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Question

Reducing unnecessary triggers for Google Calendar events in Zapier

  • February 26, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 49 views
M

This trigger burned through hundreds of tasks this billing cycle when no meaningful changes (for my use case) occurred to the event. I'm looking to only run the zap when a new event is scheduled or when the start date/time is updated for an existing event.

I’ve filtered out runs for recurring events using a filter, but since then the zap fired a ton of times for an event that had many guests on it. I believe it's firing when guests confirmation status changes.

Any suggestions?

This post has been closed for comments. Please create a new post if you need help or have a question about this topic.

4 replies

Dana.L
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  • Dana.LZapier Staff
  • Zapier Staff
  • February 26, 2025

Hi ​@max131387,

Dana here from Zapier Support - I'm happy to help today!

If you are using the Google Calendar trigger for ‘New or Updated event’, it may consider the guest’s response status update as an ‘update’ even though you would like to disregard it. 

Is it possible to have two separate Zaps so that one will trigger for a brand-new event only, and the other will use the ‘new or updated event’ with Filter conditions for the start date/time update only? 

More info is found here:

https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496276332557-Add-conditions-to-Zaps-with-filters

Please try this and let me know how you get on.

Thank you!

M
  • max131387Beginner
  • Author
  • Beginner
  • February 26, 2025

Thanks, Dana. How would you use that same trigger but filter out all updates that didn't involve a change of start date?

M
  • max131387Beginner
  • Author
  • Beginner
  • February 26, 2025

​@Dana.L your suggestion would work for me, but please see my comment above. I do not understand how I could filter out runs where the event was updated with regard to something other than the start time. Any advice?

ken.a
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  • ken.aZapier Staff
  • Zapier Staff
  • February 27, 2025

Hi ​@max131387,

I did some digging into this, and it seems like if you update a recurring event and choose to update multiple events in the series (either "all events" or "this and following events" option in the screenshot below), the Zap will trigger once per individual event:

If this is not what the you wants, you can change the option "Expand Recurring Events" to False:

This will make it so that only the event that was updated will trigger the Zap.

Additionally, is your Zap triggering on new events as well? If so, the "New or Updated Event" trigger is unfortunately not able to distinguish between an existing event being updated and a brand-new event being created. This is the known/expected behavior.

You can get around this by filtering for an updated time that doesn't match the created at time, like so: 

Kindly give it a try and let me know how it goes? I'll keep an eye out for your response!

Dana.L
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