Add service appointments to the dispatch calendar
A booking arrives and lands on the dispatch calendar with the address as a map pin and the job in the title.
New submission on your appointment booking form
Create an event on the shared services calendar with the customer name, service, and address
One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.
A dispatcher's day is a map problem before it is a diary problem. The booking form asks where the job is, what needs doing and when the customer can be in; each submission drops that onto the shared calendar with the address in the location field, so the route reads itself.
Plumbers, electricians and appliance repair firms run this while the phone is still ringing. Technicians open the calendar on their phone and get a tappable pin instead of an address typed into a group chat.
Setting it up
- 1
Publish the work order form with Service Location Address and Preferred Service Date required, and use conditional logic so Site Access Notes only appears for commercial sites.
- 2
In Zapier, trigger on New Submission from that form and add Google Calendar's Create Detailed Event action.
- 3
Select the shared dispatch calendar that every technician already subscribes to, not an individual engineer's calendar.
- 4
Build the start from Preferred Service Date plus the opening hour of Preferred Time Window, and set the end at the close of that window so the day view shows the real slot.
- 5
Map Service Location Address into the location field — Google Calendar resolves it to a map link the technician taps from the van.
- 6
Write the summary as Service Type plus Customer Name, so the calendar reads as a job list rather than a name list.
- 7
Send Problem Description, Site Access Notes and Phone Number to the description, so the call-ahead and the parts decision happen before anyone drives.
- 8
Book a test job at a known address, check the pin lands on the right street, then switch the Zap on.
What maps where
Using the Work Order Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.
| Form field | Google Calendar |
|---|---|
| Preferred Service Date | The date of the job on the dispatch calendar |
| Preferred Time Window | Converted to real hours for the event start and end |
| Service Location Address | Event location, which Google Calendar turns into a map link |
| Service Type | First half of the event summary |
| Customer Name | Second half of the event summary |
| Problem Description | Event description, so the technician knows what to load before leaving |
Variations worth knowing
Route Urgency through a Zapier paths step. Emergencies go to a call-out calendar the on-duty engineer watches, everything else queues on the standard dispatch calendar, and neither list has to be sorted by hand each morning.
Map Email Address to attendees so the customer gets the invitation and the reminder for their window. Move the internal notes out of the description first — guests can read it — and keep Site Access Notes for the office copy.
If something isn't arriving
Preferred Time Window arrives as words, not hours. Add a Formatter lookup that turns each choice into a start time — morning to 08:00, afternoon to 13:00 — and calculate the end from your usual slot length before the calendar step.
Free-text addresses without a postcode geocode badly. Ask for the postcode in the address question, and add a Formatter step that appends your service county when a submission arrives without one, so Google Calendar has enough to resolve.
Frequently asked questions
Can technicians see the day's jobs on their phone?
Yes, once they subscribe to the dispatch calendar in the Google Calendar app. Each job shows the service, the customer and a tappable address, and the description carries the fault the customer described.
If we reschedule a job, does the customer's form entry change?
No. Drag the event to a new slot and Google Calendar handles the notification, but the submission keeps the window the customer originally asked for. Nothing from the calendar is written back into formformform.
Can the customer send a photo of the fault?
Yes. Add a File Upload question to the work order form and the customer attaches a photo as they book, up to 2 MB per file. It arrives with the response, and the dispatcher opens it in formformform before the van is loaded. What it will not do is travel to the calendar: an upload downloads only for the account that owns the form, so a link dropped into the event gives a technician on the road nothing to open. Keep a URL question beside the upload for whatever the technician needs to see from the van, and for anything past 2 MB — a full-resolution shot, a video of the fault, a folder covering a whole site — then map that link into the event description.
Related automations
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- Log project deadlines as all-day events
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- Put candidate interviews on the hiring team's calendar
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- Turn event registrations into calendar invitations
Someone registers for your workshop and Google Calendar sends them the invitation, with their details in the event.
- Book a new patient's first visit from their intake form
A finished intake form books the patient's first visit in Acuity Scheduling and carries their contact details into the appointment.
Build the form first
The automation needs somewhere to fire from. Publish a form, connect it once, and every submission from then on runs this flow.
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