Business card scanner for Zapier.

How it works

Somebody on your stand photographs a card with the CardParse app. The card is parsed into named fields, anything the parser is unsure about is flagged for a person to check rather than guessed at, and the contact appears in your dashboard.

A POST to your catch hook, one per card, carrying the fields you mapped. The fields that make the journey are below.

Connecting it

In Zapier, create a Zap with the Webhooks by Zapier trigger, choose Catch Hook, and paste the URL it gives you into CardParse.

Scanning works with no signal. Cards queue on the phone and upload themselves when the connection comes back, which matters more at a trade show than anywhere else: a hall full of people is a hall full of phones fighting over the same cell.

Automatically, or when you say so

Each destination is set to one or the other. Automatic means every card arrives within seconds of being scanned, with anything flagged for review held back until somebody confirms it. The alternative is that nothing leaves on its own: you select the contacts you want on the contacts table and press send, whenever you are ready.

Which one suits depends on the show. A stand qualifying as it goes usually wants to check before sending; a stand collecting as fast as it can usually does not.

Worth knowing

• The catch hook URL is the credential, so it is encrypted at rest and never displayed again. Turning the Zap off stops the delivery at your end.
• This is the only destination that carries every field including the event and the time of the scan, because a Zap can do something useful with both and a CRM contact record usually cannot.
• A card is posted once. If your Zap fails, CardParse retries it; if it succeeds and your Zap then loses the data, that is beyond where we can see.