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5 min read

4 ways to automate Dovetail

By Nicole Replogle · January 3, 2023
A hero image of the Dovetail app logo connected to other app logos with black lines on a light purple background.

Dovetail is a collaborative platform for storing and sharing user research. It's a popular tool because of its intuitive interface and robust analytics, making it an effective platform for discovering patterns and making insights into what your customers really need out of your product.

But as powerful as Dovetail is, you can make it even more powerful by connecting it to the rest of your tech stack. With Zaps—our word for our automated workflows—you can easily build systems to connect info and teams across your organization.

We've compiled the most popular ways to automate Dovetail with Zapier—from inputting customer feedback across survey tools to connecting Dovetail to your most-used databases and project management apps. 

Zapier is the leader in workflow automation—integrating with thousands of apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use interfaces, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization's technology stack. Learn more.

Table of contents

  • Add customer feedback

  • Add feedback from your team

  • Connect Dovetail to your other tools

  • Connect Dovetail to almost any other app

To get started with a Zap template—what we call our pre-made workflows—just click on the button. It only takes a few minutes to set up. You can read more about setting up Zaps here.

Add customer feedback

Incorporating customer feedback is one of the most essential responsibilities of a product management team. You need to constantly gather feedback, analyze the product's performance, and make adjustments to your product based on real-time customer reactions and requests.

But the methods of gathering customer feedback are almost as varied as the customers themselves—which is why you should automate collecting data from various sources and inputting it into Dovetail for analysis and implementation.

From forms and surveys

Form builders and survey tools are easy and accessible ways to learn how your customers feel about your product. Simply embed a form on your site, email customers a form link, or use a tool like Hotjar to build surveys and suggestion boxes directly into your product.

But hundreds of survey responses won't do you much good unless you have a quick and easy way to organize them. You need a reliable process for centralizing form data to get a good look at the bigger picture—finding patterns in customer opinions and making informed decisions about the future of your product. 

Make it easier to find those patterns by sending new form and survey entries to Dovetail automatically. 

Create Dovetail notes for new Typeform entries

Create Dovetail notes for new Typeform entries
  • Typeform logo
  • Dovetail logo
Typeform + Dovetail

Add new Google Form responses to Dovetail as notes

Add new Google Form responses to Dovetail as notes
  • Google Forms logo
  • Dovetail logo
Google Forms + Dovetail

Add new Wufoo form entries to Dovetail as notes

Add new Wufoo form entries to Dovetail as notes
  • Wufoo logo
  • Dovetail logo
Wufoo + Dovetail

Create notes in Dovetail from new Hotjar feedback responses

Create notes in Dovetail from new Hotjar feedback responses
  • Hotjar logo
  • Dovetail logo
Hotjar + Dovetail

From email

Sometimes, your customers send feedback and feature requests through email. The best way to centralize your user research is to ensure relevant customer emails are funneled to the same destination as your other sources of customer feedback.

If your team uses Gmail, simply add a label to relevant emails, and those emails will be automatically saved as notes in Dovetail. Or you can forward specific emails to a dedicated Zapier email address, and the Email by Zapier integration will automatically create a new Dovetail note with the email's contents.

Save new forwarded emails as Dovetail notes

Save new forwarded emails as Dovetail notes
  • Email by Zapier logo
  • Dovetail logo
Email by Zapier + Dovetail

Add new labeled Gmail emails to Dovetail as notes [Business Gmail Accounts Only]

Add new labeled Gmail emails to Dovetail as notes [Business Gmail Accounts Only]
  • Gmail logo
  • Dovetail logo
Gmail + Dovetail

From social media

Let's face it: most of your customers aren't going to seek out the right email address or phone number to express their real-time reactions to your product. They're much more likely to take to Twitter.

Why miss out on that valuable feedback? Instead of relying on your social media team to inform you of relevant Tweets, use this Zap template to append new Twitter mentions to a note in the related Dovetail project. That way, your product management team can include Twitter feedback when looking for patterns in customer opinions.

From customer support tools

If your organization uses a help desk tool like Freshdesk, Intercom, or Zendesk, it can be helpful to set up an automated workflow to send customer feedback and feature requests directly to your product management app

Use these Zaps to automatically send customer feedback to your support tools. That way, these customer interactions are at your fingertips when making informed decisions about product updates.

Save new Freshdesk tickets as Dovetail notes

Save new Freshdesk tickets as Dovetail notes
  • Freshdesk logo
  • Dovetail logo
Freshdesk + Dovetail

Create a note in Dovetail for new tickets in Zendesk

Create a note in Dovetail for new tickets in Zendesk
  • Zendesk logo
  • Dovetail logo
Zendesk + Dovetail

Add feedback from your team

In many product management processes, team members receive user feedback anecdotally and need a way to share that information with the whole team. Then, that user feedback can be turned into actionable notes and tasks. 

Perhaps you have a specific Slack channel dedicated to feedback, or maybe your team members tend to have conversations about product-related feedback across various Slack channels. Either way, you can set up a Zap to watch for new Slack messages in a channel or with a specific tag—and send matching entries to Dovetail as a new note.

Save new Slack reactions to Dovetail notes

Save new Slack reactions to Dovetail notes
  • Slack logo
  • Dovetail logo
Slack + Dovetail

Save new Slack messages to Dovetail notes

Save new Slack messages to Dovetail notes
  • Slack logo
  • Dovetail logo
Slack + Dovetail

Instead of Slack, your team might compile user research using a notes app like Evernote or a web clipper like Pocket. In that case, the Zaps below can automatically add new notes or pages to Dovetail. From there, your team can organize your research notes in one place to uncover patterns and insights more easily.

Add new Evernote notes to Dovetail as notes

Add new Evernote notes to Dovetail as notes
  • Evernote logo
  • Dovetail logo
Evernote + Dovetail

Save new Pocket items to Dovetail notes

Save new Pocket items to Dovetail notes
  • Pocket logo
  • Dovetail logo
Pocket + Dovetail

Connect Dovetail to your other tools

If you're like every other modern organization, your team uses more than one app to stay organized, productive, and informed across departments. After all, Dovetail may be an excellent tool for compiling and analyzing customer research—but it can't do everything. 

Update Spreadsheets

For instance, there's nothing like a spreadsheet for powerful (and endlessly customizable) analytics. You might use Google Sheets to store research notes or customer data. But without automation, you're stuck manually copying and pasting information back and forth between tools, which can lead to data errors or missed info. Instead, you can use a Zap to import new or updated spreadsheet data into Dovetail for analysis.

Create Dovetail notes for new Google Sheets rows

Create Dovetail notes for new Google Sheets rows
  • Google Sheets logo
  • Dovetail logo
Google Sheets + Dovetail

Connect to project and product management apps

Or maybe you use tools like Trello, Airtable, or Productboard to visualize, prioritize, and assign tasks across your team. Instead of perpetually switching between tools to find information, you can set up a Zap to copy relevant information from one tool to another.

Create Dovetail notes for new Trello cards

Create Dovetail notes for new Trello cards
  • Trello logo
  • Dovetail logo
Trello + Dovetail

Create notes in Dovetail from new records in Airtable

Create notes in Dovetail from new records in Airtable
  • Airtable logo
  • Dovetail logo
Airtable + Dovetail

Create notes in Productboard from new insights in Dovetail

Create notes in Productboard from new insights in Dovetail
  • Dovetail logo
  • Productboard logo
Dovetail + Productboard

Organize bug-tracking data

If your team uses Jira or GitHub for feedback management, at least some of that data should probably make its way to your product management app. 

Dovetail is a great place to store feedback data and bug reports so you can find patterns and ways to improve your product over time. Streamline the process by automatically importing new issues in Jira or GitHub directly into Dovetail.

Save new JIRA issues as Dovetail notes

Save new JIRA issues as Dovetail notes
  • Jira Software Server logo
  • Dovetail logo
Jira Software Server + Dovetail

Save new GitHub issues as Dovetail notes

Save new GitHub issues as Dovetail notes
  • GitHub logo
  • Dovetail logo
GitHub + Dovetail

Connect Dovetail to almost any other app

Zapier lets you connect Dovetail to thousands of apps. But on the off chance you use a tool that isn't (yet!) supported by Zapier, you can use webhooks to send information between that app and Dovetail automatically.

Webhooks are automated messages sent from one app to another, triggered by a specific activity. For example, say you use a custom or obscure form builder to conduct user surveys. You can set up a webhook to look for new form submissions and import them automatically into Dovetail.

Use the template below to get started.

Create new Dovetail notes from a webhook

Create new Dovetail notes from a webhook
  • Webhooks by Zapier logo
  • Dovetail logo
Webhooks by Zapier + Dovetail

Save time with custom automation

By definition, the product management process is complex and usually involves pulling information from multiple sources. Whether it's from forms and surveys, anecdotal feedback from your team, or input from your other internal tools, you need a consistent method for consolidating relevant data into one source of truth for user research and product development.

Use Zapier to keep your tech stack in sync—that way, your team can redirect that time to more important tasks.

This is just the start of what you can do with Zapier and Dovetail. Check out our app directory to see what you can create.

Related reading:

  • How to automate your product management workflows

  • Automation for project managers: Make your job easier

  • 4 ways to automate Productboard

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A Zap with the trigger 'When I get a new lead from Facebook,' and the action 'Notify my team in Slack'