Auto Decline Conflicting Invitation in Google Calendar

It's common to receive a meeting invitation when your Google Calendar already has an accepted event at the same time slot. Google Calendar does nothing to the conflict so you have to explicitly decline the new invitation, creating unnecessary burden. It's also not uncommon to see double booking on your calendar at busy days.

The invitation clash is most likely because your calendar is not visible to the event organizer, who is outside your organization. Otherwise they can find a time to prevent it.

This article is NOT about Google Calendar's Out of Office or Working Hours features since it aggressively and unfavorably blocks all invitations at a particular time.

The rest of article explains using Foresight, a workflow automation tool, to auto decline conflicting invitations in Google Calendar.

Video Demo

The video demo is an oversimplified case. Your primary calendar is the only source for managing meetings, no 2nd calendar or group calendars or shared calendars.

When someone sends an invitation to your primary calendar, it triggers the automation rule. The rule then checks if the invitation conflicts with your other events on your primary calendar and decline the invitation if a conflict occurs. The event is immediately shown as Not going with an optional message to the sender.

Instructions

Follow the step-by-step instructions below to set up an automation for your calendar.

1. Sign into Foresight.
2. Go to Rules.
3. Click the button to create a new rule.
4. In Select a trigger page, choose New calendar event.
   
5. In Edit trigger page,
   1. Click Sign in with Google to authorize Foresight to view your Google calendars. Once you granted the permission, it displays as Access granted.
   2. In Calendars field, click and select Primary Calendar. This means Foresight watches for new invitations on your primary calendar.
   3. Leave Also include events I was not invited and Also include events I created unchecked.
6. Click Next.
7. In Select an action page, choose Check event conflict.
   
8. In edit Check event conflict action page,
   1. Click Sign in with Google to authorize Foresight to view and edit events on your Google calendars. Once you granted the permission, it displays as Access granted.
   2. In Calendar field, click and select Calendar Id variable from the drop down menu. The variable is displayed as {{ calendarId_xxxxxx }}.
   3. In Event field, click and select Calendar Event Id variable from the drop down menu. The variable is displayed as {{ calendarEventId_xxxxxx }}.
   4. In Conflict calendars field, click and select calendars that would collide with the new invitation. In our simplified but typical case, only Primary calendar is selected.
      
   5. Click ADD NEXT ACTION button.
9. In Select an action page, choose If action.
   
10. In edit If action page,
    1. Click and rename Branch 1 to Event conflicts.
    2. Set the condition of Branch Event conflicts to Has event conflict is true.
    3. Click and rename Fallback branch to Event does not conflicts.
    4. Click ADD NEXT ACTION button in Branch Event conflicts.
       
11. In Select an action page again, choose Respond to event.
    
12. In edit Respond to event action,
    1. If you see Access granted, move to the next step. Otherwise, click Sign in with Google to authorize Foresight to view and edit events on your Google calendars. Once you granted the permission, it displays as Access granted.
    2. In Calendar field, click and select Calendar Id variable from the drop-down menu. The variable is displayed as {{ calendarId_xxxxxx }}.
    3. In Event field, click and select Calendar Event Id variable from the drop-down menu. The variable is displayed as {{ calendarEventId_xxxxxx }}.
    4. In Going field, choose No.
    5. (Optional) In Add a note field, write something polite to the event organizer that you have conflicting schedules.
       
13. Click REVIEW.
14. In Review page, give the automation rule a name and click CREATE.
15. Your workflow looks like this
    

Now ask someone else to send you a meeting invitation. If the time slot of new invitation overlaps with a previously scheduled meeting, the new invitation will be automatically rejected. Otherwise, no response is replied to the sender.

Notes

• An all-day invitation is by default in free visibility (not blocking your time slots), so unless the organizer explicitly changes it to busy visibility, the invitation does not conflict with any events in the day(s).
• The workflow does NOT support recurring events because the Check event conflict action does not support it. A rule will stop at the Check event conflict action with a failed state.
• Checking event conflict is done by free / busy visibility. It does not matter whether you have accepted the existing meeting before a new invitation comes in. To make an exception of allowing invitation coexistence, change your existing meeting to free visibility.

Feel free to leave your ideas or questions below or contact us for issues. You may also like

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