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I want to set up a Zap using the Google Calendar New or Updated Event as a trigger and I’d like to get a notification if there are people from outside my company attending the event.

In other words - I only want the actions in the Zap to run if there’s someone who isn’t from my organization on the Attendees list. What do you think, how could I do this with Zapier?


You can do this by adding a Formatter step to find and remove the email addresses of people in your organization, and then a Filter step that looks for any remaining emails.

The Formatter by Zapier step

  • Add a Formatter step in the Zap and select Text > Find and replace.
  • Add the Attendees as the input for the step
  • For the search text, type for the full domain of your organization, including the '@' symbol (eg @zapier.com)
  • Leave the replace section blank so that it will delete any examples that it finds

The Filter step

  • Add a filter step to the Zap after the Formatter step
  • Set it so that the Zap will only continue if the output of the Formatter step contains the symbol '@'

Any of your colleague's email addresses will have been removed, so the only @ that's left will belong to someone from outside of your organization!

This is a fun workaround that you can use for all sorts of things - any time where you want to find the odd one out in a list!

Has anyone used a similar workaround? What did you use it for?