Bring context to your calendar by connecting other apps

Time is money; the calendar is your budget. You need to know how much time you have so you can prioritize what you do with it. But does your calendar have all the information you need to make those decisions?

With Zapier, you can connect your calendar to thousands of apps, meaning you can automatically add precisely the information you need to your calendar. Here are just a few ways you can do exactly that.

See your tasks on your calendar and calendar events as tasks

You've got things to do. Do you have the time to do them? We've shown you how to add tasks in Google Calendar, focusing on Google's own to do list, Google Tasks. But what if you use another app to track your tasks? That's where Zapier comes in. You can automatically send new tasks with a due date over to your calendar, so you know what's coming up.

This is especially useful if you want to manage your time in one place.

What if you want the reverse to happen, where new calendar events create tasks in your to do list? That's possible, too.

With apps like Trello, you can get more detailed, and set it up so an appointment is only created when you move a card to a particular list. This lets you delay adding cards to your calendar until you're ready.

These are just a few ideas; check out the rest of our Google Calendar integrations for Trello, Todoist, Asana, and Toodledo.

Not sure how to manage your tasks? Check out our list of the best to do list apps.

See daily weather forecasts on your calendar

Google Calendar used to offer weather forecasts. You can bring them back yourself using Zapier, which can add a detailed weather report to your calendar every morning. Here's a quick template for setting that up.

Create calendar appointments using forms

Form applications make it easy to ask people for information, including scheduling appointments. You can create Google Calendar appointments using Google forms responses, if you like, meaning appointments scheduled using your form will show up on your calendar. Here's a quick template for setting that up.

You're not limited to Google Forms, either. You can also automatically add appointments from services like Typeform, Gravity Forms, and many more.

Inform co-workers on Slack when you're busy

Slack notifications during a meeting aren't ideal, but your co-workers can't be expected to know whether you're in a meeting or not. This is why it's a good idea for Google Calendar to automatically update your Slack status, allowing your co-workers to know at a glance when you are and aren't available. Here's a template for setting up just that.

There are other creative ways you can connect Google Calendar with Slack, like posting upcoming events in a channel or getting personal Slackbot notifications when an event is about to start.

Get calendar appointment reminders via SMS

Google Calendar used to offer SMS notifications for an upcoming appointment but doesn't anymore. Happily, you can still get SMS reminders for Google Calendar appointments using Zapier. This template will help you get started.

Send appointments from Outlook to Google Calendar (and vice versa)

Are you a Google Calendar user forced to use Outlook at work? You can sync Google Calendar with Outlook, sort of, using Zapier. You could, for example, send Google Calendar events to Outlook.

This is great if you just want your Google Calendar appointments to show up in one of your Outlook calendars. You can set up as many integrations as you want, pulling in appointments from multiple calendars. You will be able to edit appointments after they make the jump over to Outlook, though you should note that changes made in Outlook won't be reflected in Google Calendar.

You can also do this the other way around, if you want, allowing you to copy all new events from an Outlook calendar to Google Calendar:

Do not set up both of these at once—that will create what we call a Zap loop, where duplicate appointments are sent back and forth between the two platforms until entropy inevitably leads to the heat death of the cosmos or your Zapier account runs out of tasks (whichever comes first.)

This is just the beginning

These are just a few of the many ways Zapier users are connecting their calendars with other applications. You can automate almost any workflow you can imagine, right now, so click here to get started building a Zap.