Overview
Sometimes you may want to use some specific user data in an action that’s not readily available via the tokens in the recipe’s triggers. Here are a few example scenarios:
- When a user submits a form, include some of their profile information in a webhook sent to an external system (or Zapier, or Google Sheets) along with the form data.
- When a user completes a course, send an email to that user’s manager, whose email address is stored in a custom user metadata key manager_email.
- When a user purchases a product (in WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, etc.) generate and email certificate that contains their personal information stored in user meta.
User meta data
User meta data is stored in key-value pairs. When you want to find user meta data, you look up the value by specifying the corresponding key. For example, if first_name is a key, the corresponding value could be Ken. When using user meta data in Automator actions, you’ll specify the key and Automator will retrieve the corresponding value.
Using user meta data in actions
To use user meta data in actions, you’ll need to insert a User meta key token. You can find the User meta key token in the tokens menu:
This token is different from other tokens because after it is inserted, you need to specify the user meta key that you want to use the value of. When you insert the token, you’ll see this popup:
You’ll need to specify the user meta key that you want to retrieve the corresponding value of. So, to retrieve the value of the manager_email key from the example above, you would enter manager_email in the User meta key field, then click Add token.
This will output the value associated with the user meta key manager_email.
The user meta key is a really powerful token that lets you retrieve any custom user meta data for use in your recipes. We’re working on making it even easier to use user meta data in Automator actions. Stay tuned!
