Google Calendar - Slack Notifications Integration

Say goodbye to the old-fashioned method of manually notifying your colleagues about your AFK (Away From Keyboard) status in Slack. With this automated system, there's no need to repeatedly write and duplicate notifications in Google Calendar. Now, all you have to do is add an event to your calendar, and API will take care of the rest by automatically sending a message to the designated channel.

Even if you decline the event, system will handle it gracefully and send an appropriate message to the channel. Enjoy the convenience of this automated solution, or simply share the link with your colleagues to show them how to integrate Google Calendar with Slack using Google Calendar for Slack. Embrace efficiency and seamless communication with this approach!

Technologies

• Slack API
  • send messages in the channel
• Google Calendar API
  • read events
• Google Sheets API
  • used as a storage of handling events
  • read/write events info
• NestJS
• TS
• date-fns

Pre-Conditions

Slack Bot Configuration:

• Create a Slack Bot in your workspace.
• Generate an App-Level Token: SLACK_TOKEN.
• Create an OAuth Token with the scope chat:write: SLACK_BOT_TOKEN.
• Obtain the Channel ID where the messages will be sent: SLACK_CHAT_ID.

Google Service Account Setup:

• Create a Google Service Account.
• Grant the necessary permissions for the Service Account in Google Calendar.
• Specify the email of the account for which events will be scanned: GOOGLE_CALENDAR_ID.
• Create a spreadsheet and add permissions for the Service Account. Obtain the spreadsheet ID: GOOGLE_SHEET_ID.

Additional Configurations:

• Specify the number of days you want to scan ahead for Google events: COUNT_OF_DAYS_CHECK.
• Define the phrase with which you want to start a message in Slack: MESSAGE_HEADING.

Deployment

Currently, the check and notification process is initiated only by manually triggering the /notify route. To automate this process, you can integrate a NestJS CronJob that will automatically trigger the /notify route on the server at specified intervals.

Additionally, you have another option to deploy the API on Google Cloud Run. By doing so, you can take advantage of Google Scheduler to schedule the frequent triggering of the /notify route based on your desired frequency. This approach ensures a seamless and automated execution of the check and notification process without manual intervention.

How it works

Make sure only events with the text [out] in title will be taken for further interaction

New events in Google Calendar added

Event deleted

Event moved to other time