I’m building a Zapier integration where my custom application (called Message Handler) works as the trigger event. However, when I try to test the trigger during zap creation, I keep getting an error message that says ‘Make sure you have at least one recent Message Handler created.’ This forces me to bypass the testing phase and proceed directly to setting up the action step. Has anyone encountered this issue before? I need to understand why Zapier can’t find recent data from my trigger app even though I believe there should be available messages. What could be causing this problem and how can I fix it so the trigger test works properly?
Sounds like a webhook problm. Your app needs to send recent msgs proply when Zapier polls for them. If nothing comes bck, Zapier can’t find the data to validate the trigger. Double-check your API response format.
Had the exact same issue with my custom trigger. Zapier only looks for data from the last 15-30 minutes when testing - it completely ignores older stuff, even if your Message Handler has tons of historical data. I fixed it by creating a few test messages right before running the trigger test. Also double-check that your trigger endpoint filters by creation date and sorts newest first. If your API returns messages randomly or doesn’t filter dates properly, Zapier won’t find the recent ones. Make sure your timestamps are ISO 8601 format too - anything else and Zapier treats it as invalid.
This happens when your trigger endpoint isn’t returning the right data structure or timestamp format that Zapier expects. Zapier needs to see recent activity from the last few minutes to validate your trigger works. First, check if your Message Handler API is actually creating entries with proper timestamps recently. Then verify your polling URL returns data that exactly matches your Zapier integration settings - even tiny field name differences will break validation. I ran into the same thing with my custom app. Zapier’s really picky about the response schema matching exactly what you defined in the trigger config.