12 Zaps That Automate Your Client Design Review Process

Most of the admin around client review is not the review. It is everything either side of it: copying a change request into your task list, telling the team a design got approved, remembering to invoice after sign-off, hunting for which version the client was actually looking at.

None of that needs a human. Aligno is live in the Zapier directory, which means every comment, version, and approval decision can trigger something in the other 8,000-odd apps you already use.

Below are twelve automations that are worth building, grouped by what sets them off. Each one names the real trigger, the filter you need, and the fields available to map — and where a recipe has a genuine catch, it says so rather than pretending the setup is one click.

What you can trigger on in your client review process

Before the recipes, the raw materials. Aligno's Zapier app exposes six triggers:

Trigger	Fires when
New Comment	Anyone leaves a comment on an asset
Comment Resolved	A comment is marked resolved
Approval Received	A reviewer records a decision
New Asset	A design, webpage, PDF, or video is added
New Asset Version	A new version is uploaded to an existing asset
New Project	A project is created

Three things to know before you build anything on them.

Approval Received only fires on real decisions. The status is either approved or changes_requested. The pending placeholder that gets created when you upload a new version is deliberately not a trigger event, so your Zaps do not fire every time you re-open something for review.

New Comment fires for every author, including you. The Zap is your automation, so it does not filter out your own comments. If you only want client feedback, add a Zapier Filter step on the author fields.

Reviewer names can be null. Clients review without an account, so author_name and reviewer_name are empty when someone comments anonymously. Always pair them with asset_name in your message text, or you will end up with Slack notifications that read "commented on".

Useful fields on the approval payload: status, reviewer_name, reviewer_email, message, approved_via, project_name, asset_name, dashboard_url, created_at. Comments carry those plus content, is_reply, page_number, and shape.

When a client makes a decision

1. Approval received → email the team

The simplest one, and the one most worth having. A client decides, an email lands.

Trigger: Approval Received
Action: Email by Zapier, or Gmail → Send Email
Subject: {{asset_name}} — {{status}}
Body: {{reviewer_name}} decided on "{{asset_name}}" ({{project_name}}): {{status}}. Message: {{message}}. View it: {{dashboard_url}}

The point is not the notification, it is that nobody has to watch a dashboard to find out whether work is cleared to proceed.

2. Changes requested → create a task

Change requests that live in a review tool get forgotten. Change requests in your task list get scheduled.

Trigger: Approval Received
Filter: continue only if status exactly matches changes_requested
Action: Asana → Create Task, Trello → Create Card, or ClickUp → Create Task
Title: Changes requested: {{asset_name}}
Notes: the client's {{message}} plus {{dashboard_url}}

The filter matters. Without it you create tasks for approvals too, and within a week the automation is noise you ignore.

3. Approved → draft the invoice

The one that pays for the afternoon you spend setting this up. Sign-off is the natural trigger for billing, and it is the step that most often slips by two weeks because it depends on you remembering.

Trigger: Approval Received
Filter: continue only if status exactly matches approved
Action: QuickBooks Online → Create Invoice, or Xero → Create Sales Invoice
Line description: Approved: {{asset_name}} ({{project_name}}) on {{created_at}}

The catch: invoicing apps need a customer reference, and the Aligno payload does not carry one — it knows about projects and assets, not your accounting ledger. So you need either a Find Customer search step keyed on {{project_name}}, or a small lookup table in Google Sheets or Airtable mapping projects to customers. Budget twenty minutes for that part, and create the invoice as a draft rather than sending it automatically.

4. Approved → move the project forward

The status update everyone forgets to make.

Trigger: Approval Received, filtered to approved
Action: Notion → Update Database Item, HubSpot → Update Deal Stage, or Pipedrive → Update Deal

Map {{asset_name}} and {{created_at}} into the record so the approval date is captured where your project tracking already lives, rather than only in the review tool.

5. Approved → ask for the testimonial

The best moment to ask a client for a review or a referral is immediately after they have told you they are happy. Which is exactly when you are busy shipping and never do it.

Trigger: Approval Received, filtered to approved
Step 2: Delay by Zapier → 3 days
Action: Gmail → Send Email to {{reviewer_email}}

Keep it human and keep it short. The delay is what stops it reading like an autoresponder.

When feedback arrives

6. New comment → Slack

Trigger: New Comment
Action: Slack → Send Channel Message
Text: 💬 {{author_name}} commented on *{{asset_name}}* ({{project_name}}): {{content}} — {{dashboard_url}}

Aligno has a native Slack integration with threaded replies and per-event channels, and for most teams that is the better option. Build the Zapier version when you want routing the native one does not do — a separate channel per client, for instance, or posting into a workspace you do not own.

7. New comment → a Google Sheets feedback log

Trigger: New Comment
Action: Google Sheets → Create Spreadsheet Row
Columns: {{created_at}}, {{project_name}}, {{asset_name}}, {{author_name}}, {{content}}, {{dashboard_url}}

A running record of every piece of client feedback across every project, for no ongoing effort. It becomes genuinely useful about six months in, when you can filter it and see which kinds of notes keep recurring.

8. Comment resolved → close the loop

Trigger: Comment Resolved
Action: Slack → Send Channel Message, or Google Sheets → Update Spreadsheet Row

The resolved payload carries resolved_at and resolved_by. Pair this with recipe 7 and your sheet shows open versus closed feedback rather than an ever-growing list of things that may or may not have been dealt with.

9. Urgent comment → notify properly

Trigger: New Comment
Filter: content contains urgent, or the comment is not a reply (is_reply is false)
Action: Twilio → Send SMS, or Slack → Send Direct Message

Use this sparingly. An automation that pages you for everything gets muted within a week, and then it is worse than nothing.

When you ship something new

10. New asset → send the client their link

Trigger: New Asset
Action: Gmail → Send Email, or Slack → Send Channel Message

The asset payload includes share_url — the public, no-login review link. Mapping that field into an email means uploading a design is the whole act of sending it for review, with no separate "now go and share it" step.

11. New version → tell the reviewers

Trigger: New Asset Version
Action: Gmail → Send Email, or Slack → Send Channel Message
Body: Version {{version_number}} of {{asset_name}} is ready to review: {{dashboard_url}}

The version payload carries version_number and is_current, so the message can say exactly which round the client is being asked to look at. That alone removes a lot of "sorry, which one am I looking at?" email.

12. New project → set up everything else

Trigger: New Project
Actions: Google Drive → Create Folder, then Trello → Create Board or Asana → Create Project

Project kickoff admin is repetitive, well-defined, and happens at a predictable moment. Ideal automation material.

Going the other way: into Aligno

Aligno is not only a trigger. It has three actions — Create Project, Create Webpage Asset, and Share Asset — which makes client intake automatable end to end.

A worked example: a new row in Airtable, or a Typeform submission from your intake form, triggers Create Webpage Asset with the URL the client submitted, then Share Asset to turn on the public link. The client gets a review link back without you opening the dashboard at all.

Four search steps round it out — Find Project, Find Asset, Find Asset Details, and Find Comments on Asset — which is what you use to look up an existing record mid-Zap rather than creating a duplicate.

What this does not do

Worth being straight about the boundaries before you design a workflow around them.

It is one-way for feedback. Comments flow out of Aligno into your other tools. Replying in Slack or closing the Asana task does not write anything back as a comment. The available actions are the three listed above, and that is the whole set.

Delivery is at-least-once. In rare retry situations the same event can be delivered twice. Zapier dedupes on the payload id, so this is handled for you, but it is worth knowing if you ever build something with side effects you would not want repeated — like sending an invoice automatically instead of drafting one.

The trigger is the decision, not the discussion. Approval Received fires when a reviewer records a verdict in your design feedback tool. If your process treats a comment saying "yeah looks fine" as approval, there is nothing to trigger on. That is an argument for using an explicit approval step rather than against automation — the automation is only as good as the signal underneath it.

Setting up your first client review automation

You need an Aligno API key. In Aligno, open Dashboard → Integrations, find the Zapier card, and click Configure → Generate key. Copy it immediately — it starts with algn_live_ and is shown exactly once, because only a hash is stored. If you lose it, revoke it and generate a new one.

Then create a Zap, choose Aligno as the trigger app, and paste the key when Zapier asks you to connect the account. Keys are created and revoked by the account owner, but a team collaborator's activity still fires the owner's Zaps. There is a step-by-step version on the Zapier integration page and in the Zapier documentation.

Start with recipe 1. It takes about five minutes, and it is the one that changes how the rest of your week feels.

Frequently asked questions

Does Aligno work with Zapier?

Yes. Aligno is live in the Zapier app directory with six triggers (New Comment, Comment Resolved, Approval Received, New Asset, New Asset Version, New Project), three actions (Create Project, Create Webpage Asset, Share Asset), and four search steps. You connect it with an API key generated from Dashboard → Integrations.

Can I automatically invoice a client when they approve a design?

Yes, using the Approval Received trigger filtered to approved as the trigger for a QuickBooks or Xero invoice. The one piece of setup is the customer reference — the Aligno payload carries the project and asset, not your accounting customer record, so you need a Find Customer step or a lookup table to bridge them. Create the invoice as a draft rather than sending it automatically.

Will a Zap fire when a client requests changes rather than approves?

Yes. Approval Received fires for both decisions, and the status field is either approved or changes_requested. Add a Zapier Filter step on that field so each Zap only runs for the outcome it is meant to handle.

Can Zapier post comments back into Aligno?

No. The integration sends comments and approvals out of Aligno into your other tools, and the available actions are limited to creating projects, creating webpage assets, and enabling a share link. Replies made in Slack or a task manager do not sync back as Aligno comments.

Do I need a paid plan to use the Zapier integration?

You need an Aligno account to generate an API key, and a Zapier account on a plan that supports the number of Zaps and tasks you want to run. Multi-step Zaps, filters, and delays — which several of the recipes above use — are Zapier paid-plan features rather than Aligno ones.

Aligno collects pinned client feedback and a clear approval decision on one share link, then hands both to whatever you have automated next. Try it free.