How to Connect WPForms to Google Calendar

Every WordPress business owner knows the importance of time management and scheduling. However, whether it’s ever-pressing deadlines or client appointments, there never seems to be enough time to, well, manage your time.

Fortunately, for those of us running behind the clock, there’s a solution. By connecting WPForms to Google Calendar with Uncanny Automator, you can start to automate your workflows and save time for the important things in life—like catching up on your TV shows.

Connect WPForms to Google Calendar for free and watch your workflows handle themselves.

An Introduction to WPForms and Google Calendar

Connecting WPForms to Google Calendar using Uncanny Automator can unlock the potential of these powerful (and free) tools. But before we start automating workflows and optimizing schedules, it’s worth learning more about what WPForms and Google Calendar can do all on their own.

WPForms

WPForms is a beginner-friendly—but feature rich—WordPress form-building plugin. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and an ever-growing list of functions, it’s not difficult to see why WPForms is one of the most popular plugins on the market today.

The free version of WPForms, WPForms Lite, comes equipped with dozens of handy templates to get you started with just a few clicks. The paid version, on the other hand, allows you to create more sophisticated forms with built-in integrations and safety features such as spam protection and privacy compliance.

Google Calendar

In today’s business environment, most companies—big and small—make use of at least some of Google’s products and services. Despite the near ubiquity of tools such as Gmail and Google Docs, however, few businesses are truly making the most of Google’s full suite of goodies.

Google Calendar, for example, is a scheduling powerhouse with the ability to form the foundation of your digital media, e-learning or service based business. When paired with other workplace favorites such as Google Sheets, Meets and Slides, Google Calendar can help you keep your various projects and workflows organized and on-schedule.

Why Connect WPForms to Google Calendar?

Both WPForms and Google Calendar can help you organize your workflows—but together, they can do so much more. Whether you’re running a small WordPress blog or a rapidly growing e-learning platform, connecting WPForms to Google Calendar will create new opportunities for your business.

Here are just a few examples of what you can do with this powerful pairing:

• Automatically register students in pre-scheduled Google Meet classes and share relevant course material.
• Generate various types of customer appointments and easily differentiate between them using multiple calendars.
• Send out automated, personalized emails to your users to celebrate their birthdays, anniversaries or other special occasions.
• Automatically register users for special events and follow-up with additional promotional emails to boost your conversion rates.

Now that your creative juices are flowing, it’s time to figure out how to connect WPForms to Google Calendar—all for free! Your workflows will be running like a German train schedule in just a few clicks.

Connecting WPForms to Google Calendar

To start automating your workflows, you’ll need:

1. WPForms Lite or WPForms. You can download the plugin from your WordPress Admin Sidebar by navigating to Plugins > Add New and typing “wpforms” into the search bar.
2. The Google account associated with your business. If you don’t have one, don’t worry. Basic Google accounts are free and 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.

Once you’ve downloaded WPForms and Google Calendar, you can start to populate your website and schedule with all of your particulars.

Uncanny Automator will detect when you’ve downloaded and activated WPForms. But to start automating your workflows, you’ll first need to connect Google Calendar to Uncanny Automator. There are a few ways to 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.

Congratulations, you’re ready to start automating your workflows and regaining control of your schedule! Below, we’ve included one example of the many ways in which you can pair WPForms and Google Calendar to improve your existing workflows and create new ones.

Example: Register Users for a Free Web Series

One of the best ways to promote your paid content is to offer free content that gets prospective customers into your sales funnel. With WPForms and Google Calendar, you can get your users and site visitors signed up for a free web series in no time.

Uncanny Automator works using recipes, i.e., sets of triggers and actions that automate your workflows. In this example, the trigger will be the completion and submission of a form and the action will be inviting a guest to a Google Calendar event.

Step 1: Create Your Web Series

Open Google Calendar from your Google account. Click Create and then Event in the upper left-hand corner. In the pop-up window that appears, click Add Google Meet video conferencing. Google will automatically generate a Meeting ID but you can configure your meeting settings, including guest permissions, by clicking on the gear icon labeled Video call options.

Once you’ve configured your Google Meet settings to your liking, you can finish setting up your event. In our example, we’ve configured a week-long event. When you’re finished, your event should look something like this:

Click Save.

Step 2: Create Your Registration Form

With your event all set up, it’s time to give your guests the ability to sign-up by creating a registration form with WPForms. From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to WPForms > Add New. You can select from a number of templates but we’re just going to use a blank slate.

Click Create Blank Form. In the form-building window, drag and drop Name and Email into your workspace. Both fields should appear with a red asterisk next to their title to indicate that they are required for form completion. If not, click on the field and toggle the button next to Required in the form-builder sidebar. Both Google Calendar and Google Meets use emails to invite and manage event attendees and guests.

When you’re finished, your form should look like this:

In the upper right-hand corner, click Save then Embed and follow the prompts to publish your new form on your website.

Step 3: Select Automator Recipe Type

From Your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New. Automator will prompt you to select your recipe type. In this example, we’ve selected Everyone so that all visitors to your site, whether they are site users/members or not, can register for your web series. Click Confirm.

If you wanted, you could create a second form and Automator recipe for Logged-in users that registers them for an extended version of your web series.

Step 4: Name Your Recipe

Before selecting your Trigger and Action, name your recipe. A simple naming convention for Automator recipes is to include the integrations used in the recipe and the action. Following that convention, our recipe title would be WPForms-Google Calendar: Web Series Registration.

Step 5: Select Your Trigger

In the Trigger pane beneath the recipe title, click WPForms then select A form is submitted from the drop-down list that appears.

Select your web series registration form then click Save. Make sure that your trigger is Live. It should look like this:

Step 6: Select Your Action

Scroll down to the Actions pane and click Add action. From the list of integrations that appears, select Google Calendar and Add an attendee to an event in a Google Calendar from the drop-down list.

In the next window, select the calendar that contains your web series event. Under Attendee email, click on the WPForms drop-down list and select Email. This is what Google Calendar will use to extend event invitations.

Once you’ve configured your first action, click Save.

Repeat this step for each of the events in your web series. When you’re finished, toggle your recipe from Draft to Live. Your recipe should look something like this:

With workflows this seamless, your web series will fill up in no time! You can even build hype around your web series by creating a limited number of spaces. All you have to do is click Edit next to Total times in the Recipe pane in the upper right-hand corner of your recipe window. Then simply disable your WPForms registration form.

Augment Your Automations

With your first recipe under your belt, you can start connecting all of your workflows with your schedule and put your business on autopilot. Once you’ve mastered WPForms and Uncanny Automator, upgrade to the pro versions to create powerful workflows that will take your business to the next level.

Want to share lesson plans with the whole team and generate everyone’s schedule? Pair WPForms’ advanced fields and pro templates with Automator to create Google Calendar events for the whole team, replete with all of the lesson plan documentation.

Have any other ideas on connecting your workflows with your calendar? Let us know in the comments section below.

Happy automating!