Recipe: Calendly workflow in Calendar

Integrating Calendly with our Calendar app provides a powerful way to streamline your scheduling process within Zendesk. By setting up this integration, you can automatically create Zendesk tickets whenever an event is booked through Calendly. This means your agents will have full visibility of scheduled meetings, consultations, or appointments directly within their Zendesk interface, ensuring that they can stay organized and provide timely support.

Although this recipe focuses on Calendly, any calendar scheduler such as Google Calendar Appointments or Microsoft Bookings will follow similar steps.

We will also cover 2 different scenarios:

• Automatically creating a new Zendesk ticket from the scheduled event
• Manually linking an existing Zendesk ticket to the scheduled event

Calendly workflow in Calendar Recipe

Steps covered in this recipe:

• 1. Set up Calendly or calendar scheduler
• 2. Create a calendar in the Calendar app
• 3. Sync the calendar with your external calendar
• 4. Connect events to Zendesk tickets
  • 4a. Option 1: Automatically create new tickets
  • 4b. Option 2: Link to existing tickets

1. Set up Calendly or calendar scheduler

Within Calendly, or your preferred scheduler, create your account and follow their getting started guides to start accepting meetings.

Once you have set up your account with Calendly, it will then automatically create events in the connected calendar/s. We will use these same calendar/s to sync these events with our Calendar app.

2. Create a calendar in the Calendar app

We will now create a calendar in the Calendar app. The following steps will need to be repeated for each calendar connected to Calendly.

If the events are created in your agents calendars, they can create their calendar under Personal calendar.

Otherwise if you are using a global/shared calendar for all events, the calendar can be created under a global calendars.

To create a global calendar, in the Calendar app click Calendars in the left side menu and then click Add calendar on the top right.

In the new calendar Settings:

• Name your calendar.
• Select a color.
• If required, change read & write permissions. 
• If required, set any pre-defined workflows. Note if you are automatically creating new tickets, ticket templates will be used instead for the 'Calendar event created' ticket update, which we will create in a step below.
• Calendar mappings are not required for this recipe.

Click Create calendar.

3. Sync the calendar with your external calendar

This new calendar can now be synced with the external account where the Calendly events are being created.

Please follow our guide on how to Connect Google & Microsoft accounts to calendar and connect the external account to the new calendar we just created above.

4. Connect events to Zendesk tickets

This step will be vary depending on whether you need (4a) a new Zendesk ticket created for every scheduled event or (4b) an existing ticket linked to events in your calendar.

4a. Option 1: Automatically create new tickets

With your external account now connected to the calendar, you will have a new option to automatically create a new Zendesk ticket when an event is created. 

First we will need to create a ticket template to define what information will be on the ticket when it's created by our app.

In the Calendar app, click Ticket templates and then Add ticket template on the top right.

Within the ticket template, define the following:

• Name of the ticket template.
  
  
• Access permissions is not used in this recipe. We recommend changing this to Admin so the ticket template is only used for this workflow.
  
  
• Ticket definition - specify what information the ticket will be created with, the placeholders we use here will be pulled from the external event. When selecting a placeholder from the + menu, some fields require you to click </> first. Here are the important fields needed for a Calendly workflow:
  
  • Requester email - select Calendar event attendee emails from the drop down menu. This ensures the person who booked the event is the requester. If your calendar is through Google, please use this placeholder instead:
    {% assign first_email = calendar_event.attendee_emails | split: ',' | first %} {{ first_email }}
    
    
  • Subject - select Calendar event subject from the drop down menu.
    
    
  • Comment - toggle to Public, and select Calendar event description from the drop down menu. As we will be using this comment to send an email to your attendees, you might want to add in further information to the attendee such as to reply to this email instead of the calendar invite. Please see below for more information on ensuring an email gets sent when the ticket is created.
    
    
  • Assignee email - select Calendar event creator email from the drop down. If each of your agents have their own calendar connected to Calendly, then this will automatically assign them the ticket if their email matches. Otherwise if it's a global calendar, set a preferred Group and Assignee instead.
    
    
  • Email CCs - select Calendar event emails from the drop down menu. If there is more than 1 guest for these events, then they will be added as CCs to the ticket.

Click Create ticket template

Now that a ticket template is ready, we can enable our calendar to start automating new tickets from events. To enable, click on the calendar and then the Ticket mapping in the top menu.

Toggle on the option to Automatically create ticket when an event is created in external calendar

Then from the Ticket template drop down, select the template we have created above.

Click Update calendar.

New tickets will now be automatically created whenever a calendar event is scheduled, go ahead and try it out!

4b. Option 2: Link to existing tickets

Alternatively, if a ticket exists already with your customer or will be created by other means, you can link events to tickets with our Calendar app.

Linking events to existing tickets can be achieved in 2 different areas:

1. Sidebar app on the ticket

Once the customer has booked in the event, open the existing ticket and in the calendar app on the right side of the ticket click the Add event drop down and select the relevant calendar. 

Our app will then show you the next event with the assignee or requester automatically for you. If this is the correct event, simply click Link event to this ticket.

2. Topbar app in Zendesk

Once the customer has booked in the event, open the Calendar app on the top right of Zendesk which will provide you with a calendar view.

Navigate to the date of the event and click on it, then click Link to ticket at the bottom of the event.

You will then be provided with a search bar to find the existing ticket or options from your currently open tickets. Select the correct ticket and then click Link.

• 1. Set up Calendly or calendar scheduler
• 2. Create a calendar in the Calendar app
• 3. Sync the calendar with your external calendar
• 4. Connect events to Zendesk tickets
• 4a. Option 1: Automatically create new tickets
• 4b. Option 2: Link to existing tickets