Make an Adaptive Card with Zapier

Zapier is the most popular business automation platform. It’s main goal is to bridge gaps between applications by letting you push data from any of it’s 5000 apps to another one. Once you setup such a Zap, it is executed seamlessly behind the scenes.

However there are certain scenarios where you may not want your data to stay “behind” the scenes. For example, people building personal dashboards might want to see their data aggregated on their screen. Clearbox reports that monitoring all aspects of a business, from one place, is a core aim of an efficient digital workplace.
Indeed, Zapier offers a few ways in which users can view data: for example, Email or RSS can be used as a way of forwarding incoming Triggers to a users inbox or preferred RSS reader.

There is even one Zapier app named Adaptive Card Maker that lets you push Zaps to a personal dashboard. In this article, we’ll see how that works.

Create a free dashboard

To start, get yourself over to the Digital Assistant registration page and register a free account. Once that’s done you’ll be greeted by your own (and empty) Board where the Adaptive Cards will later go.

Start your Zap

Now let’s head over to Zapier’s list of some 5,000 apps. Start a new Zap from their website by searching for your source app in the first dropdown, and then selecting Adaptive Card Maker by adenin in the second dropdown.

Configure steps

Then start to connect with your source app following the steps required by Zapier’s Zap Editor. For the Adaptive Card Maker event you will have selected Generate New Card Entry (there’s just one option) and this is how you need to configure it:

Basically each line in the Zap corresponds to a line of the Adaptive Card you will get on your Board. Once you send the test event off, the Card will automatically appear on your Digital Assistant Board at https://app.adenin.com/.

You can repeat sending of test events, or generate real events in your source app and refine the Zap event until you’re happy with the result.

Editing the Zapier Adaptive Card

If you want to further change the layout of your Card, you can also open it in the Adaptive Card designer. For that, just click the ··· button and then select Edit in Designer.

For example, you could move the image around into a side-by-side view by using a ColumnSet element.

Related: Tutorial how to make an Adaptive Card

(optional) Embed into your SharePoint or intranet

The last step would be to share your Zapier Adaptive Card with your team, for example in SharePoint or the Microsoft Viva dashboard. For that, just hit the Share button in the Adaptive Card Designer and then select your desired intranet platform. The platform will then direct you to the various AppSource packages for each product.

Related: Find out which channels support Zapier Adaptive Cards

For example in Viva Connections dashboard, your Zapier Adaptive Card would look like this:

~~

Have you made an Adaptive Card with Zapier before? What are your most recommended Zapier apps you like to share with your team, or do you prefer them just for your own use? Let us know in the comments below.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Posts
Read More

How to make a personal dashboard (for work apps)

Just like you can see the weather by looking out the window for .3 seconds, most of us have the wish to get a complete view of our data ‘situation’ with just a glance at our dashboard. Making your own personal “hub” can be fun and problematic at the same time, depending on how open you are to compromise on this instantly “glanceable” vision of a dashboard. In this guide we’ll go through how to create your own personal dashboard, but focus specifically on your workplace apps. These are even harder to summarize conveniently than private apps, where any iPhone…
Read More

The best replacements for Outlook’s Calendar Board

In June ’23 Microsoft – after just two years – will retire Calendar Board, Outlook’s special calendar view (available on the web version only) that let you add widgets to a personal dashboard. You had a choice of about a dozen different widgets and could arrange them anyway you liked, but the experience was always a little finicky and never saw 3rd party widget support. Released in 2021 at a similar time to Viva Connections, it was showing a degree of UI polish that suggested – when first released – Microsoft was indeed very committed to the idea of creating…
Read More

How to create a Botpress workplace chatbot using business data

Botpress is an unusual offering in the landscape of AI chatbots; it’s free, and it’s open-source, which immediately puts it at the top of the list for many people. Not only that, but it can be hosted on your own equipment – a big plus for organizations that want to keep tight control over where their chatbot requests go. But if you’re planning to use Botpress for an internal office chatbot, will the open-source nature of the platform be a hindrance or an advantage? I’ve created my own AI chatbot using Botpress and documented the process, so you can follow…
Read More

Building with Adaptive Cards? 7 things you need to consider

Adaptive Cards are a universal Card UI framework released by Microsoft in 2017 which aims to standardize the layouting of Cards independent of the host platform.The goal is to define a Card just once, make it portable and leave it to the different platforms to skin it according to its own requirements. For the first couple years, whether to make an Adaptive Card was a question for people developing with Bot Framework. But recently they have moved into new territory, such as Viva Connections or Windows 11 Widgets. Pro and cons of using Adaptive Cards Whatever you’re working on (or about to…