Calendar Invite Over SMS

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1

Hi,

Using Zapier + Google Calendar + Twilio.

Is it possible to create a Google Calendar event and share a link to the event over SMS where users can then add to calendar?

I can make the calendar public (not great) and the user can then view the event. But there isn’t a clean way to add to calendar.

There are other reasons we aren’t using email, so would love to find a way to work with phone numbers.

Thanks!

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2

@Dom how far along are you? How are you creating the calendar event?

3

Hey Dom,

Also working on an event-based App.

I’m working on a solution along the lines of this link to create custom calendar events in a users calendar.

(just switch out ‘Title’ and other fields using magic text for the event info etc…)

Current issue is that the ‘No Formatting’ option for the date field in Adalo still retains dashes and colons, which Google doesn’t like. I might be able to fix this by creating more fields in Airtable, but hoping there is a simpler option @Ben?

4

I figured out a solution. I’m using Zapier to create the Google calendar event. Google has 2 types of links to calendar events:

  1. First link (called HTML Link) is available in Zapier, but does not have the ability for user to save to calendar when sent over SMS. User has to copy the event to their calendar, which is easy to miss and clunky.

  2. Second link is not available in Zapier. If you go to the calendar event in Google Calendar, there is an option to “Publish Event”. This provides a link, which has a “Save” button. I was able to deconstruct this URL and rebuild in Zapier - combination of hard-coded text that is always the same + event ID (available in Link 1, use Zapier Formatter to extract) + a field called “Organizer Email” which is basically the ID for the calendar.

Steps:

Adalo-Zapier Integration: New Adalo record triggers Zapier

Zapier-Google Calendar Integration: Creates Google Calendar Event with details from Adalo record.

Zapier Formatter: Use truncate to extract Event ID from Google Calendar HTML Link.

Zapier-Twilio Integration: In the SMS message build Publish Event link - below, replacing [EVENT ID] and [ORGANIZER EMAIL] aka calendar ID. You can text this link to users, which will open the event with a “Save” button.

https://calendar.google.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=[EVENT ID]&tmsrc=[ORGANIZER EMAIL]

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