Feature
New feature: filter outputs in the launcher

You can now filter the outputs that you want or you don't want in a workflow, directly in the launcher.
In order to do that:

  • Create or use a pre-existing workflow
  • Finish configuring the workflow
  • Go to the launcher in the "Configure Output Data" section
  • Filter the outputs you don't want by switching them off

Screenshot 2022-12-30 at 15.42.47.png

In your job results, you will only see the outputs you decided to keep :)

Announcement
Less is more

Hello everyone,

We are currently working on improving the different categories on our Store.

We will communicate about it once it's done.

For the moment, if you have trouble finding the right workflow, do not hesitate to look for it in the search bar or ask the support.

Thank you

See you soon

  • G
Fix & Issues
⏱ Delays in Jobs - Resolved ✅

Dear users,

We've experienced some issues making the jobs you launch in running or pending state for a long amount of time.

We've identified the problem and running some fixes as we speak.

All jobs should resume today. You have nothing to do on your side.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.
We'll make a new announcement very soon to let yo know you can use the platform normally again.

Regards,
Captain Data Team

The Workflow Editor is out!

Product Updates 🚨

The most expected feature of the year, the Workflow Editor, was released!

What is it?

For our newbies, the Workflow Editor is a new feature on our platform allowing you to build automated workflows in no time.

Thanks to the automations available on the platform, you are now able to create a workflow from scratch according to your stack and needs.

How does it work?

The Workflow Editor can be used in two ways:

  • by creating a workflow from scratch
  • or by editing a pre-existing template on the Store

Create a workflow from scratch

Let’s say you want to use your creativity and build a workflow according to your internal strategy.

Go to “My workflows” section.

You’ll be able to see the button to create a workflow from scratch:

WE (4).png

You can also go directly on the “Store” and click on the button on the right of the search bar:

WE (5).png

Edit a pre-existing template

Now, let’s say you are thrilled about the templates you can find on the Store but you want to edit one by adding or modifying steps in it.

Go on the Store and select the template you want to edit.

Click on "Create a new workflow" or "New Configuration".

Once in the configuration, you’ll be able to edit the template by clicking on the “Edit workflow” button, at the top-left of the page:

Capture d’écran 2022-03-28 à 10.42.50.png

Then, dissociate the workflow from the template to be able to edit it by clicking on “Dissociate”:

Screenshot 2022-03-25 at 16.47.02.png

How-to use?

As always we've prepared a complete documentation teaching you how-to use this new feature.

You can check it here: How to create and edit a workflow with the Workflow Editor.

We are so excited for you to test this new feature and we look forward to get all your feedback 🙂.

We will send you a form next week to collect all your feedback in more details.

For now, if you're experiencing some issues, please contact our support.

Best,

Guillaume
Co-founder

Announcement
Captainers, there's been a delay...

“Good things come to those who wait”

Contrarily to what we announced in our last newsletter on Monday 21st, we are re-scheduling the release of our most-wanted feature: The Workflow Editor, which we originally forecasted for March 7th.

Why is that

Well, as mentioned above, we were so excited to step up the game with this product development that we may have been too enthusiastic 😅.

An important part of this release is based on an exclusive component dedicated to data aggregation which is something new and (almost) never done in the automation market. Our entire team is working hard to deliver this tailored, state of the art release, in order to make it as functional as possible for the due date.

Speaking of due date... The Workflow Editor will be ready to use on **March 28th***.

Worth the wait!

In the meantime, let’s have a look at what’s new: Captain Academy, New Automations, improvements, and fixes.

Captain Data Academy

We share, we help you work, you learn.

An important part of our job is to advise our clients on data automation, lead gen & co. We decided it was time to bundle this knowledge in an Academy!

Soon to be released, you’ll have access to complete courses, with tutos and ready-to-use templates, to learn everything you need to know about data automation. Stay tuned!

Interested? Send us an email at: sales@captaindata.co

Fresh new automations 🧑‍🚀

Improvements 🛠️

  • Added “primary” shared connections for LinkedIn People Search with the following fields:
    • number_shared_connections
    • shared_connection_profile_urls
    • search_connection_search_url
  • Handled the “location” parameter in the SerpWow Google Search automation

Fixes ⚙️

  • Search Pages Jaunes: we added more volume for the search
  • Filter issues on workflows using Sales Navigator

As always, feel free to add and vote for new ideas in our public roadmap here.

See you soon,

Captain Data Team

*we will begin to deploy during the night of the 27th.

Announcement
Our most asked feature is coming soon 🤫

The Workflow Editor, one of our most expected feature of the year, is coming very soon!

Build your own workflows, in no time

Ever dreamed of building your own automated workflows? Well, our team is making your dream come true!

On March 7th *, you’ll be able to build your own workflows by linking together multiple automations available on the platform.

Imagination will be the only limit!

Here's a little snippet of what it will look like:

image.png

How will it work?

As simple as this: by linking different automation blocks between them. For each automation block you’ll be adding to your workflow, you’ll be able to retrieve data from the previous step to build the next one. 

Data aggregation will also be possible between automations, giving you the opportunity to customize your outputs

As it will be the first release, we know that it won’t be flawless! Every feedback is welcomed as it will help us build the best feature possible, just for you 🤗.
We will keep you updated in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, you can continue to upvote or add new automation ideas to our public roadmap.

Best,

Guillaume
Co-Founder

*We'll start releasing it the 6th

Fix & Issues
Sales Navigator Maintenance Done ✅

Hello Captains!

Coming back to you with great news!

The following workflows were corrected and can be used:

There might some edge cases we did not see. So please if you notice any instability on any job, please contact us right ahead through our support. This is our top priority.

Thank you for your patience,

Happy Automating,
Captain Data Team

Fix & Issues
Sales Navigator Maintenance Update

Hey Captains!

Coming back to you with some updates about the ongoing maintenance on Sales Navigator.

Good News:

✅ Corrected and can be used:

If you notice any instability on any new job, please let us know so we can optimize you experience. Just hit the "Help button" from the side navigation bar.

⚠ Testing in progress :

We're battle testing every case possible.

Everything should go back to normal by next week.

Captain Data Team

Fix & Issues
⚠️ Sales Navigator Automation Maintenance

Hello Captains!

This week, Sales Navigator has released some new updates on its UI and aggressively started releasing it progressively.

The migration also has impacts on the old versions behavior.

The following automations are impacted:

We're putting all our effort and working day and night to release new versions for each automation.

✅ Our amazing team (thank you 🤩) has already corrected:

⚠ Work in progress :

Stay tuned, we ship smart code fast, we'll make a new announcement by the end of the week.

Captain Data Team

Extract an event, Generic scraper... What's new on Captain Data

Find out what the team has been doing for the past two weeks:

Fresh new automations 🧑‍🚀

Where can I find it?

You can find this automation on the Store in the application “Captain Data” or by typing “Generic Scraper” in the search bar:

Generic Scraper newsletter (1).png

How does it work?

In your configuration, you need to input a website URL.
Then, you’ll be able to add parameters to custom the data you want to extract with the number of results, the data selectors and the pagination path for example.

Check our how-to guide to know how we extracted data such as the name of many dermatologists on Doctolib with this automation.

Feedback from our beta testers on this new automation is welcome through our support 🤗.

As always, feel free to add and vote for new ideas in our public roadmap here.

See you soon!
Captain Data Team

Announcement
Scheduled maintenance 🛠️

⚠️ Maintenance from one of our providers ⚠️

Starting from today until the 20th - 4:30 p.m. UTC, we're expecting a maintenance from one of our providers.

You'll be able to use Captain Data as usual but we're anticipating some possible consequences on your jobs:

  • a shutdown of your workflows
  • a slowdown of your workflows

If it's happening, just hit the retry button in your job to restart the workflow:
Maintenance Brightdata communication.png

We sincerely apologize about this maintenance.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us through our support.

Automation
Automation Updates 🎉

Find out what the team has been doing for the past two weeks:

Fresh new automations 🧑‍🚀

  • Find Email Datagma
    This automation is great to find your prospect’s email addresses. We’re adding it to our Email Cascade feature so you can enjoy it along with other email providers 🙂.
  • Lusha Enrich Person
    This automation will enable you to instantly find out the technology behind any website, such as the CMS of an e-commerce platform, for example.

Suggested automations ❤️

  • Search Google Maps
    One of our most-used automations - thanks a lot ❤️.
    Starting with a Google Maps search URL or a custom query, you’ll get all the information about businesses or places you’re looking for.
  • Email Cascade
    This home-made automation highly increases your chances to find emails, up to 80%, and other crucial data points about your B2B leads.
    This automation will soon be enriched with Lusha, Datagma and Kaspr 🎉.

Suggested templates ❤️

How to find relevant B2B leads and their contacts with Captain Data

This workflow is very useful if you want to get a list of specific businesses and scrape their information such as emails and social media links. 

Let’s deep dive into this workflow:

1. Prepare your search on Google Maps

Try to be specific when crafting your search: what type of businesses are you looking for? Which ones are relevant for you?

Once you’re confident & you tested manually your query, head over to Google Maps and add your search.

We recommend to use the “near” operator to precise your search: it could be a region, a city, a postal code, etc.

For example: https://www.google.com/maps/search/coffee+shops+near+Paris/.

Google Maps - Newsletter automation updates.png

You can copy this URL.

2. Setup your workflow

On Captain Data, look for the Search Google Maps & find emails with website scraper workflow and enter your URL as input.

This workflow has 3 steps:

  • it will make a search on Google Maps (like you would do manually)
  • filter all the data
  • scrape each website found

3. Enjoy the results

See how easy it was? You now have a list of all the businesses you were looking for with their relevant information like email, phone number, opening hours and even social media links.

As always, feel free to add and vote for new ideas in our public roadmap here.

See you soon!
Captain Data Team

Feature
Users management and pricing update

What's new? 🎉

On Sunday we released a new users management system on Captain Data to make it more scalable.

We also updated our pricing to make it fit perfectly to your needs when it comes to tasks and users.

What does it change for you? Nothing, except things will be clearer.

Users

Accounts, sharing, blabla.. we used our own jargon when we actually realized that what we talked about was essentially: users

We’ve simplified the platform in this direction: one user, think of it as a licence, can be synchronized to any integrations: LinkedIn, Dropcontact or anything else.

A user can either use directly the platform, or be external, without access to your workspace: very handy for agencies and team scaling fast.

Each new user comes with an additional 10 000 tasks - if you’re adding users, you probably want to automate more, right 🙂

New Users Management System

The new users management system allows you to have a clear vision of the roles and apps attributed to the different users you registered on the platform. 
Go to My Account > Users to see the list of users (note: you need to be a workspace owner to see the users).

Note: we’ll slowly introduce more roles for better granularity.
Workspace _ Users management.png

  • An owner has all the rights on the platform. He can view all users, delete and edit them as well as promote them to owners. He can also select the connected accounts he wants to use in a workflow. More, he can upgrade and downgrade the subscription and edit billing details. It’s a perfect role for the owner of the project

  • A user has all the basic rights but cannot access the subscription and billing details. It’s a perfect role to attribute to the members of your marketing and sales team, for example

  • An external user has a restrictive usage on the platform and can only connect his accounts. It’s a perfect role to attribute to your clients

New Pricing Model

Having too many plans to choose from is not always ideal. Sometimes you need more users than tasks, sometimes you only need tasks, etc. The starting point is also much lower, enabling you to test right ahead, without thinking much about costs.

To simplify things, we’re introducing 3 plans:

  • Starter is the perfect plan to easily get started with the platform

  • Professional is going to be the go-to plan to start growing

  • Growth is designed to help you scale your ops

Workspace _ Subscription (1).png

If you’re subscribed to the previous pricing model and wondering if your subscription is going to change, read the section Migration of this email.

Each pricing model gives you a set number of users and tasks.

Instead of upgrading your subscription, you can now buy these two add-ons separately and according to your needs.

Remember that each user that you buy gives you 10 000 tasks in addition.

For example, if you need 2 users in addition next month, you’ll be able to add them to your project by upgrading your additional number of users in the add-on section, and downgrade when your need is over.

It’s the same logic for tasks.

All in all, it gives you all the control you need to fine-tune your workspace and spend only for what you use and pay.

Note that all add-ons are recurring, renewing each month, so if you don’t need the tasks or users month to month, remember to downgrade at some point.

Workspace _ Add-ons (2).png

If you need more information, read those related articles:

Enterprise

We’ve kept our Enterprise plan and we still offer ramp-up periods 🎉

You can create and manage users through the API and everything is linked directly to your billing - this will simplify our job and yours since you have all the data you need to manage your subscription!

You can activate billing via the API in the settings here.

Migration

You’re one of our old plan subscribers? See below how you can switch to one of our a new plans:

Workspace _ Old plan.png

In the Plans section, you can simply subscribe to the new plan that suits you best by clicking on the Subscribe button. Your new subscription will be taken into account after your current billing cycle. 

Best,

Guillaume
Co-Founder

Automation
Automation Updates 🎉

Find out what the team has been doing for the past month:

Fresh new automations 🧑‍🚀

We also released Extract Amazon Product Reviews and Extract Shopify Products.

Fresh new templates 🧑‍🚀

Improvements 🛠️

  • Inputs validity now checks if the integration API endpoint requires "at least one of a list of fields"
  • Search Google Maps: added search from new countries: Canada, India and Thailand
  • More flexible way to catch error messages from integration API endpoints 

Fixes 🛠️

  • LinkedIn People Profile: endpoint changed, number of connections, degree name
  • Indeed Job Search: de-duplicate process
  • SerpWow Search: "shopping" search type in now correctly working
  • Extract Instagram Posts: stability fixed
  • Trusted shop reviews: now working
  • Website Scraper: input correctly at "failed" if no results 
  • Instagram Public Page: correct "category" saved

As always, feel free to add and vote for new ideas in our public roadmap here.

See you soon!
Captain Data Team

Fix & Issues
12 Nov - Service Disruption

Hey there - we're suffering from heavy service disruption from Google (yes, mighty Google).
We're doing everything we can to get it back to normal, although it seems it does not depend entirely on us.

Announcement
✅ All systems back to normal

Hello 👋
As stated in our previous announcement, we've had a slight issue with one of our IP provider.
The problem is now completely resolved.
Amongst other, impacted automations:

  • Website Scraper
  • Google Maps

Everything is back to normal, we apologize for any inconvenience.
Have a nice week-end 🎉

Fix & Issues
Issue with IPs

Hey there 👋
One of our IP provider is having issues at the moment, which results in automations like Google Maps and Website Scraper breaking.
We're doing everything we can to resolve this by working with them - sadly we don't have a clear ETA on the matter.
We'll keep you updated.
Thank you for your patience 🙌

Fix & Issues
⚠️ Platform Under Maintenance

Dear users,

We've experienced some issues making all automation momentarily unavailable on Captain Data.

Rest assured that we put all the resources forward to paliate to the issue and restore the service ASAP.

Thanks for your understanding and patience. We'll make a new announcement very soon to let yo know you can use the platform normally again.

Regards,
Captain Data Team

Feature
18/10/21 - New onboarding & Automation store

Hello there 🙌

Onboarding

We're entirely opening the platform, with a complete new onboarding.

We'll slowly enhance it with additional resources, like intro and tutorial videos, to help you get the best out of Captain Data!

You'll be able to find all those resources inside the "Onboarding" section in the navigation menu (still WIP).

Automation Store

We're updating the automation store to make it more easy to explore:

You can filter by use cases, by clicking on the side menu displaying use casesOnce you filter by a use case, you can even click on an app to refine your search.

You can still combine multiple apps together to find templates matching the selected apps

If you search (top search bar), it'll search across our entire templates' library

Finally, you can filter if you want only multi-steps workflows or single-step workflows (just automating 1 task)

New Captain Data Store .png

Don't hesitate to give us feedback!

API Performances

We've optimized the API so it should be even faster than before - this is the first roll-out, more will come.

Help Center

Our Help Center will now centralize everything when it comes to how-to guides.

Next Releases

In the next few weeks, we'll add:

  • More automations, like Lusha and FullContact
  • An even better onboarding experience
  • An enhanced way to visualize errors and resolve them
  • API & database optimizations
  • And most of all, we're preparing our workflow editor for Q1 2022, that will enable you to build anything you'd like, always without coding :)

Stay tuned!

PS: this new version should not hinder performances, if it's the case, contact us on the support.