Google Calendar

What your agents can doCopy Anchor Link

Agents use the Google Calendar API with the access granted by your connected account.

• Create events with guests and a Google Meet link
• List the agenda for a day or a week, across your calendars
• Find free time with the free/busy API
• Reschedule or cancel events, and notify guests
• Accept or decline invitations
• Create calendars, share a calendar, and change who can see or edit it

Agents can read your Google Calendar settings but can't change them, because the Calendar API has no method for that. The exception is your time zone. Changing your primary calendar's time zone changes it too. The connection only grants access to Google Calendar, so agents can't open the Google Drive files attached to an event.

AuthenticationCopy Anchor Link

Both methods ask for these scopes, with offline access so that Google issues a refresh token:

If Google's consent screen lets you leave out access to Google Calendar, allow it. Without it, agents can't call the Calendar API and triggers don't work.

Access tokens last an hour, and Helios renews them with the refresh token. See Integration authentication for how credentials are stored and injected.

Helios Google Calendar AppCopy Anchor Link

1. In Helios, choose Helios Google Calendar App.
2. Optional: to watch calendars other than your primary one for triggers, enter their IDs in Calendars. See Triggers.
3. Save, then choose your Google account and approve access.

Helios asks Google for consent each time you connect. If you remove Helios's access in your Google Account, open the connection and click Re-connect.

Your own Google Calendar OAuth appCopy Anchor Link

You need a Google Cloud project that you can edit. To keep sign-in inside a Google Workspace organization, the project must belong to that organization.

1. In the Google Cloud console, create a project or pick one. Under APIs & Services → Library, enable the Google Calendar API.

2. Open Google Auth Platform. If it isn't set up yet, click Get Started. On Branding, set the app name and the user support email.

3. On Audience, choose the user type:

   • Internal limits sign-in to your Google Workspace organization.
   • External allows any Google account. The app starts in Testing, so add your account under Test users with Add users.

4. On Data Access, click Add or Remove Scopes and add the scopes above. Google lists calendar as a sensitive scope.

5. On Clients, click Create client and choose Web application. Under Authorized redirect URIs, add this URL, then click Create:

   Copy Text

   https://api.heliosapp.com/integrations/google/oauth_callback

   Copy the client secret now. Google shows it only when you create the client.

6. In Helios, choose Your own Google Calendar OAuth app. Enter the Client ID and Client Secret of the client you created. Optional: enter calendar IDs in Calendars.

7. Save, then approve access in Google.

If you add a new client secret in Google, enter it in Helios through Manage before you disable the old one. After you change the app's scopes, click Re-connect on the connection and approve again.

TriggersCopy Anchor Link

Google Calendar can start a Workflow when something changes. Helios sets up notifications with the Calendar API when you save the connection, so there is nothing to set up in Google.

Helios watches your primary calendar. To watch other calendars, set Calendars on the connection to their IDs, separated by commas. A calendar's ID is under Integrate calendar in its settings in Google Calendar. Helios skips a calendar the account can't see. Your calendar list and settings belong to the account, so they don't depend on Calendars.

All filters are optional. Pattern filters are case-sensitive, so *Standup* doesn't match daily standup.

• Calendar is chosen from a list. For event and sharing events, the list has the watched calendars. For calendar list events, it has every calendar in your list.
• Title matches the event's title.
• Organizer email matches the organizer's email address.
• Event type is one of Event, Focus time, Out of office, Working location, Birthday or Event from Gmail. Use it to leave out focus time and working location entries.
• My response is your own answer to the invitation. Choose Not responded to catch new invitations you haven't answered.
• Shared with matches the email address of the person or group, or the domain, that the calendar is shared with, such as *@example.com. Sharing with the public has no address, so it doesn't match when this filter is set.
• Access is the access that the sharing gives, such as See all event details or Make changes and manage sharing.
• Calendar name matches the name you see for the calendar in your list, which is your own name for it if you set one.
• My access is your own access to the calendar.
• Setting is the setting that changed, such as Time zone or Start of the week.

How Helios reads the changes:

• An event counts as created when it was created after the last change Helios saw. An invitation to an event that someone created earlier arrives as event.updated.
• Google may send only the ID of a deleted event. The title, organizer and event type filters then can't match it. On calendars you own, Google keeps the details.
• A sharing rule or a calendar in your list counts as new when it wasn't there the last time Helios read the changes.
• calendar_list_entry.updated covers your own settings for a calendar. Google doesn't report a change to the calendar itself, such as a new title set by its owner, or a change to who it's shared with, as a calendar list change.

If Google refuses to watch something, Helios watches the rest and shows the events it can't receive as unavailable in the trigger picker, with the reason. This happens when the connection doesn't have access to Google Calendar, or when you can't make changes to any watched calendar, which hides its sharing settings. Helios tries the sharing settings again later, so sharing events become available once you can make changes to a watched calendar.

Check that it worksCopy Anchor Link

• The connection: after you approve access, the connection's status shows Connected. Error means Google rejected the token. See Common errors.
• A trigger:
  1. Add event.created to a workflow with no filters.
  2. Create a test event on a watched calendar.
  3. Check that a run starts. Then open the connection in Helios and click Webhook events to see the event.

Common errorsCopy Anchor Link