Four ways to automate Redtail
| Route | What it does | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Workflows | Runs repeatable processes inside Redtail as steps and tasks | Redtail’s Growth plan |
| Native integrations | Connects tools directly, like notetakers, planning software and onboarding forms | An account with the other tool |
| Zapier | Creates and updates contacts, activities and opportunities when something happens in another app | A Zapier account, and a paid plan for anything past two steps |
| API | Anything the API exposes, built by you or a developer | A key, after Redtail reviews the project |
Make and n8n have no Redtail app, so outside Zapier and the native integrations, the API is the only way in.
Redtail Workflows
A Redtail workflow is a repeatable process made of steps, and each step holds tasks. When a step’s tasks are done, the workflow moves to the next step, and you can edit a workflow while it’s running. You build workflows from templates and attach them to contacts, one at a time or in bulk, or to opportunities, and each task can go to a user, a team or a role. On Redtail’s pricing page, Automated Workflows come with the Growth plan.
Good candidates are the processes that run the same way every time: new-client onboarding, annual review prep, account transfers and beneficiary updates. Two Zapier triggers, Workflow Step Completed and Workflow Step Task Completed, let other apps react when a step finishes. Zapier can’t start a workflow, though. Starting one takes Redtail itself, or a native integration that can, like Zocks.
What connects natively
Redtail’s directory listed 192 integrations when we checked. The ones that matter most for automation:
- Meeting notetakers. Jump syncs meeting notes and tasks into Redtail as notes and activities. Zocks can sync summaries as events or notes, create and assign tasks, start or update workflows and update fields. Fireflies.ai syncs meeting notes to the contact’s Notes, creates missing contacts, and adds action items as calendar events a week after the meeting.
- Planning and onboarding. PreciseFP imports contacts from Redtail and exports updated client data back. eMoney imports Redtail contacts and syncs tasks, notes and contact data back. RightCapital syncs contacts, notes and tasks, and Orion syncs data points between its apps and Redtail.
- Not in the directory: Fathom, Zoom, Calendly, DocuSign, Smarsh and Global Relay. Redtail says Calendly connects through Retriever Cloud for Google, and Zapier can connect the others.
Outlook and Google
Redtail has two sync options. Retriever Cloud syncs contacts and calendar activities both ways, in real time, between Redtail and Office 365 or Outlook, or Google, and you choose which contacts sync with tag groups. Suite Sync syncs email, calendar and contacts with Outlook, and Redtail includes it on the Growth plan. Redtail’s Retriever Cloud articles don’t say whether it costs extra, so ask Redtail before you count on it.
Redtail and Zapier
You connect Redtail to Zapier with a token from Manage Your Integrations in Redtail. Here’s what the app can do:
| Redtail on Zapier | |
|---|---|
| Triggers | Activity Created, Activity Updated, Activity Deleted, Contact Created, Contact Updated, Contact Deleted, Note Created, Opportunity Created, Opportunity Updated, Opportunity Deleted, Workflow Step Completed, Workflow Step Task Completed |
| Actions | Create Activity, Create Contact, Create Opportunity, Update Activity, Update Contact, Update Opportunity |
| Searches | Find Activity, Find Contact, Find or Create Activity, Find or Create Contact |
What’s missing matters as much as what’s there. There’s no action that creates a note, attaches a document or starts a workflow. So anything you send to Redtail through Zapier, a meeting summary included, lands in an activity.
Notes and activities aren’t the same thing
In Redtail, a note is a time-stamped record of something that already happened, and it can’t be edited once it’s saved. An activity’s Description is a running notepad: any user can edit it, and it has no time stamp or change history. That’s why the Zapier route is weaker for meeting summaries than a notetaker that writes real notes. If your firm treats CRM notes as part of its books and records, ask your compliance officer whether an editable activity description is an acceptable home for a meeting summary.
The Redtail API
Redtail describes its API as open and REST-based, but access isn’t automatic. You request a key through a form on Redtail’s API page, either as API Access for your own firm or as a Redtail Partner building an integration for all Redtail users, and Redtail’s API terms say it reviews and approves each project plan before granting access. The public documentation is thin: an Authentication Methods article in Redtail’s support site. Plan on a conversation with Redtail before you plan on a build.
How-tos for Redtail
- How to connect Fathom to Redtail
- How to connect Zoom to Redtail
- How to automate CRM updates after meetings
- How to automate client onboarding
Where do-it-yourself Redtail automations break
- Meeting summaries sent through Zapier land in an activity’s Description, where anyone can edit them and nothing records when they changed.
- Regenerating the Zapier token in Redtail disables every existing Zap at once, so one well-meant security cleanup can stop all of them.
- A search by name or email can match more than one member of a family, and a Zap that takes the first match files the summary on the wrong person.
- Zapier can react to a finished workflow step but can’t start a workflow, so a process that begins in another app still needs someone in Redtail to kick it off.
- Outside Zapier there’s no Make or n8n app, so anything Zapier can’t do means the API, and the API means Redtail’s approval.
How we run Redtail automations
We build in your own Redtail and the tools around it, using the native integration where one exists and Zapier or the API where it doesn’t. Every write is logged. For the first week a human on our team checks every write it makes, and after that we review the log as part of supervision. When a match is ambiguous, like two family members with one email address, it asks instead of guessing, and it never deletes or merges records. CRM Keeper is the agent that keeps Redtail current after meetings.
A note on recordkeeping
If you’re an SEC-registered investment adviser or a broker-dealer, meeting notes, summaries and recordings can be records you have to keep, under SEC Rule 204-2 for advisers or FINRA Rule 4511 and SEA Rule 17a-4 for broker-dealers. Which records you keep, where and for how long are decisions for your compliance officer, so choose your tools and where their notes land with them. This page describes how the tools connect, and it isn’t legal or compliance advice.
