How to Automatically Add Google Drive Folders to Motion.io Projects

Instead of creating Google Drive folders for each client and manually embedding them into your Motion.io projects, you can use Zapier to automate the process.

This article provides a step-by-step guide for creating a Zap that automatically handles the following actions:

1. Creates a new Google Drive Folder for each client you onboard
2. Generates the iFrame embed code needed to embed Google Drive Folders in Motion.io
3. Creates a new project from one of your Motion.io templates and invites clients to it
4. Adds a Google Drive embed value as a custom field to have it automatically display within any tasks or portal pages of the project it is added to

Before You Begin

Create a Custom Field

To successfully set up this Zap, you must create a custom field in your Motion.io account.
Navigate to your account’s “Settings” page and select the “Fields” tab. Click “Add Field,” enter “Google Drive Embed” as the label, and {{GDRIVE}} as the slug.

After creating your custom field, adding the slug {{GDRIVE}} to the “App Embed Code” section of tasks and portal pages in both active projects or templates will allow you to display the Google Drive Folder this Zap creates directly in your client’s portals.

Create a New Spreadsheet in Google Docs

You must add a small code snippet for Google Drive folders to display in Motion.io. Normally, this step must be done manually, but you can automate the process via Zapier.

To do this, create a new spreadsheet in Google Drive with column headers for folder name, original URL, and embed URL.

Step 1: Add a Trigger Event

In Zapier, a “Trigger” is an event that happens in a software application that causes the rest of the actions in a Zap to fire.

While the example Zap in this guide triggers when a new customer is created in Stripe, you can use various other events and software applications to start a similar Zap. Some examples of other events you can use as triggers to start a Zap of your own include:

• Contacts being marked as closed/won in a CRM like Hubspot or Pipedrive
• Messages sent to communication apps like Slack that notify your team of new customers
• New customers in alternate billing platforms like Charge or Paddle

Step 2: Add an Action to “Create Folder” in Google Drive

With your trigger event configured, click the button to add a new action. Select “Google Drive” from the action modal and choose “Create Folder” from the “App & Event” dropdown.

Map the “Folder Name” field under the “Actions” tab to the new customer’s name from the Stripe trigger event.

Step 3: Add an Action to “Create Spreadsheet Row” in Google Sheets

Following the action to create a Folder in Google Drive, add an action to “Create a Spreadsheet row” in Google Sheets. In the “Action” tab, map the following fields as follows:

• Spreadsheet: Map this field to the new “Google Drive URLs” spreadsheet you created following the instructions at the beginning of this article.

• Folder Name: Map this field to the “Title” value of the folder created by Google Drive in the previous action.
• Original URL: Map this field to the “Alternate Link” value generated by the “Create Folder in Google Drive” action.

• Embed URL: An additional step is required to configure this field. Refer to the instructions below for details on how to do this.

To configure the “Embed URL” field, paste the following code snippet:

<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/embeddedfolderview?id=FOLDER-ID#grid" style="width:100%; height:600px; border:0;"></iframe>

After pasting the above code snippet, replace the default “FOLDER-ID” text with the unique ID of the folder Google Drive created in the previous action.

Step 4: Add an Action to “Create Project” in Motion.io

For the final step of this Zap, choose Motion.io’s “Create Project” action. Map the information from the Stripe Customer Trigger to the corresponding fields in the “Action” tab.

• Portal Template – Select a template you’d like this Zap to create a portal from or leave empty if you would like this Zap to create portals from scratch each time is it triggers.
• Portal Name – Map this field to the customer name pulled in from the Stripe trigger.
• Project Owner – Map this field to the email address of the team member you would like to assign as the owner of the project. Leave this field empty if you would not like to assign a project owner.
• Client Email – Map this field to the customer’s email address from the Stripe Trigger.

• Custom Field Values – Map the top field’s value to the {{GDRIVE}} slug you created and the bottom field’s value to the corresponding “Embed URL” from your Google Sheet.

Next Steps to Automatically Add Google Drive Folders to Motion.io Projects

And you’re done! After publishing this Zap, any projects it creates where the {{GDRIVE}} custom field is used will automatically populate with your client’s new Google Drive folder.

If you don’t yet have a Motion.io account, sign up for a trial and see why we are the best client portal & onboarding software out there. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you run into any issues while setting up this Zap; we’re happy to help!