Enable Google calendar integration to send event invitations
The Google Calendar integration helps event registrants block off their calendars to attend your events and provides direct access sign-in information from their calendars.
Once enabled, this integration does the work for you; when a user registers for an event, they’ll automatically receive a Google calendar invite that holds the time on their calendar and includes event information and the direct event link.
Note: You’ll need to set up or have an actual Google account (not just an email distribution account) to send calendar invites from. We suggest something generic like events@gradual.com.
How it works
The Google Calendar integration leverages a google group to send out the invite. Anyone who registers for the event is automatically added to the invitation.
Attendees who are added via the dashboard, bulk imported, or added by API will not receive the calendar invite.
If you view the invitation as the account owner, you will see all of the invitees, but individual invitees will not see anyone else. This means if the event is edited or deleted, those changes will be reflected for every registrant, just like a normal Google Calendar event.
If you edit the event in Gradual, the Google Calendar event will automatically be updated, but attendees will not be notified, so it's still necessary to notify attendees.
If you delete the event from the account that is the "owner" and tied to the integration, it will delete the event for all registrants, just like if you were deleting a regular Google calendar event and send a cancellation notice.
How to set up the integration
- Sign into your dashboard.
- Select Integrations, scroll to Google Calendar and select Setup.
- Select ‘Connect to Google Calendar’, choose an account and enable all access and select Continue.
- The integration is set up and moving forward, anytime someone registers for an event they’ll receive a confirmation email and a calendar invite through Google.
How to change the account associated with the integration
- Sign into your dashboard.
- Select Integrations, scroll to Google Calendar and hover over the three-dot menu, and select 'Edit'.
- Select ‘Edit’, choose an account and enable all access settings, and select 'Continue'.
- The integration is set up on the new account. All previous invitations are still valid and remain on registrants' calendars, and moving forward, anytime someone registers for an event they’ll receive a confirmation email and a calendar invite through Google.
Google Calendar has updated its policy on automatic calendar invites from unknown senders that may affect the receipt of calendar invites with this integration.
Recipients may need to still approve calendar invites from you as the sender, but this may aid in the receipt of them: ensure that the Google integration email address (that you loaded for this integration above) matches an email address that your community already interacts with already. Examples could include your marketing email address or the 'Sender Email' email address in your Gradual community dashboard.
To check or change your email sender email address in Gradual:
Navigate to your dashboard, to 'Settings', to 'System Settings', and your 'Sender Email' will be the first address at the top. To change that email address follow these steps.
To learn more about this change, reference this resource from Google: Manage invitations (from Google)