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How to have Google Calendar change events to busy

  • 22 September 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 1724 views

My work has a system set up to automatically create events on my Google calendar and I have a Calendly account that lets clients know when I can take calls. The problem is that the new calendar events that are generated are marked as “free” but I want them marked as “busy” so that Calendly tells clients I’m unavailable at that time. 

 

I’ve tried multiple times but I can’t figure out how to set the Zap “action” to either 1) change the event that was just created to “busy” or even 2) change ALL my events on my calendar to “busy.” Either one would solve my problem and I don’t mind if all my events are set to “busy.”

 

Anyone know how to do this?

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4 replies

christina.d
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey there, @Kevin1180! Thanks for reaching out in the Community!

As far as I know there isn’t a global setting in Google Calendar for all events created on your calendar to show as “Busy”. 😔 That said, when creating events or managing events on your calendar you can always edit this under Event Details. 

If Zapier is being used to create the calendar events then your action would need to be “Create Detailed Event” in Google Calendar and you can select the status under “Show me as Free or Busy”.

I hope some of this helps! 

K
Userlevel 1

Thanks for the response, @christina.d !  The tricky part is, the calendar events are being created by a process set up through my work so I’m not actually the one creating the calendar events. These occur 5-10 times per week, so I’m trying to save myself the time I’d have to spend manually marking each event as “busy.”

So if I understand you correctly, there’s no option to change ALL my events to “busy,” but is there a way for the Zap trigger to be the creation of the new event (I think I figured this part out), and set the “action” to be to just change that same event’s status to “busy?” It’s the setting up that action that is confusing to me. 

I’ve attached a screenshot if that helps.

1 Attachment
GetUWired
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @Kevin1180 

You need a zap that looks like the following

Trigger: New Event in Google Calendar
Action: Update Event in Google Calendar

Pass the event id from the trigger step into the update action step and mark the show me as free or busy dropdown as busy. Now all newly created events will be ‘Busy’

 

K
Userlevel 1

Thank you so much @GetUWired for taking the time to answer! That worked perfectly. 

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