I am trying to create a zap where specific events added to my calendar will trigger a new row on my Google Sheet to track meetings/appointments.
However, these events have various search terms and the Google Calendar trigger zap does not allow me to use “OR” search functions. What’s a good workaround for this? Create multiple zaps for the various search terms?
Hi
I have a couple of tips that could help you with the event matching search trigger. I’ll share some examples of search modifiers you can use and then explain something else you can add to your Zap to help.
The Search term field in the trigger uses the same operators as Google Calendar. It doesn’t work with operators like AND and OR but there are a couple of things you can use.
If you put quotes around the search term, the search will only return that exact phrase for example the search term General meeting will return events that have the exact phrase ‘General meeting’ and also ‘General Leadership meeting’. If you search for “General Meeting” you’ll only get events with the exact phrase “General Meeting” in the title.
You can also use a negative modifier to exclude terms. To do that, add a - immediately after your search term (with no space). I tested this in my calendar in the example below. I type “general meeting” I see all events that have that exact phrase, if I include “-bipoc” on the end, the only search results I get are the Prizm meetings.
A couple of other tips:
“general meeting”-BIPOC-Prizm“General Meeting”-”All hands”
No matter what search phrase you use, I always recommend trying it out directly in Google Calendar calendar to see if it brings up the events you’re expecting to see.
If you can’t get specific enough with those modifiers, you can add a filter step to your Zap. When a filter is added to a Zap, it looks at the information coming into the filter and only allows the actions to continue if the information meets specific criteria. For example, you could tell the Zap to only continue if the Attendees field contains certain people, or only to continue if the event description isn’t empty. If you’ve not used a filter in your Zap before, this help doc explains more: Add conditions to Zaps with Filters.
I hope that gives you enough to set up your Zap the way that you need. If you have any questions, let us know!
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Hi
Thank you for the prompt and awesome reply!
What you have provided has been really helpful, however the issue I have is that the event naming convention on Google Calendar is not categorised well enough for me to use 1 term to include multiple event types that have different names. (which might work if I can use the “AND” function) And it will be difficult to exclude multiple names as there are too many variations.
But super helpful stuff, now I know how it searches I can tweak accordingly. Thank you so much!!!
Hi
I have a couple of tips that could help you with the event matching search trigger. I’ll share some examples of search modifiers you can use and then explain something else you can add to your Zap to help.
The Search term field in the trigger uses the same operators as Google Calendar. It doesn’t work with operators like AND and OR but there are a couple of things you can use.
If you put quotes around the search term, the search will only return that exact phrase for example the search term General meeting will return events that have the exact phrase ‘General meeting’ and also ‘General Leadership meeting’. If you search for “General Meeting” you’ll only get events with the exact phrase “General Meeting” in the title.
You can also use a negative modifier to exclude terms. To do that, add a - immediately after your search term (with no space). I tested this in my calendar in the example below. I type “general meeting” I see all events that have that exact phrase, if I include “-bipoc” on the end, the only search results I get are the Prizm meetings.
A couple of other tips:
“general meeting”-BIPOC-Prizm“General Meeting”-”All hands”
No matter what search phrase you use, I always recommend trying it out directly in Google Calendar calendar to see if it brings up the events you’re expecting to see.
If you can’t get specific enough with those modifiers, you can add a filter step to your Zap. When a filter is added to a Zap, it looks at the information coming into the filter and only allows the actions to continue if the information meets specific criteria. For example, you could tell the Zap to only continue if the Attendees field contains certain people, or only to continue if the event description isn’t empty. If you’ve not used a filter in your Zap before, this help doc explains more: Add conditions to Zaps with Filters.
I hope that gives you enough to set up your Zap the way that you need. If you have any questions, let us know!
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