How to Add Events to Google Calendar with IFTTT

Add events to Google calendar straight from your site. Set up an IFTTT applet, create your form, and tell your form where to send the data.

Requirements

• Formidable API add-on
• IFTTT.com account

Set up an IFTTT Applet

IFTTT has a service called Maker Webhooks. It allows you to send pretty much any data into it. You can then tell it to trigger other events. If you don't yet have an account for IFTTT, go ahead and create one.

1. Now, you're ready to create an applet.
2. You will see If This Then That on the Create page. Click on the Add button to choose what happens first.
   
3. Search for webhook and click on the Webhooks block on the Choose a service page.
   
4. Click Receive a web request on the Choose trigger page.
   
5. Choose your event name. You can use whatever you would like. We will use add_form_event for this example.
   
6. Click the Add button in Then That on the Create page to choose your action.
   
7. Search for Google Calendar for your action and click on the Google Calendar block.
   
8. Click the Connect button. Allow IFTTT to add events to your account.
   
9. Click Quick Add Event on the Choose an Action page.
10. Next, clear out the text in the Quick Add text box. Click the Add ingredient button to insert Value 1 and Value 2 into the box. Value 1 is a placeholder for the event name, and Value 2 is for the date and time.
    
11. Click Create action. Here is an overview of the entire applet.
    

Create your form

If you don't already have a Formidable form to collect your events, create one now. Be sure to include a date field and a field for the event name. You can also include a time field.

Set up your API form action

1. Go to your form Settings → Actions & Notifications, and click the Send API data form action.
   
2. In the API form action, insert the notification URL and secret key. To find this, go to the Maker service on your account and click the Settings link.
   
3. You'll see a URL on the page that looks something like https://maker.ifttt.com/use/hXks-sdflkj3-fwkejlk. For this example, the notification URL would be https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/add_form_event/with/key/hXks-sdflkj3-fwkejlk.
   
   Be sure to replace add_form_event with the name you used in Step 4 above, and hXks-sdflkj3-fwkejlk with the value in the settings page URL.
4. You can leave the Basic Auth box empty.
5. Set the data form to json.
6. Set method to POST.
7. In the Map Data section, add two rows into the box for key/value pairs. Use value1 with the event name field, and value2 with the date and time fields. This is case sensitive.

Add events to Google calendar

You're all set. Now go ahead and submit an entry in your form to add events to Google calendar. Please note that IFTTT has frequent delays between the trigger and the action. They say it may take an average of 15 minutes to trigger, but our tests took about 30 minutes.