How to Connect Formidable Forms to Google Calendar

If you’re running a small, medium or large sized business off of your WordPress website, you’re probably no stranger to the challenges of scheduling and time management. Internal meetings, client appointments and due dates can slip through your workflows like sand through your fingers.

But when you connect Formidable Forms to Google Calendar with Uncanny Automator, you can start to automate your workflows in a way that makes you the master of your time once again. Don’t miss another important deadline with this powerful integration. In fact, time will be trying to keep up with you!

An Introduction to Formidable Forms and Google Calendar

Before we figure out how to connect Formidable Forms to Google Calendar using Uncanny Automator, it’s worth learning a little more about each of these powerful tools in their own right.

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is one of the highest-rated WordPress form-building plugins available on the market today. With this drag-and-drop style form-builder, businesses can easily create custom forms that match their website’s design and branding.

While the free version of Formidable Forms is powerful enough to meet any business’ basic needs, paid versions add must-have features that can augment your business’ operations. Select from hundreds of powerful pre-built templates, dozens of premium form fields and make use of detailed reports to track the effectiveness of your forms.

Google Calendar

By now, most businesses are familiar with the full suite of Google’s products and services. Consumer favorites such as Google Docs, Google Sheets and Gmail are practically ubiquitous in today’s workplace. But few businesses are capitalizing on the full potential of these incredible tools.

Google Calendar, for example, can do a lot more than just notify you of the next holiday—although that is a pretty crucial feature. Create events, to-do lists and separate calendars to better manage your time, organize customers and coordinate with staff. You can also get automated daily emails first thing in the morning—but not before coffee—with your itinerary for the day ahead, complete with the relevant attachments and links.

When paired with other Google products and services such as Google Meet and Google Docs, it’s even possible to use Google Calendar to schedule and manage online courses/webinars.

Why Connect Formidable Forms to Google Calendar?

Formidable Forms and Google Calendar are both powerful (and free) tools all on their own. Just imagine what they can do together! Connecting Formidable Forms to Google Calendar can automate some of your business’ workflows and help you manage—and save—your valuable time.

Here are just some examples of why you might want to connect your WordPress form-builder with your Google Calendar:

• Automatically create customer appointments and assign them to specific team members using different calendars.
• Get reminders of important customer dates such as anniversaries and birthdays to run automated personalized promotions.
• Automatically register customers for events, remind them ahead of time and immediately give them access to event materials and media using attachments.

In the next section, we’re going to provide a step-by-step guide for connecting Formidable Forms to Google Calendar using Uncanny Automator. We’ll show you how easy it is to start automating your workflows!

Connecting Formidable Forms to Google Calendar

To start automating your workflows, you’ll need:

1. The free (or paid) version of Formidable Forms. You can download the plugin directly from the Formidable Forms website or from your WordPress Admin Sidebar by navigating to Plugins > Add New and typing “formidable forms” into the search bar.
2. A Google account. If you don’t already have one, don’t worry. Google accounts are free and you can get started in minutes. Additionally, your Google account will come with a whole host of Google products and services.
3. Uncanny Automator. You can download Automator from https://wordpress.org/plugins/uncanny-automator/ or directly from your WordPress Admin Sidebar by navigating to Plugins > Add New and typing “uncanny automator” into the search bar.

Both Formidable Forms and Uncanny Automator offer free and paid versions. However, at least for now, you won’t have to spend a dime to start saving time!

Step 1: Connect Google Calendar

Before you connect Formidable Forms to Google Calendar, you’ll need to connect your Google Calendar to Automator. There are a couple of quick ways that you can do this:

Option 1: Connect Google Calendar from Automator Settings

From your WordPress Admin sidebar, navigate to Automator > Settings and then, from the window, select App Integrations. From the list of integrations on the left-hand side, select Google Calendar and click Connect Google account. Follow the prompts to complete the process.

Option 2: Connect Google Calendar from a New Recipe

You can also connect Google Calendar to Automator while making a new Automator recipe. Simply navigate to Automator > Add New from your WordPress Admin Sidebar. You’ll be prompted to select a recipe type—for our purposes right now, it’s not particularly relevant which recipe type you choose.

Scroll down to the Actions box and click Add action. From the list of integrations that appears, select Google Calendar.

A pop-up window will appear. Click Connect account and follow the prompts.

For the following steps, you can either work from this recipe or delete it and start a new one.

Step 2: Configure Your Google Calendar Event and Formidable Form

Setting up a Google Calendar event takes just a few clicks. From your Google account, navigate to Google Calendar and click Create in the upper left-hand corner and then Event from the drop-down list.

A pop-up window will appear where you can schedule your event, add attachments and add a Google Meet link. Click More options to set guest permissions and further customize your event. When you’re satisfied, click Save.

Now that your webinar event is all set up, it’s time to configure your form. Creating a webinar/event sign-up sheet with Formidable Forms is both quick and easy. From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, click Formidable, then Add New and Blank Form.

You’ll be prompted to create a title for your new form before continuing. For simplicity, we named it Webinar Sign-up. You can then add fields to your blank slate using the drag-and-drop form builder. If you’re registering customers to a Google Calendar event, you’ll need to add an Email field and make sure that it is required for form submission. You can do this by clicking on the field and checking the box underneath Field Name.

When you’re all finished, your form should look something like this, depending on the fields you’ve added:

Once you click Update in the upper right-hand corner, Formidable will save your changes. Next you’ll want to publish your form by clicking Embed, also in the upper-right hand corner, and following the prompts. You can customize your form’s design to match your website and branding by navigating to Formidable > Styles from your WordPress Admin Sidebar.

Step 3: Create a New Recipe

Uncanny Automator connects various WordPress plugins and integrations using recipes—combinations of triggers and actions that automate workflows. For example, a visitor to your website submits a form (the trigger) and becomes a registered WordPress subscriber (the action).

To create a new recipe, navigate to Automator > Add New from your WordPress Admin Sidebar and select your recipe type. For this example, we’ll select Everyone so that any visitor to your site could register for your webinar.

It’s a good practice to create a title for your recipe before continuing. You may want to develop a naming convention so that it’s easy for you to identify your recipes at a glance. For example, we’ve titled this recipe Formidable-Calendar: Webinar Sign-up so that we know the integrations involved in the recipe and the purpose for it.

Step 4: Select a Trigger

Once you’ve named your recipe, it’s time to choose your Trigger. In this instance, click Formidable.

A drop-down list will appear. Select A form is submitted and then choose the form you’d like. For our example, that form is titled Webinar Sign-up. Once you click Save, your trigger should be set up as follows:

Step 5: Configure Your Action(s)

Now comes the fun part! Scroll down to the Actions box and click Add action. Next, click Google Calendar.

A drop-down list of options will appear. Select Add an attendee to an event in a Google Calendar.

You’ll get to select which calendar you would like to connect to and the specific event to which you would like to invite the guest submitting the form. Finally, because Google Calendar event invitations work off of email, you’ll have to select the email address field from your Webinar Sign-up form. Once you click Save your action should be configured as follows:

Congratulations! You’ve just completed your first recipe. Now, all that’s left to do is to toggle the recipe button in the upper right-hand corner from Draft to Live and watch your webinar fill up with guests.

Augment Your Automations

Now that you have the basics down, you can start to create higher-level automations to smooth your existing workflows and create brand new ones.

Want to keep track of your attendees in a spreadsheet? Add a second Google Sheets action to your recipe. Want to initiate a drip campaign to build hype for your upcoming event? Add an ActiveCampaign action. Want the whole team to know about a new event registrant? Send an automated message via Slack.

With Uncanny Automator, you can connect Formidable Forms to Google Calendar and another 90+ plugins and apps to augment your workflows. Become the master of your schedule with this incredible pairing.

Do you have any questions about connecting Formidable Forms with Google Calendar? How do you use forms on your WordPress website? Let us know in the comments section below.

Happy automating!