The Case Of The Curious Coder And The Calendly Integration
From time to time, I get a challenge ...
Posted by Steffi Lewis on 23/05/2023 @ 8:00AM
I virtual network with a lovely chap and over the past few meetings, he's been mulling over subscribing to YourPCM. "Now's the time for a free trial!" he proclaimed after our last event together, "But I need YourPCM to do something extra!" Colour me intrigued sir ...
Integrating Calendly and YourPCM was well worth the Saturday afternoon I put in to make it work!
He told me that when new people use Calendly to book a meeting with him, he has to ring them up and get all their details so he knows who he's dealing with and can keep in touch with them before and after his meeting. He's a very busy chap and found that a bit of a time waster, so he wondered if there was something YourPCM could do to help.
"We needed a Calendly integration!"
I had a look at the Calendly API. Yes, it could work that way, but I always like to go for the simplest solution whenever possible. So, it turns out that in the notifications section of a Calendly booking form, you can set up an external URL for it to redirect to once a booking has been made. And you can also tell it to send details of the booking along with the redirect.
That's the way to do it! Nice and simple! I needed to write a custom script that could be redirected to (a webhook) and then have it handle the data sent and get a new contact into the YourPCM database for the subscriber. Should be a couple of hours of work at most.
Well, there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth at the start. Was it doing a GET or a POST? The documentation was unclear. And working out what fields were sent and in what format was a bit of a pain. For example, phone numbers come in with a plus sign and country code, so that needed tweaking, especially if it was a UK mobile number. And there were a few other little bits and pieces I needed to reformat.
"I got there in the end with help from the Calendly documentation!"
I have a demonstration arranged for next week with him and I know now that he'll start a free trial after it. He's agreed to let me log in to his Calendly account and tweak his booking form to work with YourPCM then any new bookings will result in a new contact being added to his contact database.
I also updated the Extras Tab in YourPCM to explain what it is and how it works. It does mean doing things in a Calendly booking form in the right way, but it's not a major change and something my Subscriber Team can do in a few minutes.
Ok, so it was an afternoon's work to get that sorted, not just a couple of hours, but I'm a curious coder and do love a challenge. Besides, now I'll get another subscriber and, of course, it's an added draw for potential new subscribers in future too.
Well worth the Saturday afternoon I put in to make it work.
Love, light and logic ...
STEFFI LEWIS
The CRM designed exclusively for UK small business owners ...
Foodie, sci-fi nut, cat lover, brain aneurysm & cancer survivor, countryside dweller, SaaS entrepreneur, developer and networker.
Published my first website in 1993 for the Open University and am highly experienced with Windows Servers, SQL Server, HTML, Classic ASP, JavaScript, and CSS.
I've also worked as a professional photographer in Los Angeles, USA and been a vision mixer and producer for live television in my time.
I live in a village north of Milton Keynes with my two cats, Baggins and Gimley, and a large planted aquarium full of unruly tropical fish.
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