Pivotal Tracker Zapier integrationAutomate Pivotal Tracker with Zapier.
The Pivotal Tracker Zapier integration gives you 3 triggers, 2 actions and 1 search. All three triggers are checked on a timer, none is instant. Here is what each one does, what it costs and where it tends to trip people up.
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What the Pivotal Tracker Zapier integration actually does
It links your Pivotal Tracker account to Zapier. Something new in a project (a story, a project, any activity) can then start a chain of steps in your other tools. The other way round, those tools can create projects and stories in Tracker without anyone opening it.
Three outcomes cover most of what teams build. A project kickoff that writes itself: New Project starts the Zap and Create Story drops a first story into the fresh project, so nobody forgets the setup checklist. Requests turned into stories: a form, a support inbox or a spreadsheet row in another tool feeds Create Story, and the request lands in the backlog instead of a chat thread. A project feed for people who never open Tracker: New Activity or New Story pushes each change to the channel or sheet your managers already read.
Now the honest part. Zapier offers no action to update, move or delete a story, and no search for stories: you can create, and you can find a project by its name, that is it. None of the three triggers is instant either, so a story added in Tracker reaches your Zap at the next check, not the moment it is saved.
If those gaps matter, the Pivotal Tracker Make integration is the page to put next to this one before you choose.
Zapier vocabulary in one minute
Seven words come back on every line of this page. Here they are in plain English, once.
- Zap
- The automation you build on Zapier: one trigger, then one or more actions that run each time the trigger event happens.
- Trigger
- The event that starts the Zap, for example a new story in a Tracker project. Once the Zap is on, Zapier waits for it.
- Action
- What the Zap does once it has started: the step that creates, writes or sends something for you in an app.
- Task
- The unit Zapier bills. One task is one action your Zap completes successfully, and your plan is a count of those.
- Polling vs instant
- A polling trigger is checked on a timer and keeps only what is new. An instant trigger is reported by the app itself, with no wait.
- Filter
- A step that lets the Zap carry on only when what arrived meets your condition, and stops it quietly otherwise.
- Search step
- A step that looks up something that already exists, such as a project, so the steps after it can reuse what it found.
What a Pivotal Tracker Zap really costs
Pivotal Tracker is not one of the apps Zapier keeps for paid plans: it works from the free plan. What you pay for is tasks.
- Free plan100 tasks a month, unlimited Zaps
- Free plan Zap sizeTwo steps: one trigger, one action
- Trigger checksNever billed
- Failed actionNot counted
The trigger never costs a task, and neither do the checks Zapier runs to look for new stories, however often they happen. Each action that succeeds counts once, so a Zap with two Create Story steps costs two tasks per run. An action that fails is not counted. The catch on the free plan is size: one trigger and one action, nothing more. Add a filter, a second action or the Find Project search and the Zap becomes a multi-step Zap (anything beyond one trigger and one action), which needs a paid plan.
Connect your Pivotal Tracker account
- 01
Open your Zapier apps
Go to the Apps page of your Zapier account and click + Add connection. A connection is your Tracker account linked once, then reused by every Zap that touches Tracker.
- 02
Pick Pivotal Tracker
Type Pivotal Tracker in the search box of the dialog, select it, then click Add connection. You need an existing Tracker account at this point: Zapier does not create one for you.
- 03
Sign in and grant access
Sign in to Pivotal Tracker in the tab that opens and grant Zapier access to the account. From then on, every Tracker step in every Zap can pick this connection from a dropdown.
Your first Pivotal Tracker Zap
GoalEach new Tracker project gets a kickoff story, but only when it passes your condition.
- 01
Build the trigger
Create a new Zap, choose Pivotal Tracker as the app that starts it and
New Projectas the event, then pick your connection. - 02
Test it on a real project
Run the test. Zapier brings back the three most recent projects of your account, so pick one and map the next steps against real data rather than placeholders.
- 03
Add the filter
Click the plus icon, choose Filter, then set the field, the rule and the value in Configure & test. This step makes it a multi-step Zap, so a paid plan.
- 04
Add Create Story
Add Pivotal Tracker again with
Create Story. In the required Project field, map the project that came from the trigger, so the story lands in the right place. - 05
Test, then publish
Test the action once and check the story in Tracker. Then publish the Zap to switch it on: from that point, every new project that passes the filter gets its story.
Pivotal Tracker triggers
3 events start a Zap when something happens in Pivotal Tracker. Zapier checks for them at the interval your plan allows.
New Activity
Polling triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when any new activity happens within a project.”
Starts your Zap on any new activity inside one Tracker project, whatever its kind. It is the widest net of the three, so it fits a running log more than a precise rule.
New Project
Polling triggerIn Zapier“Trigger when a new Project is added.”
Fires on a project that did not exist at Zapier's last look. It is the only trigger here that works above the project level, which makes it the natural entry point for setup routines.
New Story
Polling triggerIn Zapier“Trigger when a new story is added in a project.”
Hands your Zap each story newly added to the project you pick, and nothing else. Narrower than New Activity, and usually the one teams actually want.
Pivotal Tracker actions
Pivotal Tracker gives you 2 actions. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.
Create Project
ActionIn Zapier“Creates a new project.”
Opens a brand new project in your Tracker account from data that arrives in another tool. One run, one project, one task.
Create Story
ActionIn Zapier“Creates a new story in a project.”
Writes a story into the project of your choice, which is how outside requests reach the backlog without copy and paste.
Pivotal Tracker search
1 search step looks for data that already exists in Pivotal Tracker, so a later step can use it.
A search step looks something up before the Zap acts. In the editor, searches sit at the bottom of the Action event list, under SEARCH. Three settings decide what happens when the answer is not clean.
Find Project
SearchFind or createIn Zapier“Finds an existing project by exact name match.”
Looks up a Tracker project by its name and hands it to the following steps, so a later Create Story knows where to go. The name has to match exactly; a near miss finds nothing.
The three settings every search exposes
- Successful if no search results are found?Left on its default, a search that finds nothing stops the Zap and skips the steps that relied on it. Switched on, the Zap carries on empty-handed.
- Create X if it doesn't exist yet?Ticking it turns the search into a find-or-create: the setting above disappears and the step asks for what it needs to create the missing item.
- If multiple search results are found?Three ways out: keep the first match (the default), stop the Zap, or pass every match on to the next steps.
When a Pivotal Tracker Zap breaks
Zapier attaches no help article of its own to Pivotal Tracker. What goes wrong comes from how Zaps work in general, and four cases show up again and again.
None of them throws an error you would spot in Tracker. They show up as missing stories, duplicate stories or a task count that drains faster than expected. If one of them keeps biting, the Zapier troubleshooting page is the next stop.
Old projects and stories never arrive
A Zap only reacts to what happens after you publish it. The stories already in Tracker are not picked up; moving that backlog is a separate job.The Zap that feeds itself
New Story and Create Story on the same project form a loop: every created story is a new story, so the Zap runs again and eats tasks fast.A bulk import gets held back
After a migration or a mass import, a trigger can return a huge batch at once. Zapier's flood protection may hold it back rather than run it all.Each item counts once
Zapier remembers what it has already seen on a polling trigger, so the same story does not start the Zap twice, which keeps runs and tasks honest.
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