You’re building a Zap. A lead comes in through a form and needs to go to your CRM. The email has extra spaces. The name is in all caps. A phone number is buried in a text block.
The data needs to be cleaned before it hits your CRM. The question is: where should that transformation live?
Until now, the answer was usually to add a Formatter step. Formatter is powerful—great for complex transformations and advanced logic. But for quick, in-field adjustments, adding a full step can be more than you need.
Today, we’re introducing a complementary option.
Inline Formulas let you handle lightweight transformations directly inside your existing Zap steps. Trim text, extract emails, combine fields, parse JSON, and more—right where you’re mapping data. No extra steps. No context switching. Just streamlined workflows.
How Inline Formulas work
When you’re setting up an action and mapping a field, you can now apply a formula directly to that field. The transformation runs inside the step, and the result is carried forward into your next step
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Example 1: Clean up emails
You’re syncing contacts to your email platform, but the incoming email field contains extra spaces and uppercase letters. Before sending it to your CRM, you want to normalize the value.
Input data | Formula | Result |
|---|---|---|
JOHN@EXAMPLE.COM |
| john@example.com |
Result: The email is trimmed and converted to lowercase directly within the Zap step.
Example 2: Extract an email from messy text
A support ticket includes contact information buried inside a longer description. You need to pull the email address and send it to another app.
Input data | Formula | Result |
|---|---|---|
Please reach out to sarah.smith@company.com or call 555-1234. |
| sarah.smith@company.com |
Result: The formula extracts the first email address it finds and passes it directly into your next step—no additional processing required.
Example 3: Set a fallback value
A form field is optional. If it’s empty, you want to provide a default value so your CRM field is never blank.
How it works:
Result: You ensure required fields are always populated, which is especially helpful for CRM hygiene and standardized reporting.
Example 4: Combine Multiple Fields
You need to create a full name from separate fields before sending the data to another app.
Formula applied:
Result:
The combined value flows directly into your action step—no additional Formatter step required.
Inline formulas save me a lot of time—small things that used to require an extra Formatter step can now be done directly in a step. Converting text to lowercase, coalescing between two variables, or extracting an email from raw text. Huge time saver!
—Dennis Chiuten, Founder at work.flowers
Why this matters
As your automations grow, your workflows become more sophisticated. Clean data is foundational, and Formatter remains the right tool for structured, multi-step transformations.
Inline Formulas add flexibility.
For small in-field adjustments like trimming text, extracting values, combining fields, or setting fallbacks, you no longer need to use an entire step.
That means you can:
Preserve step capacity for advanced logic
Keep simple workflows lightweight
Decide exactly where transformations belong
This gives you more control over how you build, so you can use your steps where they create the most value.
Wrapping up
Inline Formulas are available now on your plan.
The next time you’re mapping a field in an action, click the formula icon and apply a transformation directly in that field.
Ready to try it out? Jump back into Zapier →
