Calendar Integrations

Calendar integrations automate appointment booking and event scheduling directly from your Buildorado workflows. When a user submits a form with date, time, and contact information, Buildorado can instantly create a calendar event with attendees, location, reminders, and a detailed description pulled from the form data. This eliminates the back-and-forth of manual scheduling and ensures every booking is confirmed the moment the form is submitted. All calendar integrations authenticate via OAuth 2.0 and store credentials with AES-256 encryption through AWS KMS.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is the most widely used calendar integration in Buildorado. Create events with attendees, locations, and custom details automatically from form submissions.

Setting Up Google Calendar

1. Navigate to Settings > Integrations in your Buildorado dashboard.
2. Find Google Calendar and click Connect.
3. Sign in with your Google account in the authorization popup.
4. Grant the following permissions:
   • calendar -- Full access to manage calendars
   • calendar.events -- Create and manage events
5. Once authorized, Google Calendar shows as Connected with your Google account email.

Both personal Google accounts and Google Workspace accounts are supported.

Operations

createEvent

Create a new calendar event.

Output:

updateEvent

Update an existing calendar event.

Output:

listEvents

List upcoming calendar events.

Output:

Mapping Date/Time Form Fields

When your form includes date and time fields, map them to the Google Calendar event:

[Form: Appointment Booking]
  -- [Google Calendar: createEvent]
    summary: "Meeting with {{form.clientName}}"
    startDateTime: "{{form.appointmentDate}}T{{form.appointmentTime}}:00"
    endDateTime: computed from start + duration
    attendees: "{{form.clientEmail}}"
    location: "{{form.meetingLocation}}"

Date format considerations:

• If your form uses a date field, Buildorado provides the value in ISO format (e.g., 2024-03-15).
• If your form uses a time field, the value comes as HH:MM (e.g., 14:30).
• Combine them with the T separator: {{form.date}}T{{form.time}}:00 produces 2024-03-15T14:30:00.

For all-day events, use date-only values without the time component:

startDateTime: "{{form.eventDate}}"
endDateTime: "{{form.eventEndDate}}"

Timezone Handling

Timezones are critical for scheduling across regions. Google Calendar handles timezones using IANA timezone identifiers:

Best practices for timezone handling:

• If your form collects the user's timezone, map it to the timeZone field: {{form.timezone}}.
• If your form does not collect timezone, set a default timezone in the action configuration.
• Avoid relying on the calendar's default timezone if your users are in different regions. Explicitly set the timezone to prevent off-by-hours scheduling errors.

Attendees and Invitations

When you include email addresses in the attendees field, Google Calendar sends invitation emails to each attendee. The attendees receive a standard Google Calendar invitation they can accept, decline, or mark as tentative.

attendees: "{{form.clientEmail}}, {{form.advisorEmail}}, [email protected]"

Multiple attendees are separated by commas. Each receives an independent invitation.

Note: Invitation emails are sent by Google, not by Buildorado. The invitation appears to come from the Google account that owns the calendar.

Template Variables in Event Details

Use template variables throughout the event configuration to personalize every field:

summary: "Consultation: {{form.firstName}} {{form.lastName}}"
description: "Client: {{form.firstName}} {{form.lastName}}
Email: {{form.email}}
Phone: {{form.phone}}
Topic: {{form.consultationTopic}}
Notes: {{form.additionalNotes}}

Submitted via Buildorado on {{submission.createdAt}}"
location: "{{form.preferredOffice}}"

Common Patterns

Appointment booking with confirmation email:

[Form: Book Appointment]
  -- [Google Calendar: createEvent]
    summary: "{{form.serviceType}} - {{form.clientName}}"
    startDateTime: "{{form.date}}T{{form.time}}:00"
    endDateTime: calculated
    attendees: "{{form.email}}"
  -- [Email: Send confirmation]
    to: "{{form.email}}"
    subject: "Your appointment is confirmed"
    body: "Your {{form.serviceType}} is scheduled for {{form.date}} at {{form.time}}.
           View it on your calendar: {{googleCalendar_1.htmlLink}}"

Conditional calendar selection:

[Form: Meeting Request]
  -- Branch: meetingType
    -- "Sales" -- [Google Calendar: Create on [email protected] calendar]
    -- "Support" -- [Google Calendar: Create on [email protected] calendar]
    -- "General" -- [Google Calendar: Create on [email protected] calendar]

Tips for Google Calendar

• The connected Google account must have write access to the target calendar. For shared calendars, ensure the account has "Make changes to events" permission.
• Google Calendar API has a quota of 1,000,000 queries per day and 500 requests per 100 seconds per user. These limits are generous for most workflows.
• For recurring events, create the first event and note the event ID. Recurring event support in the action node requires the recurrence rule (RRULE) format.

Outlook Calendar

Outlook Calendar integration creates events in Microsoft 365 calendars, ideal for organizations that use the Microsoft ecosystem.

Setting Up Outlook Calendar

1. Navigate to Settings > Integrations and click Connect next to Outlook Calendar.
2. Sign in with your Microsoft 365 account in the authorization popup.
3. Grant the following permissions:
   • User.Read -- Read your profile
   • Calendars.ReadWrite -- Create and manage calendar events
   • offline_access -- Maintain the connection
4. Once authorized, Outlook Calendar shows as Connected.

Operations

createEvent

Create a new calendar event in Outlook.

Output:

updateEvent

Update an existing calendar event.

Output:

listEvents

List upcoming calendar events.

Output:

Teams Meeting Integration

Set isOnlineMeeting to true to automatically generate a Microsoft Teams meeting link for the event. The Teams join URL is available in the output as onlineMeetingUrl, which you can include in confirmation emails:

[Outlook Calendar: createEvent]
  subject: "Meeting with {{form.clientName}}"
  isOnlineMeeting: true
-- [Email: Send to {{form.email}}]
  body: "Join via Teams: {{outlookCalendar_1.onlineMeetingUrl}}"

Timezone Differences

Outlook Calendar uses Windows timezone names instead of IANA identifiers:

If your form collects IANA timezone values, you may need to map them to the Windows equivalents in a code node.

Tips for Outlook Calendar

• For shared or room calendars, specify the calendar owner's email or calendar ID.
• Outlook Calendar supports rich HTML in the event body, including tables, links, and formatted text.
• Admin consent may be required for organization-wide calendar access.

Microsoft Bookings

Microsoft Bookings is a scheduling tool within Microsoft 365 designed for customer-facing appointment booking.

Setting Up Microsoft Bookings

1. Navigate to Settings > Integrations and click Connect next to Microsoft Bookings.
2. Sign in with your Microsoft 365 account.
3. Grant permissions for reading and managing Bookings data. The following scopes are requested:
   • User.Read -- Read your profile
   • BookingsAppointment.ReadWrite.All -- Manage bookings
   • offline_access -- Maintain the connection
4. Once authorized, Bookings shows as Connected.

Operations

listBusinesses

List all booking businesses the user has access to.

Output:

listServices

List all services for a booking business.

Output:

createAppointment

Create a new appointment in a booking business.

Output:

Tips for Microsoft Bookings

• Bookings is included with Microsoft 365 Business Standard and higher plans.
• Use the listBusinesses operation to discover business IDs, then use listServices to find available services.
• Bookings automatically sends confirmation and reminder emails to customers through Microsoft 365.
• Staff member auto-assignment distributes bookings evenly when no specific staff member is selected.

Best Practices for Calendar Integrations

Validate Date and Time Before Creating Events

Use conditional logic to ensure the selected date is in the future:

[Form: Appointment]
  -- Branch: appointmentDate is after today
    -- true -- [Google Calendar: createEvent]
    -- false -- [Email: "Please select a future date"]

Include All Relevant Details in the Event

Pack the event description with all form data so the organizer has full context without navigating back to Buildorado:

description: "Appointment Details
Client: {{form.name}}
Email: {{form.email}}
Phone: {{form.phone}}
Service: {{form.service}}
Notes: {{form.notes}}
Submission: {{submission.id}}"

Send Confirmation After Event Creation

Always follow calendar event creation with a confirmation email or message that includes the event URL:

[Calendar: createEvent]
  -- [Email: "Your appointment is confirmed. View: {{calendar_1.htmlLink}}"]

Error Handling

Calendar API calls can fail if the connected account is deauthorized, the calendar is deleted, or the time slot conflicts with an existing event. Attach an error handler node to handle failures gracefully.