in this tutorial you will learn how you can use data stores inside integer mod it's not super tacky but it's actually really simple and it's a really handy feature so let's just dive right in and i'll explain what data stores are where the data structure inside the data store is then i'll explain some of the data store modules and then i want to show you two of my favorite use cases so inside integra mod all you have to do is you have to go over to data stores and then you get a page that looks like this and then we want to create a new data store now what a data store basically is is a kind of a google sheet or a database it's like something we're going to store info into that we can then use later on in the same scenario or in a different scenario i'll also show you that in those use cases in a bit so data store name so you can just give it any name for the use case that you want to use it for so i will just call it example right now and then what it will ask you to do is to add a data structure so i think especially this sounds a bit techy but basically if you would compare it to a google sheet all you have to do is you have to add columns so what you could do is you go here to add and then here you have to give the structure a name and what i like to do myself is to just give it the same name as the data store you can also give it a different name but for myself i find this quite easy and then we have to set here some specifications so we want to add what kind of items we want to add to our data store so all you have to do here is you have to click add item and then you give basically the column a name so for example this could be someone's email address then you set it to a type so it can be an array a collection a date text number or line binary data so in this case because we want to store an email address i would just set the type to text and we do not have a default but then if you want you can make it required so that whenever we add data to the data store i'll show you in a bit how you do that then this has to be required otherwise it's not going to work so if that's important then set this to required multi-line is for if you want to add multiple lines inside that one text thing then we click here add and then you see we basically edit the first thing then you can add another item for example we could say first name text and then we do not set a default here we do not make it required it's not multi-line click here add and then maybe you could for example imagine if this is like some kind of database you are using for appointments then you can also say appointment date for example right then you would set this to date then you also see that these options disappear and then we can click here at and then now what we can do is we can just click save and then you see that the data structure here will be set then you can set the data storage size in megabytes so you see here that it must be lower or equal to than one must be higher than or equal to one so it basically has to be one and this depends a bit on which plan you're using in integer mod so by default i think on the free plan you're allowed to create one data store that is one megabyte and with a page plan then you get multiple data stores that are also a bit bigger so right now i'll just leave this to one click save and then you see that we have our data store so now if i click here browse then you also see a little bit what i mean with this like google sheet comparison so here we have basically a column of email addresses first names appointment dates and then you also see this thing that you might not know and i call this a key and this is basically the unique id of that row which we're also going to need in some of the modules that we'll show you in a bit but first let's just add something manually to this database you can also do that so here i just click add then the key you can set something here your own id but if you leave it empty then it will just automatically populate something that's usually what i do so then email address you could for example say here emma doe first name emma the date of the appointment is here the 23rd and then we click save and you see right now that we have an automatically generated key over here we have an email address we have a first name and we have an appointment date so this is how you create a data store and also how you can create a data structure so now let's go over to a scenario so that i can also explain you all the modules that you can use for data stores so this is the scenarios this is my example scenario so i'm just going to show you those modules but obviously you can use these inside all of your scenarios right so to do it you just click your module where you want to edit and then you search for datastore if it doesn't appear over here then we have datastore and then you see that these are the actions that we have so all these actions are just built in into integramont so what we can do is we can add or replace a record we can update a record get a record check the existence of a record delete a record delete all records search records or count records now for example imagine we want to add a record to our data store so all we have to do is we click this then you have to select the data store that you want to add something to then you see here we can fill out the key if we want to so usually i just leave it blank so that it automatically generates something random and then you can also set here overwrite an existing record usually i don't need this but if you want to you could do that if you maybe want to replace or update something so here we just say okay emma doe let's change this to john doe like something different john and then here we have the appointment date now let's just just for purpose sake here say that the appointment date is right now so then i would click here okay and then now if you click here run this module only so then the data will be stored inside that data store you see here okay cool was a success then here we go over here we refresh the page we go here to browse and you see now that here it says john doe john and that the appointment date is right now so obviously you would probably not type these things in here you would add the variables of previous modules but so that's how that one works and then what you can also do which one i also use quite often is for example search records so if you want to search if maybe something is already inside your data store then you can just say here search records then you select your data store that you want to search into and then you get like a filter that you maybe already know from integromod like a bit similar and then here you can select the thing you want to search for so here for example i want to search if an email address is equal to and then let's just make it case insensitive for example john doe at gmail.com then i click here okay then i click here run this module only and then you see over here that we get an output one bundle so it found one thing basically and this is the record that it found and this is the key for that record so then if you search something for that maybe i wanted to get the first name or maybe i want to update something in that or maybe i want to remove this thing from our data store so then i can also say add another module datastore and then we could for example say delete a record so maybe it has served its purpose we don't need it anymore we just wouldn't delete it so then we say here okay we want to delete something inside this data store so in this case it's called example and then we have to give that key so that key we know from our previous module so we just click here key click okay we click here save and then now see what happens if i click run once and you see that it still found the same person because we didn't remove it right and then over here it deleted that record so if we go back now to our data store or refresh the page to click browse you see now that john doe is gone so right now here if i click run once then we see over here that nothing was found and then it's also not continuing because it cannot delete something that does not exist yet and those are basically the modules that are used most often i think the other ones are quite obvious what you can do there self-explanatory right so you can for example use account records you can update a record you can get a specific record from the data store so for example if you say here get a record then i didn't find this so super useful but if i say here example then i have to fill out the key and if the key is automatically generated then that does not work but i can maybe imagine imagine that you maybe create a data store of all your customers and then instead of a random key maybe you use the email address as the key and then you can just add the email address over in here and then it will still get that a record so just keep that in mind that that is also possible now then what i'm going to do is i want to show you two of my favorite use cases so this is the first one and this i called my simple gmail bridge so i connected my domain name monkscrollember.com with gmail because i'm using google workspaces so i can use the gmail module to send emails and for example something that i really like to do is to send people emails that follow one of my free courses to ask how they like it and i'm doing that with the gmo modules because then the emails really look like they came from me and i really love to send everyone manual emails but this way i think it comes across a little bit more personal and i still reply to all their replies so yeah this is basically how i do that so i have a web hook over here i add it to an automation inside active campaign so that if somebody followed the third lesson then this webhook will be triggered and then this module is going to send an email that says like hey how do you like it and over here we have an email in html so it would say something like hey emma i noticed that you just watched the third lesson of the free course awesome how do you like the course so far so just like a friendly email right but i really want to prevent that that email is somehow sent multiple times so one thing i'm doing with the data stores is that i created a data store that is called events and inside the data store i store which emails i send to people so what i can do then is i trigger this web book right and then i use the search records module and then i search for if the email address is equal to the email address of the active campaign contact and then if the event name which is another record in the database here you can see that we have email active campaign id event name and time so if the even name is equal to email sent and then send email as a variable that i add to that web hook then if there's no event yet so you can see here if the key does not exist then i know like hey okay cool it did not find anything so then continue and then adds an event to the database so here events database we add the email address the active campaign id then event name email sent and then this variable over here time now so then next time if for some reason the contract would go into this scenario two minutes later again then it will search events and this time the key will be found so it will stop here so then after that it just continues to those modules so that's one of my favorite use cases that i can just use data stores to prevent things from happening twice and then my second favorite use case is this one so this is my calendly handler super big scenario if you want to know how it works you can check out this video over here where i'm also talking about it but right now we're just going to talk about this here in the beginning so this is my calendar handler and basically what i'm using it for is to send a confirmation email to everyone who is booking a coaching call with me so people can use a tool called canonly to pick a spot directly into my calendar so then there's also no back and forth emailing of all i o available on wednesday oh no sorry what about on thursday it's super handy like you can just pick a spot right to your calendar and then whenever they schedule the call with me this module is going to get data then i send a confirmation email to that person saying something like hey super cool thanks for booking the call with me i will see you on this date at this time and you can use the zoom link below to join our meeting so super duper handy but something that i really wanted to do is i wanted to send a reminder email to those people saying something like hey just a reminder our call is starting within one hour don't forget something like that right just like a friendly email so by default inside integer mods you cannot have like some kind of module that says like hey wait until one hour before our coaching call so what you need to do is you need to store the the relevant data for that coaching call inside the data store and then you need a second scenario this one i'll explain this in a bit to check if there's any calls starting within the next hour so that works like this so this tool is going to get data right then here we send the confirmation email and then we here we add a reminder record to this data store over here reminders you can see this is what it looks like so here we have our key email type of uh of a reminder and then the start time so then here i say okay i want to add a record so here i add the email address then i set the type to call because i'm also using this for webinars super handy and then also the start time of our call so these data i both get from canon lee and this one i just typed in here myself and then we have this scenario and you see that this is a scheduled scenario so you see this little club over here and you see that we run this scenario at a regular intervals so we run it every 30 minutes every 30 minutes this scenario is going to start from eight in the morning till six in the evening because those are my work times and then here we search records so we search for a start time that is earlier than now plus 90 minutes so i'm using here the add minutes function you can also check out my date functions tutorial if you want to learn how that works but basically what i'm doing here i say now plus 90 minutes and then if the start time inside our data store is earlier than that then i know hey our call is starting within the next 90 minutes so then it is going to continue because the key exists then we delete that reminder because i do not want to send another reminder 30 minutes later so here we have deleted record then we use the key from the previous module then here i have a router and then it's going to check the type of reminder so if it's a call it will go over here it sends a reminder for our call and if it's a webinar then it will send an email about that webinar so i find this super duper handy and i really love it to use it for my calls and also my webinars but yeah this is how you can use data stores insights integra mod i hope this cleared some things up i know that when i got started with integromat i was really like what what what are these data stores i had no clue but it's actually really simple right it's like some kind of google sheet or database you put things in it that you can then use on a later moment if you have any questions about it just let me know in the comments below and i also created a really cool intake of my cheat sheet which you can also find in the description of this video if you want to learn more tips and tricks like this