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Hi, we are trying to integrate our application with Zapier / Webhooks.

Every time we create an item - in our case, an appointment -, we call the hooks which Zapier gave us, and all works fine: a new appointment is created on the external application (for example Google Calendar)

For the updates, we created a Zap with the following steps:
1) search the appointment on the external app by Title (for example: "Doctor appointment")
2) update the Google Calendar appointment (with the Google event Id we got from the previous step)

It works, but only if the appointment's title is unchanged (if the title is changed, the search fails).

We are wondering if there is a better way: is it possible to get the Google appointment id when we create it, and do the update by id, rather than by title? Can we organize our integration code or our Zaps differently?

 

Thank you very much

 

Barmassimo

@barmassimo 

you could pass along the appointment id from the trigger step into the Google Calendar Event description.. Then when that same appointment is updated you could look for the appointment id from your app. 

Otherwise, yes, in theory (so if the API of the app that triggered Zapier supports this.. ) after the google calendar event is created you could call an endpoint to update the event that triggered the zap with the Gcal event id

Thank you for your answer,
    so if I understand correctly, we could

a) configure the Zap so that OUR appointment id is saved in the description, and search by our ID when we update (of course, the user see the id in the description, and should not remove it)

or, alternatively,

b) create another Zap so that, when an event is created on Google Cal, our application is called, with the Google appointment id so that we can update the appointment with the Google id (in this case, the appointment can be identified by title+description+date+wathever. This is “safe”, because the process occurs in a few seconds and all parameters should be unchanged.

Am I correct? If so, b) is probably better than a), but more complex for the user.

Thank you again

 

Barmassimo

@barmassimo 
 

a) yes, exactly. The user would see the appointment id and need to know not to change it. 

 

b) not exactly.. same premise but i would try and do it all in the same zap so that you know which appointment needs updated

NEW APPT ZAP
Trigger: Your new appointment trigger
Action: Create event in Google calendar
Action: Update the appointment in your application (the id is known since its the same appointment that triggered the zap) with the G-Cal id.

UPDATED APPT ZAP
Trigger: Your updated appointment trigger
Action: update event in Google calendar (no need to search for anything as the google calendar event id should now be returned from the trigger)


 

Thank you again, 
    do users need a paid plan to use solution b)? (because of multi-action zap)
 

Best regards,

 

Barmassimo

    

@barmassimo 

yep! Your users would need a paid Zapier plan if they intend to build multi step zaps

Sorry for the late answer.

    solution b) worked very well, and now we have implemented a bi-directional sync between our app and google calendar.

Thank you very much for your help!

 

Barmassimo

 

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