UPDATE: Since this blog post was written we’ve set up a special interface directly to Google Calendar which works almost instantaneous, so the method described here is no longer needed. You can simply set it up from the Synchronize screen.
SuperSaaS controls the speed at which availability from your Google Calendar is synced to your SuperSaaS schedule. Like most of the configurations we offer, it’s quick and easy. However, the reverse (from SuperSaaS to Google) has always been a bit lacklustre.
This is in part because Google decides the speed of updating, which in our insta-world can be excruciatingly slow. In addition, you have no control over which appointment fields show up in the event description on your Google Calendar.
Take away the tedious wait
Enter workflow automation tools such as Zapier and Make, for which our developers have created automated templates to speed things up and enable customized fields to be shown.
Every time a new appointment is made in your SuperSaaS schedule, it will be added to your Google Calendar. If you update or delete a booking, the changes will be reflected in Google, too.
You can also customize additional details that you would like to show in Google. For example, you can include fields such as location, email, start or finish times, price, or whether the booking came from a waitlist.
You can try it out for yourself using Make. If you don’t already have an account, you may need to create one before continuing (their service is free for small users, which also helps).
Go with the flow
It’s a fairly intuitive case of “click, select, repeat” but here’s an outline of the steps you’ll take to enable SuperSaaS to sync to your Google Calendar using the Make template:
Click on the button “Create new scenario from template” to open a pop-up window that will allow you to select a connection to your SuperSaaS schedule, or if this is already done, click ‘Add’ to add your schedule or choose from the list of your schedules if you have more than one.
Click Continue and a new pop-up window will automatically open to allow you to select your Google account from the list, or click ‘Add’ and log into your Google account. You can click on the white bar to reveal your Google Calendar options.
In the same window, you can then choose which field you want to use for the event title.
Thereafter, each time you click continue, you will simply need to select the same calendar to enable the integration for Google to know that it needs to add new events, and then to update or delete events as these actions occur in your SuperSaaS account.
Test your setup by adding a new event to your SuperSaaS schedule. Then click ‘Run’ under your Make scenario.
You may want to change the time and/or date of your test appointment (or even delete it) and click ‘Run’ again to ensure that changes appear in your Google Calendar as they should.
If you would rather use Zapier instead of Make, we’ve also created a similar template for Zapier.
These steps enable the updates to occur one-way from SuperSaaS to Google. If you’d like to achieve the reverse, take a look at these guidelines on how to synchronize availability in your Google Calendar to SuperSaaS.
Try these tricks
We recommend that you create a separate Google Calendar at first and use a build-and-test cycle until you are sure that the integration works as intended. If you accidentally create errors in the process, then your preferred Google Calendar will not be affected.
When customizing which fields get put in the event description (or if you’d like to add more fields), make sure ‘ID’ is not removed. The system updates appointments according to their unique identity number, so if it is removed, the system will not be able to reflect any changes in Google.
You can refine your integration even further by creating a separate hook to different Google Calendars for each resource or service, giving each a different color.
If webhooks sound like a great idea to you, you’ll find more ideas on how you can improve your schedule using webhooks.