Laptop, finance system

2. 02

   Welcome email

   Sent straight away from the People mailbox with the first-day plan and documents.

   Welcome: your first day is 2 NovemberEmail

   Hi Jo, welcome. Your manager is Dev Rao.

   Your first-day plan and handbook are linked below.

3. 03

   Filter

   Only employees continue to the checklist. Agency staff and contractors stop here.

4. 04

   Checklist row

   A new row for People and IT, with the accounts and equipment and a status of To do.

   New starter checklistSheet

   StarterStatus

   Matched: Jo ParkerTo doMatched
5. 05

   Test with a fake starter

   Run a made-up person through the whole chain before any real hire.

   A person decides here

Goes outA tested automation

Gilt ring: a person makes the call at this step

The tool we are using

We are building this in Zapier. It is the easiest place to start: a huge list of ready-made connections to other apps, a plain-English interface, and a free plan you can learn the pieces on. A Zap with several steps like this one may need a paid plan or a trial, so check Zapier’s pricing page before you start. If you have used Make or Power Automate before, or end up preferring one later, the ideas carry straight across, trigger, action, filter, test, they just live under slightly different menu names. Start with Zapier here. You are not marrying it.

What you need before lesson two

Nothing you do not already have: a work email address and a Google account (used for two of the tools we lean on). You will also want about ten minutes free right now if you want to keep pace with the setup in the next lesson. You do not need your real HR system connected, we will show you a way to follow along today with a simple form.

Use fake people while you learn

The checklist holds personal details, so build and test with made-up starters and your own email address. Only point it at real hires once you have tested it and agreed who may see the sheet. UK GDPR applies to employee data as much as customer data.

A note before we start

You will occasionally hit a screen that looks slightly different from what is described here. Software moves buttons around. If that happens, look for the same idea rather than the exact wording, the concepts in this course (trigger, action, filter, test) outlast whatever a menu is called this month.

Next: creating your account and getting the tools you are connecting ready to talk to each other.

Before you build anything, you need the workshop set up: one Zapier account, and the apps it is going to connect. This lesson is short on purpose. Ten minutes here and lesson three starts building for real.

Create your Zapier account

Go to zapier.com and sign up with your work email or your Google account. The free plan is enough to learn the pieces and test with, so do not reach for your card yet. A multi-step Zap that runs for real hires may need a paid plan. Check Zapier’s pricing page when you get to that point, and ask who in your company should own the account.

Once you are in, you will land on the Zapier dashboard. The button you want is usually top-right and says Create Zap or + Create. That is where every automation in this course starts. Have a look around for thirty seconds, but do not click into anything yet, lesson three is where the real building starts.

The two things you’re connecting

Every automation in this course is one form and two places that act on it. Here is what each one is and why we picked it.

How it moves

The workshop: one account, one form, one sheet

Ten minutes here, and lesson three starts building for real.

Comes inA work email address

1. 01

   Create the Zapier account

   Sign up with a work email. The free plan is enough to learn on. Ask who should own it.

2. 02

   Build the trigger form

   Use your HR system if it has one, or a quick Google Form with the fields below.

   New-starter form fields4 of 4

   • Done: Name and personal email
   • Done: Start date, job title, manager
   • Done: Starting as: employee or agency
   • Done: Accounts and equipment needed
3. 03

   Make the checklist sheet

   Headers across the top row, nothing else. Share it only with People and IT.

   New starter checklistSheet

   StarterStatus

   Added by ZapierTo do
4. 04

   Connect accounts once

   A shared People mailbox, not one person's inbox, so it survives a leaver.

   Connect an accountScreen

   App

   Gmail

   Permission

   Send email as People

   People shared mailbox

   Ok:

Goes outReady to build

The trigger: your new-starter form. In a real business the trigger is often your HR system. If you use BambooHR, HiBob, Personio or a similar tool, search for its name inside Zapier and look for a “new employee” style event. If you are not sure, or you would rather follow along today without touching live HR data, use a free Google Form instead. Go to forms.google.com, create a new blank form, and add these fields:

• Name
• Personal email (the new starter has no work address yet)
• Start date
• Job title
• Manager
• Starting as, a dropdown with two options: “Permanent or fixed-term employee” and “Agency or contractor”
• Accounts and equipment needed, a paragraph box, for example “Standard office accounts, laptop, finance system”

That five-minute form stands in for your real hiring trigger for the rest of this course. Once you have built it and understand the shape, you can point the same automation at your HR system.

The actions: Gmail and Google Sheets. We send the welcome through Gmail (or “Email by Zapier” if you would rather not connect a mailbox for now). We record every new starter on a Google Sheet. Both are things most businesses already have a login for, and both connect to Zapier in a couple of clicks. Open a blank Google Sheet now and give it a name like “New starter checklist”, with column headers across the top row: Name, Personal email, Start date, Job title, Manager, Accounts and equipment, Status. Leave it empty otherwise, Zapier will fill it in for you from lesson five onward. Keep the sheet in your company’s Google Workspace, and share it only with People and IT.

Connecting an account: the one idea worth understanding

Whenever Zapier asks you to “Connect an account”, here is what is happening. You are giving Zapier permission to act on your behalf inside that app, sending an email as you, or adding a row to a sheet you own, nothing more. It is the same permission screen you have seen a hundred times when an app asks to sign in with Google. Read what it is asking for, click allow, and it remembers the connection for every future Zap, you only do it once per app. For anything real, connect a shared People mailbox rather than one person’s inbox, so the automation does not break when they leave.

What good looks like before lesson three

You should have: a Zapier account open in one tab, a form ready (your HR system’s or the quick Google Form), and a Google Sheet with headers waiting. That is the whole workshop. Next: building the trigger, the moment that starts everything off.

Every automation Zapier builds has the same two halves: something happens (the trigger), and then something else happens because of it (the action). This lesson builds the first half. By the end, Zapier will be watching your form and waking up the instant someone submits it.

Start the Zap

From your Zapier dashboard, click Create Zap. You will land on a blank canvas with a box for the trigger already waiting at the top. Give your Zap a proper name straight away, something like “New starter: welcome and checklist”, using the field at the top of the screen. Future-you, scrolling a list of ten Zaps in six months, will thank you for not calling it “Untitled Zap 3”.

How it moves

Building the trigger, screen by screen

Five clicks and a test, and Zapier is watching your form.

Comes inA blank canvas

1. 01

   Name the Zap

   Something like "New starter: welcome and checklist", not "Untitled Zap 3".

2. 02

   Choose the app and event

   Your HR system's "New Employee" event, or Google Forms and "New Form Response".

3. 03

   Connect the account

   Sign in, allow the permissions, and Zapier remembers it.

4. 04

   Point it at the form

   Pick the form from lesson two in the dropdown.

5. 05

   Test the trigger

   Zapier finds a real submission and shows its shape. Fill in a made-up starter first if there is none.

   Zapier: test triggerScreen

   Event

   New Form Response

   Name

   Ok: Jo Parker

   Start date

   Ok: 2 November

   Starting as

   Ok: Permanent employee

Goes outA tested trigger

Choose your trigger app

Click into the trigger box. Zapier asks you to search for an app, this is the tool the trigger watches.

• If you are using your HR system, search for its name (for example “BambooHR” or “HiBob”) and look for an event like “New Employee” or “New Hire”.
• If you are using the Google Form from lesson two, search for Google Forms and choose the event New Form Response.

Click Continue.

Connect your account

Zapier will ask you to connect the account that owns the form, your Google account if you are using Google Forms. Click Sign in, choose the right account, and allow the permissions it asks for. This is the same one-time handshake from the last lesson.

Point it at the right form

With the account connected, Zapier asks which specific form to watch, useful because most people end up with more than one. Choose the form you set up in lesson two from the dropdown.

Test the trigger

This is the step people skip and shouldn’t. Click Test trigger. Zapier goes and finds a real, recent submission to that form and shows it to you. If your form has no submissions yet, go and fill it in yourself right now, in another tab, as a made-up starter with your own email address, then come back and test again.

You should see a sample response appear, your test name, your email, the start date and the rest. This matters because it proves two things: Zapier can see your form, and it knows the shape of the data (which field is the name, which is the email, which is the start date) that the rest of the automation will use.

What you have built so far

A trigger on its own does nothing visible, and that is fine, it is not supposed to yet. What you have is Zapier now watching your form and ready to hand off a real submission the moment one arrives. Nothing fires until you add an action, which is exactly what the next lesson does: taking that submission and sending the new starter their welcome.

Do not turn the Zap on yet, there is nothing for it to do. Leave the tab open, or come back to it, lesson four picks up exactly here.

The trigger is watching. Now give it something to do. This lesson adds the first action: the welcome email that lands in the new starter’s inbox soon after the form is submitted, the single biggest reason this automation is worth building at all. Most people hear nothing between “offer accepted” and day one. This fixes that.

Add an action step

Under your trigger box, click the + button to add a new step. Search for Gmail (or Email by Zapier if you would rather not connect a mailbox yet, it sends from a generic Zapier address instead, useful for testing). Choose the event Send Email, then click Continue.

If you picked Gmail, connect your account the same way you connected Google Forms, sign in, allow the permissions, done. For a real rollout, connect the shared People mailbox, not a personal one.

Write the welcome, properly, once

This is the part worth taking your time over, because you only write it once and it goes out for every hire after. Fill in the fields Zapier gives you:

• To: this is where the automation earns its keep. Do not type an address, click into the field and you will see a list of the data from your form, pick the Personal email field. Now every welcome automatically goes to whoever was just hired, not to you.
• From name: your business name or “People team at [Company]”, so it does not look like a stranger.
• Subject: something plain and human, “Welcome to [Company]: your first day on [start date]” works better than anything clever.
• Body: this is your message. Write it warm and clear about what happens next, something like:

“Hi [Name], welcome to [Company]. We are delighted you are joining us as [Job title] on [Start date]. Your manager, [Manager], will be in touch before then. Your first-day plan and the staff handbook are linked below, along with the forms we need back before you start. If anything is unclear, reply to this email or ring People on [your number].”

Taken apart

The welcome email, taken apart

Five parts, each filled from the form or written once and reused for every hire.

Subject Welcome email to a new starter

1Welcome to Brightwell: your first day is 2 November

2Hi Jo, welcome to Brightwell. We are delighted you are joining us as Finance Assistant.

3Your manager, Dev Rao, will be in touch before then.

4Your first-day plan and the staff handbook are linked below, with the forms we need back.

5If anything is unclear, reply to this email or ring People on [your number].

1. 1Subject line

   Name the day. Plain and human beats clever.

2. 2Merged fields

   Name and job title come from the form, never typed by hand.

3. 3Who to expect

   A named person makes the welcome real. Only promise what you will do.

4. 4The documents

   Ordinary links in the body, so every starter gets the same pack.

5. 5A way to ask

   Sent from the People mailbox, so replies are read and it avoids spam.

Where you see [Name], [Job title], [Start date] or [Manager], do not type them. Click into the body and insert the matching field from your form, the same way you did for the email address. That is what turns one email you wrote once into a personal welcome every single time. Add the links to your first-day plan, handbook and forms as ordinary web links in the body, so every starter gets the same documents.

The one rule for this step

Only promise what you will do. If the email says “your laptop and accounts will be ready on day one”, make sure IT has been asked. A broken promise here does more damage than no automation at all, because the new starter’s first impression of the business is that it does not mean what it says. This is the same rule that runs through every automation that speaks to a person directly: say only what is true.

Test this action on its own

Click Test step (or Test & Continue). Zapier sends a real email using the sample data from your trigger test in the last lesson. Go and check the inbox it would have gone to, if you used your own email as the test submission, it should be sitting there right now. Read it as a new starter would. Does it sound like your business? Is the name inserted correctly, not showing as a raw field name like {{name}}? Is the start date in the order you expect, day then month? Fix the wording now, while it costs you nothing.

What you have built so far

A form that, the moment someone is hired, sends them a warm, personal welcome straight away, with the right documents, entirely on its own. That alone is a real automation and would be worth shipping by itself. But the email only helps the new starter, it does not help People and IT remember what each person needs. Next: a second action that builds you an onboarding checklist for every employee, plus a filter so only the people who need the full People checklist land on it.

The welcome is live. Now build the half of this automation that helps People and IT as well as the new starter: a running checklist of everyone joining, with the accounts and equipment they need, so nobody turns up to a missing laptop. Along the way you will add a filter, the piece that gives an automation a bit of judgement instead of doing the same thing every single time.

Why a filter, and not “log everything”

Not every new starter needs the same treatment. An employee needs a contract, payroll set-up and a place on the People checklist. An agency worker or contractor usually does not, because their agency or company handles the paperwork. If your checklist fills with people People never has to chase, it stops being useful for the thing that matters: making sure every employee is ready on day one. A filter lets the automation make that call for you, automatically, using the dropdown field you built into the form back in lesson two.

Side by side

What the filter does to two different starters

Everyone gets the welcome. Only employees reach the checklist.

	Permanent employeeStarting as: employee	Agency or contractorStarting as: agency
Welcome email	In its favour: Sent	In its favour: Sent
Passes the filter	In its favour: Yes, contains "employee"	Against it: No, stops here
Row on the checklist	In its favour: Added, status To do	Against it: None
Who does the paperwork	People and IT	Their agency or company
The verdict	The full set-up path	A welcome, nothing more

in its favour mixed against it

Add the filter step

Click the + below your email action to add a new step. Search for Filter by Zapier and choose it, there is no separate “event” to pick, filters only do one job.

Set the condition:

1. Choose the field: click into the box and pick the Starting as field from your form data.
2. Choose the condition: (Text) Contains.
3. Type the value: employee.

Read that back as a sentence: “Only continue if the Starting as field contains the word employee.” Anything else, an agency worker or contractor, stops here. Note what this does and does not affect: the welcome email you built in lesson four already ran, for everyone, before this filter. The filter only controls what happens next, which is exactly right, everyone deserves a welcome, not everyone needs a place on the employee checklist.

Test the filter the same way as every other step: click Test. If your sample data says “Permanent or fixed-term employee”, it should pass. If you want to see it correctly block something, submit a second test entry through your form with “Agency or contractor” selected, then re-test.

Add the second action: log it to your sheet

Click + again, below the filter. Search for Google Sheets and choose the event Create Spreadsheet Row, then Continue.

Connect your Google account if you have not already, then:

1. Pick the spreadsheet you created in lesson two (“New starter checklist”).
2. Pick the worksheet, usually “Sheet1” unless you renamed it.
3. Map the columns. Zapier shows you the column headers you set up (Name, Personal email, Start date, Job title, Manager, Accounts and equipment, Status) and asks what goes in each. Click into each one and insert the matching field from your form. In the Status column, type the plain text “To do” so every new row starts in the same state.

Test the step. Go and check the actual sheet, a new row should have appeared with the right details in the right columns, not shuffled into the wrong ones. Check the start date reads the way you expect. If the sheet shows the month first, change the sheet’s locale to United Kingdom in the spreadsheet settings.

What you have built so far

A form that welcomes everyone instantly, and builds you a tidy, filtered checklist of the employees who need the full set-up, with nothing copied by hand. IT and People can work from that one sheet, ticking off accounts and equipment as they go. That is the whole shape of the automation. What is left is making sure it survives contact with a real new starter, which is exactly what the next lesson tests properly.

Every step has been tested in isolation, the trigger, the welcome, the filter, the sheet. That is not the same as testing the whole thing running together, live, the way an actual new starter will experience it. This lesson is short and it is the one you must not skip: turning it on and watching a test hire go all the way through.

Turn the Zap on

Back at the top of your Zap, there is a toggle, usually labelled Publish or a simple on/off switch. Flip it on. Zapier will do a final check of every step and, if everything is connected properly, your automation goes live. From this second, it is watching your real form for real submissions.

How it moves

Testing the whole chain, as a new starter would

Every step passed alone. Now run one made-up person through all of them together.

Comes inThe Zap is switched on

1. 01

   Turn the Zap on

   Flip the switch and let Zapier run its final check.

2. 02

   Be your own first starter

   Fill in the form with a made-up person and your own email address.

   A person decides here

3. 03

   Check the welcome

   In your inbox: name inserted, date in order, links working, from the People mailbox.

   Welcome: your first day is 2 NovemberEmail

   Hi Jo, welcome to Brightwell.

   Your manager, Dev Rao, will be in touch.

4. 04

   Check the sheet

   A new row in the right columns, with To do in the status.

   New starter checklistSheet

   StarterStatus

   Matched: Jo ParkerTo doMatched
5. 05

   Read Zap History

   Every step, with the exact data that passed through it.

   Zap HistoryScreen

   Trigger

   Ok: Success

   Welcome email

   Ok: Success

   Filter

   Ok: Passed

   Create row

   Ok: Success

6. 06

   Break the filter on purpose

   Submit an agency starter. They should get the welcome and no row.

   A person decides here

Goes outTrusted, with a record to check

Gilt ring: a person makes the call at this step

Be your own first new starter

Do not tell anyone this is live yet. Instead, go to your form, exactly as a hiring manager would find it, and fill it in with a made-up person. Use your own real email address as the personal email so you can see what lands, and a start date a few weeks away. Pick “Permanent or fixed-term employee” in the dropdown, since that is the path that should trigger everything.

Then wait. Not refreshing anxiously. How quickly Zapier notices a new form response depends on your plan: on paid plans it is usually within a few minutes, on the free plan it can take up to fifteen. Give it time before you assume something is wrong.

Check every part of the chain

Go through it like a checklist, because a new starter will experience it as one connected thing even though you built it in three separate pieces.

• The welcome. Open the inbox you used. Is the email there? Does it read naturally, with the name, job title and start date inserted correctly rather than a raw field tag? Do the links to the first-day plan, handbook and forms open? Does it look like it came from a real business, not a broken template?
• The sheet. Open your checklist. Is there a new row, with the right name, email, start date, job title, manager and equipment, in the right columns, and with “To do” in the status?
• The timing. How long did it take? Note it, and compare it with what your plan promises. If it took far longer than that, something is worth double-checking, more on that in the next lesson.

Check your Zap history

Zapier keeps a record of every single run. From your Zap’s page, find Zap History (sometimes called Zap runs or Task History) in the left-hand menu. Click into your test run and you can see every step, trigger, welcome, filter, sheet, laid out with the exact data that passed through it. This is the most useful screen in the whole tool, because when something eventually goes wrong (and eventually it will, on some automation, at some point) this is where you find out which step did something unexpected, rather than guessing.

Run one more, on purpose, to break the filter

Submit a second test, this time choosing “Agency or contractor” instead of “Permanent or fixed-term employee”. You should still get the welcome email, that step has no filter on it, but no new row should land in your checklist. If that is what happens, your filter is doing its job properly, giving real judgement to an automation that would otherwise treat every hire the same.

Clear out the test data

Delete the test rows from the sheet when you have finished, so People does not chase a starter who does not exist. A made-up person on a live checklist is a small mess that costs someone a morning.

What you have proved

Not that it worked once by luck, but that it works the way you designed it, on a real submission, checked end to end, with a record you can go back and look at. That is what “tested” means, and it is the difference between an automation you can trust and one you are hoping about. Next: the mistakes that trip people up at exactly this stage, and the quick fix for each one.

Every automation you build, in this course or after it, tends to hit the same handful of snags the first time. None of them are complicated once you know what to look for. This lesson is the list, so you spot the cause in seconds instead of losing an afternoon to it.

Before and after

What you see, and the first thing to check

Nearly everyone hits these on a first build. Each has a quick, specific fix.

Before

What you see

• It did not send anything
• The welcome went to spam
• The wrong date is in the email
• Wrong people on the checklist
• It used up all my tasks
• It stopped after a week

Symptom to first check

What changes: Symptom to first check.

After

Check this first

1. 01Is the Zap switched on? Then Zap History
2. 02Send from the real People mailbox
3. 03Date format; set the sheet to United Kingdom
4. 04Read the filter condition out loud
5. 05Each action counts; watch your usage
6. 06Reconnect the expired or departed login

“It didn’t send anything”

The most common cause by far: the Zap is still switched off. Go back and check the toggle from lesson six, it is easy to test every step individually, feel like you are done, and forget the one flip that makes it live. The second most common cause is a field mapped to the wrong place. Check Zap History (from the last lesson) and look at exactly what data arrived at each step. The answer is usually obvious from there.

“The welcome went to spam”

This is almost always about trust, not content. It matters more here than usual, because the email goes to a personal inbox from a company the person has never heard from. An email sending from a generic, unfamiliar address looks automated to the recipient’s inbox provider and gets filtered accordingly. Send from a real connected mailbox, your People address, rather than a generic “Email by Zapier” address. That fixes most of it on its own, because a real address can build a sending reputation over time. If it keeps happening, check your email is not stuffed with words spam filters flag (FREE, ACT NOW, excessive exclamation marks). Keep the tone as plain as the example in lesson four. Tell the new starter in your offer letter to watch for an email from People.

“The wrong date, or the wrong name, is in the email”

A welcome that says “see you on 11 February” when the start date is 2 November is a poor first day. The cause is nearly always the date format: the form stores the date one way and the sheet or email shows it another. Check the order in your test email, set the sheet’s locale to United Kingdom, and test with a date like 3 November so a day-and-month mix-up is obvious. For names, check you inserted the Name field in the body and not typed a placeholder.

“The checklist has people on it who should not be there”

This means the filter is not catching what you intended. Go back into the filter step and read your condition out loud, exactly as written. A common trip-up is choosing “Contains” versus “Exactly matches”, if your dropdown option is literally “Permanent or fixed-term employee” but you typed a different word, nothing matches. Most tools are not case-sensitive so capitals are usually fine, but double check the field it is reading from is the one you think it is, not a similarly named one.

“It’s using up all my tasks”

Zapier gives each plan a limited number of tasks a month. Each action that runs counts as one, while triggers and filters do not. A single new starter going through the email and the sheet row uses two tasks. If you are testing repeatedly, which you should be, you will burn through some of that allowance on purpose. Do not panic about that while building. Once this is live, keep an eye on your usage in Zapier’s dashboard, so a busy hiring month does not hit the ceiling and stop the automation without you noticing.

“It worked in testing, then stopped a week later”

The most likely cause is a disconnected account. An app you connected may have asked you to re-confirm access (Google periodically does this for security), or the person whose login you used may have left. The automation has been failing ever since. Zapier normally emails you when a Zap fails repeatedly, so if that email arrives, do not ignore it, click through and reconnect the account it flags. This is why you connect a shared People mailbox and a named second owner from the start.

The habit that prevents most of this

Check Zap History every so often, especially in the first couple of weeks after switching something on. It takes thirty seconds and tells you plainly whether every run succeeded or where one went wrong. An automation you never look at is not more automated, it is just a mistake you have not found yet. Next, the last lesson: what to build once this one is bedded in.

You started this course with a form that did nothing but sit there. You are finishing it with an automation that welcomes every new starter within minutes. It judges which ones belong on the employee checklist. It builds that list for People and IT without a single copy and paste. That is not a small thing. Most businesses never get past the reading-about-it stage. You built it.

Let it bed in before you touch it again

Resist the urge to immediately go and automate five more things this weekend. Give this one a few hires of real running, glance at Zap History every few days, and let real starters pass through it. You will spot small wording tweaks to the welcome. You may notice the filter needs a second condition once real hiring managers use the form in ways you did not predict. An automation earns your trust by running correctly in the background, not by being finished on paper.

The same pattern, pointed at your next job

Here is the useful bit: you built one automation and learned the shape every automation in Zapier follows: a trigger, one or more actions and an optional filter, tested properly before it goes near a customer or a colleague. Once that shape is second nature, spotting the next candidate is easy. Look for anything in your business where you currently take information from one place and copy it into another by hand:

How it unfolds

The same pattern, pointed at your next four jobs

Let this one bed in first. Then reuse the trigger, action, filter and test on the next job.

1. First few hires

   Let it bed in

   Glance at Zap History every few days and tweak the wording as real starters pass through.

2. Next build

   IT account request

   An email to IT sent from the checklist row, listing the accounts and equipment needed.

   Accounts needed for Jo Parker, 2 NovEmail

   To[email protected]

   Standard accounts, laptop, finance system.

   Needed by 30 October.

3. After that

   Manager nudge in Teams

   A message to the hiring manager with their new starter's first-week tasks.

4. Then

   Leaver form

   The mirror image: remove accounts, collect equipment, tell payroll.

5. Later

   Induction bookings

   Add each new starter to the right induction sessions for their department.

• An email to IT, sent automatically from the checklist row, listing the accounts and equipment the new starter needs.
• A message to the hiring manager in Teams or Slack with their new starter’s first-week tasks.
• A leaver form that removes accounts and collects equipment, the mirror image of what you just built.
• A training booking that adds a new starter to the right induction sessions for their department.

If you want a wider look at which of those jobs to pick first, and how to think about the payback before you build, our other course covers exactly that ground. Automate your operations includes its own lesson on connecting your tools that pairs neatly with what you just did here. Our guide on the five-tool stack is a good five-minute read on where a tool like Zapier fits alongside the rest of the stack. Where to start with AI across your whole business is the right next stop if you are not sure which job to automate next.

Take the next one further, for free

If you would rather work from a ready-made list than start from a blank page again, our free 10 Automations pack gives you the ten highest-payback automations most businesses can build. It lists the tools and settings for each, so you can work down it at your own pace. Grab it from the free resources shelf.

Or bring the next one to us

If you would rather bring the process you suspect is costing the most to us, a free 30-minute fit call tests whether it is specific enough to audit. The business-wide AI Constraint Audit is £2,000 over 14 days.

You now have the pattern and the checks needed to test the onboarding automation, then decide whether it is ready to go live. That is the whole point.