Building the trigger: catching the enquiry the moment it lands

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 fills it in.

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 “Website enquiry: reply and log”, 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”.

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 real website platform’s form, search for its name (for example “WordPress” or “Wix”) and look for an event like “New Form Entry” or “New Form Submission”.
• 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, then come back and test again.

You should see a sample response appear, your name, your email, your test answer. This matters because it proves two things: Zapier can actually see your form, and it knows the shape of the data (which field is the name, which is the email) 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 person an instant reply.

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.