Irregular behaviour in "Create G Calendar event" automation

[Irene_Navarro]

Hey everyone,

I was very excited to have an interview scheduling system using Airtable Forms in the base my team uses to hire over 100 teachers per month.

As a reference to set up a booking system, I followed this Youtube video as well as this Airtable base by ScottWorld to avoid time zone problems (our candidates are all over the world).

After having candidates booking interviews via Airtable, the “Create G Calendar event” automation would do the last interview booking confirmation step by creating a G Cal event as soon as an interview time slot would be booked. Unfortunately, the automation misbehaves when the user is not using the same date and time format as we are (HH:MM DD/MM/YYYY). The events are not added to the day the candidate has booked.

I have tried several times and in several ways to find the core of this problem by changing, but I have failed miserably. When testing the automation internally from different devices and in different time zones, it has worked fine. However, when candidates book, the automation creates an event on the day when it is booked. Anyone experiencing a similar issue here who could shed some light? Thank you!

[ScottWorld]

HI @Irene_Navarro,

I’m glad my Airtable base was useful for you! :slightly_smiling_face:

Do you have screenshots or a link to your form? Are you using a normal date field?

You say that the events are not added to the calendar, but I’m assuming that they’re being added to the calendar on the MM/DD/YYY date instead of the DD/MM/YYY date?

[Irene_Navarro]

Hi there @ScottWorld !

This is the form I created last month to use this booking system. You will be able to see only one available slot in January I just added for the purpose of showing any available slots to you. I deleted the automation to create a G Cal event when a slot is booked as we stopped using it when the automation did not follow the behaviour “we built”.

Some events were added correctly at the booked time, others were added to the time and date in which the candidate submitted the form (disregarding the date and time of the candidate’s booked slot). I was totally unable to figure out why…

I tried to use your base to set up a way more user-friendly booking system and show our candidates their locale time zones. That did not work either… the automation kept acting up.

Side note: I have reached the limit number of automations in this base. So I decided to sacrifice my dream of having a booking system in Airtable and continued using another scheduling tool. Thank you so much for helping out!

[ScottWorld]

Yeah, there are so many limitations with Airtable’s Automations that it is difficult to recommend using automations in many instances.

And the crippling limitations with Airtable’s time zones often makes it impossible to collect dates & times on a form that needs to be used across multiple time zones, because you will need the users to manually specify their own time zone on the form… but that could still conflict with any sort of a system where you’re trying to present available timeslots to the user. Otherwise, the users will need to manually figure out the time zone calculations on their own, as you presented on your form. It’s just a big mess all the way around.

You’ve already abandoned Airtable, so you have already figured out that your best bet would be to use a dedicated scheduling app such as Calendly, which openly exposes time zones for everyone to manipulate, and it calculates time zones automatically for everyone.

[Irene_Navarro]

Calendly is actually the app with have been using for almost 2 years… it has its limitations too :frowning: We do our candidate management in Airtable (that won’t change) so the optimal solution would be to schedule candidates through Airtable too… Will find a solution eventually :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: Thank you for your help Scott!

[ScottWorld]

Several of my clients are linking Calendly with Airtable by using Integromat:

Integromat

Calendly Integrations

Integromat gives you the ability to integrate Calendly with many other services.

(If you have a budget and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant & Integromat Partner to help you with any of this, always feel free to contact me through my website at ScottWorld.com.)

[Irene_Navarro]

Thank you Scott! We will definitely consider this option.