Skip to main content

Get Support
Have a question? Let's get you an answer!

How Do I...? Troubleshooting Code & Webhooks Developer Zone

Other Help Resources
Wait, there's more! Check out these Community sourced spaces for additional resources.

Zapier Help Center Hire an Expert

Learning Resources
All of our best learning resources can be found here.

Featured Articles Show & Tell Zapier's products AI Hub Zapier Tools Hub

Share your knowledge
Give back to the Community by sharing your automation wins and helping to answer questions.

Share your success See unanswered questions User Groups

Other Learning Resources
Some of our favorite additional ways to upskill your Zapier knowledge.

Zapier Learn Zapier Blog Zapier Webinars

Product Updates
Check out what is new and upcoming with Zapier with our regular product updates.

Product Updates

Early Access Program
Want to join Early Access? Learn more here.

I’m using Zapier to automatically send reminder emails for events on a Google Calendar. My problem is that the events are from different calendars and this is unavoidable. It’s a sports league that publishes new calendars each season (every 10 weeks), so the calendar ID changes each season, but the name of the Calendar has the same key text. For example the calendar is always called something like “Coed 7v7 - Summer” where the last word will change from season to season. But, I can easily find this calendar using text search for a term like “7v7” or “Coed 7v7.” I don’t want to come back every 10 weeks and update my Zap to use the new calendar ID, and because I don’t have the IDs ahead of time I can’t use a lookup table as has been the suggestion for previous questions like mine. It seems this feature was requested over 3 years ago - any update? 

Hi ​@Aerin 

The GCal Zap app integrations rely on the Calendar IDs to be selected in the Zap trigger steps.

GCal Calendar IDs are unique, where as there could be 2+ GCal Calendars with the same exact name.

​@Troy Tessalone I realize that there could be multiple results returned, and I’m ok with it. It would be quite easy to rename the calendar to something unique so its easily searchable, but its literally impossible to get the IDs ahead of time, meaning I still need to come edit my zap every time a new schedule is published. There were a couple of threads 3 years ago on this topic and someone mentioned that it was actually a feature request in the queue, if I understood correctly, and that it had been upvoted several times. Unfortunately my work around isn’t great. I have a dummy calendar I created that the Zap references, and in GCal i have to copy all the events to that calendar. Where I get into trouble is when the events are updated or rescheduled, that’s obviously not transferring to my dummy calendar. 

​@Aerin 

If you are trying to use GCal in Zap trigger steps the Calendar field is required and the Calendar field expects the GCal Calendar ID which is unique among ALL GCal Calendars out there, not just your own GCal Calendars.

 

If you are trying to use a different approach then it may be possible to derive the GCal Calendar ID to use in Zap action steps.

e.g. Run a Zap on a schedule, find a GCal Calendar by name to get the GCal Calendar ID to then use to search a GCal Calendar ID for events, then act on those events, etc.

​@Troy Tessalone ok, that’s an option I hadn’t thought of, I will give it a shot. I figured this would be a fairly common issue as a lot of people out there are required to “subscribe” to various calendars in their life which may update at various intervals. I get the need for the ID; it’s just annoying since I’m using Zapier in the first place to try and simplify my life. Maybe I need to just cut back on the number of teams I manage lol. But maybe it’s on Google to provide a different way to identify a calendar - such as each time you import a new calendar being presented the option to “merge” with an existing calendar to preserve the ID. Thanks for your time. 

​@Aerin 

Google is a tech giant which is among the standards for how the internet and APIs/webooks work that most other apps follow and abide by.

Using internal IDs in apps for dropdown fields is very common practice as internal system IDs are unique values.

I would not expect this behavior to change any time soon, so best to work with it or find a work around for it.

​@Troy Tessalone 

Heard! Thanks again!

Hi ​@Aerin,
 
We just wanted to see how everything is going with your Zap. Did Troy's recommendation get the job done? Feel free to reach out if you need further assistance with your Zap. We're glad to address any concerns and assist you.
 
We're looking forward to your response.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement