What can the other tool do?

Four things, and only these: add a person to your contacts or update their name, tags and contact fields; give a person a tag; start one of your switched-on automatic emails for them; enrol them on one of your courses. It can never delete anyone, unsubscribe anyone, take a tag off, or put anyone on hold.

Only the account owner. Bernard shows you, in one sentence, what any tool holding the address will be able to do to your contacts and courses, and nothing is switched on until you approve it.

Are the people it adds on my mailing list?

No. Bernard did not see them agree to your emails, so they arrive without permission to market to them, whatever the other tool says. Your campaigns and automatic emails skip them until they sign up on one of your bernard forms. The course welcome email with their access link still goes when they are enrolled.

I lost the address or the secret. Can I see it again?

No. Both are shown once, when they are made. Ask Bernard to make a new pair. The old address stops working at once, so give the new one to every tool that used the old one.

How do I know it is working?

Ask Bernard. It shows the last 20 calls: what each asked for, whether it was done, ignored or refused, and why. It never shows the email addresses. A call with a wrong or old signature is refused and not listed, so if nothing arrives at all, check the secret first.

What if the other tool sends the same thing twice?

It is done once. A repeat of a delivery bernard has already handled is listed as a duplicate and changes nothing, so a retry never enrols or tags anyone twice.

Contacts3 min read

Let another tool add people to my contacts, tag them or enrol them

Some of your people start somewhere else: a sale in ThriveCart, a booking in Calendly, an answer in Typeform, a lead from a Facebook ad. Your site has one inbound address where another tool can send them, so they arrive in your contacts without you copying anything across.

The prompt

“Set up an inbound address for [my site] so [Zapier / Make / my own system] can [add people to my contacts / tag them / enrol them on my course]. Tell me exactly what the other tool will be able to do before you switch it on.”

Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).

This is the other direction from Tell another tool when a student finishes a lesson, a course or joins my list, where bernard tells another tool what happened here. Your contacts themselves are in Where do the people who buy, join or ask end up?.

What the other tool can ask for

Each message asks for one of four things:

add or update a person: their email address, and if you like their name, some tags and values for your own contact fields;
give a person a tag;
start an automatic email for them, one that is switched on;
enrol them on a course, with an optional personal deadline and a tag. They get the same welcome email with their sign-in link as a student you enrol by hand (Enrol a student myself - they paid elsewhere).

Nothing else is possible. The address can never delete anyone, unsubscribe anyone, take a tag off, change what somebody agreed to, or put anyone on hold. A message that asks to add the on hold tag is refused.

What the people it adds can be sent

Bernard did not see these people agree to your emails, so they arrive without permission to market to them, even if the other tool says they ticked a box. Your campaigns skip them, and an automatic email that starts for them waits until they are allowed to receive it. They can join your list the normal way, on one of your bernard forms. Emails they need, like the course welcome with their access link, still go.

Setting it up

Ask Bernard in the Workshop, for example “let Zapier add people to my contacts”. Only the account owner can do this. Bernard shows you what any tool holding the address will be able to do, and waits for your approval.

Then you get two things, each shown once:

the address, which you paste into the other tool;
a secret, which the other tool uses to sign every message, so bernard can tell a real message from a fake one.

If you lose either, ask Bernard for a new pair. The old address stops working straight away.

For ThriveCart there is a ready-made setting that needs no signing: Enrol my ThriveCart buyers on my course automatically. For Calendly, Typeform and Facebook lead ads through Zapier, see Get my Calendly bookings, Typeform answers or Facebook leads into bernard.

For the technically minded

Send a POST of one JSON object, for example {"action": "add_tag", "email": "[email protected]", "tag": "call-booked"}. The actions are upsert_contact (email, name, tags, fields), add_tag (email, tag), start_journey (email, journeyId) and enrol (email, name, courseHandle, dueAt, tag). An optional id of your own makes a repeat do nothing. Any other field is refused with a sentence naming it.

Sign it the way bernard signs its own webhooks: put the Unix time in seconds in X-Bernard-Timestamp, and v1= followed by the hex HMAC-SHA256 of the timestamp, a full stop and the exact body, made with your secret, in X-Bernard-Signature. A message more than five minutes old, or with a wrong signature, is refused and nothing is written. Bodies over 64 KB are refused, and an address that sends very many messages in a short time is slowed down.

Checking it

Ask Bernard what the inbound address has received. It shows the last 20 calls, each done, ignored (for example a repeat), refused (with the reason) or failed. To stop it, ask Bernard to switch the address off; anything sent to it is then refused until you switch it back on.

Questions people ask

What can the other tool do?: Four things, and only these: add a person to your contacts or update their name, tags and contact fields; give a person a tag; start one of your switched-on automatic emails for them; enrol them on one of your courses. It can never delete anyone, unsubscribe anyone, take a tag off, or put anyone on hold.
Who can set it up?: Only the account owner. Bernard shows you, in one sentence, what any tool holding the address will be able to do to your contacts and courses, and nothing is switched on until you approve it.
Are the people it adds on my mailing list?: No. Bernard did not see them agree to your emails, so they arrive without permission to market to them, whatever the other tool says. Your campaigns and automatic emails skip them until they sign up on one of your bernard forms. The course welcome email with their access link still goes when they are enrolled.
I lost the address or the secret. Can I see it again?: No. Both are shown once, when they are made. Ask Bernard to make a new pair. The old address stops working at once, so give the new one to every tool that used the old one.
How do I know it is working?: Ask Bernard. It shows the last 20 calls: what each asked for, whether it was done, ignored or refused, and why. It never shows the email addresses. A call with a wrong or old signature is refused and not listed, so if nothing arrives at all, check the secret first.
What if the other tool sends the same thing twice?: It is done once. A repeat of a delivery bernard has already handled is listed as a duplicate and changes nothing, so a retry never enrols or tags anyone twice.