Start a workflow from outside with a catch hook
An inbound webhook: another system posts to a URL and a workflow runs. Available on every plan, and the cleanest way to integrate anything.
A catch hook is the sixth trigger: instead of something happening inside Convarza, something outside posts to a URL and the workflow runs.
This is the recommended shape for almost any integration. Keep the outside system as thin as possible — have it post the event — and do the actual work in a workflow, where your team can read what happens. A Zap containing five steps of business logic is invisible to everyone except the person who built it.
Before you start
- A system that can send an HTTP request.
- Manager or admin access.
- A plan for what to do when the payload is malformed.
Steps
Create a workflow that uses a catch hook as its trigger
Everything else about the workflow works identically — the same conditions, the same steps, the same owner.
That is the point of doing integrations this way. The logic lives somewhere your team can read, rather than inside a Zap in somebody's personal account.
Copy the hook URL and treat it as a secret
Anyone who has it can start your workflow. Store it where you store credentials, not in a shared document.
Send a test request from the other system
Your website form, your e-commerce platform, your ERP, or an integration platform.
Check what arrived
Confirm the data landed in the shape you expected before building steps that depend on it. Assumptions about payload shape are where these break.
Build the steps
Create or update the contact, assign it, send an acknowledgement, create a task. This is where the logic belongs — visible, readable and owned.
Guard against bad payloads
Outside systems send unexpected things. An "only if" checking that the essential field is present prevents the workflow failing loudly every time somebody submits a half-filled form.
Make it safe to be called twice
Networks retry. If your workflow creates a contact every time it fires, a retry creates a duplicate — which is the single most common integration problem.
Turn it live and watch the first few
Then confirm the workflow owner is somebody who will notice failures.
Catch hooks fail differently from in-product triggers: the outside system changes, or stops calling, and nothing inside Convarza has any reason to complain. The owner is your only detection.
Check it worked
Submit through the real path — your actual website form, not a test tool — and follow one record all the way through. Then submit deliberately bad data and confirm the workflow declines gracefully rather than failing.
The parts people get wrong
- A catch hook is inbound: something else calls Convarza. A channel webhook is different — that is a provider telling Convarza a message arrived.
- If the URL leaks, treat it as a credential incident and regenerate it.
- Doing the logic in a workflow rather than in Zapier means your team can read it, own it and fix it.