As a Chinese, I never have the habit to communicate with anyone through e-mails before registered as a international student. Back in our country, we use chat apps instead to do everything that e-mails can do, thus I kept forgetting to check mail-box and kept making mistakes because of missing mails. Therefore, I am wondering APIs can solve this problem by send a notification to the chat apps as soon as new mails come so I worked on this topic. And here it is.
This is an application that links the email apps to the chat apps. Whenever you recieve a email, you will also recieve a notification in Facebook Messenger to avoid you miss any email. With this application, you don't have to download a brunch of email apps in your phone to read all the mails.
If you are a student, a white-collar, a teacher or anyone who need constantly check their mail-box to avoid missing important emails, this application is for you! Especially for whom don't like to download a lot of email apps, with this application, you can read mails through chat apps!
The keypoint of the solution is application programming interfaces (APIs) which enables us to link different softwares together, with what we will link the email apps to the chat apps. Here we will take Microsoft Outlook(email app) and Facebook Messenger(chat app) as an example to show the setup process.
We're going to use Zapier, which is an automation tool that makes it really easy to connect different services (such as Gmail, Slack, Mailchimp and more) using their APIs, with a simple interface. The setup process even don't need you to code anything.
First, create an account on Zapier, and follow the instruction below to fullfil the application.
1. Create a new Zap by click on "Make a Zap"
2. Select and choose "Outlook" in "Choose a trigger", then click
"continue"
3. Select and choose "New email" in "Trigger event", then click
"continue"
4. Choose your Outlook account in "Choose account", then click
"continue"
5. Click "Test Trigger", if test is good, then click "continue"
6. Select and choose "Facebook Messenger" in "Choose an action"
7. Select and choose "Send message from page" in "Action event", then
click "continue"
8. Choose your Messenger account in "Choose account", then click
"continue"
9. Customize message according to your preference, and click
"continue"
10. Now you have all the settings done! And you are free to try this
application with other email apps and chat apps!
Project imagined using Microsoft Outlook & Facebook Messenger
Author: Sijie GONG
Email: sijie.gong@edu.em-lyon.com