Well thanks for the fantastic Robot Assistant FG David. I have literally spent the past 2 weeks working most days/nights until Midnight putting together my Robot “Archie” and he is quite literally becoming my right hand man!
I have him watching so many aspects of our small business. The most interesting things is watching when you send him any type of report/document/statement how he can just look at it and know whats going on, can look at figures and now what they’re all about and make sure their Calculated correctly without even being told.
A couple of days ago l decided to teach him some data entry skills for Quickbooks. He wanted to watch me populate the templates…took screenshots for the skill, even asked relevant and quite logical questions etc. Just like a real new staff member watching on! It was then his turn but even trying from within Chrome and with the Quickbooks connector Archie wasn’t allowed to do any data entry on my behalf. Google searches told me that this is in fact a MAJOR barrier with Cowork at the moment as “Bots” (for good reason) can’t enter data into forms or websites. Now this was a big setback as l have lots of tasks l wanted him to do in Quickbooks. Whilst there are some free MCPs on Github l wasn’t willing to risk the data. So a chat with ChatGPT and some searching found that Zapier has tons of FULL integrations with many apps…Quickboooks and Outlook being 2 of them. So after a quick trial set, so far the testing has been faultless. Yes Archie had to do some “figuring out” since the QBO connector used IDs instead of accounts but he can now enter data perfectly. Outlook integration is slow but he can now move, flag, draft replies etc. I have some caveats , NO send, NO Deletes. I created a “Temp Delete Folder” where he put things until l can double check before deleting. And drafts sit there until l can double check and hit the send. ChatGPT suggested with the QBO entries that in the memo section it states “Created by Archie” so l know if there is a problem.
Anyhow l know a lot of people are on this “band wagon” and are no doubt hitting walls…so thought this may help. Zapier isn’t cheap but for me its absolutely a worthwhile fallback until the App developers create 1st Party MCPs.
it is enticing, but thus far i’ve resisted as i’m skittish about having Zapier keep the credentials for those services i could connect to.
Well according to all l have read Zapier uses Oauth 2.0 Authentication so they don’t actually keep any passwords etc, Its supposedly as as safe as l can get until Microsoft releases its own MCP…
Hi, Sue. Would you comfortable giving it your bank and credit account logins to download monthly PDF statements?
I would NEVER hand over bank logins to Zapier or any other service! The connector has nothing to do with bank logins, statements, or payments. I am getting it to enter expenses and receipts….in Davids words the Donkey Work. I also blocked any deletions. So far it has been unbelievably fast and accurate. I will be doing the balancing so l can make sure its right.
I’m working with Claude to replicate Tiller. I like the basic concept of managing my finances from an Excel workbook, with auto-categorization functionality and the like, but I’d prefer to populate it via CSV files that I download myself rather than relying on a service to fetch info directly from my accounts. It’s going to take a few iterations to get a polished workflow in place, but so far, so good.
Zapier does support a lot of MCPs that are not on the Anthropic catalogue. The Google MCP (Gmail, Drive, Calendar) can perform a wider range of actions than the Anthropic Catalogue MCP can. They also have an Outlook.com MCP, which Anthropic do not have (to my knowledge). I don’t have issues trusting Zapier, I would never give access to my bank account to any AI of course. I’m on the free Zapier plan, my use is infrequent but glad to have access to the tools should I need them.
Could you kindly explain what Zapier is?
Is it a local software or cloud software that is in between Anthropic and the Service like Outlook.com?
Do I connect it to claude with a Zapier MCP and it then connects to all other services?
I am using the Outlook MCP from Zapier. It works well but struggles with moving emails to sub-folders.
It works well for Archie to creat drafts, and move emails to a “pre-delete” folder.
I didn’t want to go down the Gmail path.
Apparently (and hopefully someone can confirm this) that if you have a CoPilot account you can use the Microsoft MCP from that?
Zapier is a platform that connects web applications together into “Zaps” that can move data between them automatically. It’s been around for many years, but has embraced AI in a big way.
Thanks for the explanation! I will give it a try.
Thought about creating flows on keyboard maestro, and making Claude fill the input fields of a Keyboard Maestro script?
Do Selenium or Puppeteer support form filling?