Google calendar on-event-ending is missing

Question

I'm trying to work my first Azure project which requires responding to the start AND end of appointments in a Google calendar. The on-even-started works fine, but the counterpart is missing. Give that the 'started' is already present, would it be a big effort to also include 'ended'?

Answer 1

Hi tbeernot

That shouldn't be a big effort per se, but it's important to show the product team behind this connector that there is a level of need & demand for this feature so that the team can conduct necessary review & consideration against required work as well as future roadmap of the product. Please visit Azure UserVoice and submit a feature request. This will also enable others in need of same capability to upvote for this feature as well!

With that said, in your unique project and its requirements, what conditions really warrant a meeting to have been ended? Since you're already able to access the start time and the duration of a meeting (which will give you the target end time for that meeting,) can you safely make a time-bound assumption for the meeting end time? If so, you can probably use "Delay" connector to delay your workflow by duration of the meeting, and then use HTTP connector as a subsequent action that calls an another LA workflow? Hope this helps - please let us know if any questions.

Answer 2

Well, I have to investigate the Delay. Since this is my first Azure project, I'm not very knowledgeable yet. 

But the use case is as follows... A Tesla (the car) is able to start its HVAC system remotely, this is done from a mobile app through a REST service run by Tesla, forwarding it to the car itself. However, you cannot start the HVAC scheduled at a certain time. A great omission of course.

But as an IT guy, REST service, I can fix that. There are of course multiple solutions possible, one involves running my own webapp with a schedule registration and a timer. But that will be hard for non software developers use easily. I could make it into a product of course, but, nah. So in the area of cloud computing I figured I'd give that a try, and maybe it is a nice topic for a conference talk.

For the schedule I intend to use Google Calendar. But I need some kind of trigger to the start of an event. AFAIK the other cloud platforms do not offer the workflow thingy (Logic app) that Azure does, which makes it very well suited. (And it works very well so far.) But once the HVAC is on, it stays on. So I need to have an off-event as well. The logical solution would be to use the event end time (you can hack with abusing the start of another appointment). Conceptually correct would be an on-event-ended trigger, but maybe the Delay can work as well. I'll look into that.

The alternative is Zapier, they have an on-event-ended and can call Azure functions. Maybe that makes an even more interesting conference talk, so no rush.

Answer 3

Ok. I tried the 'Delay until' connector. It seems easy because the Calendar returns the end date-time as 2018-10-03T04:35:00+00:00 (that is in GMT and no DST, but accurate). So in order to put that into the Delay, which says it requires a timestamp like 2018-10-03T04:35:00Z (Z stands for zulu, roughly equal to GMT), I need to replace the +00:00 with Z with this: 

replace(triggerBody()?['end'],'+00:00', 'Z')

But I'm unable to type a variable name in setVariable.

Answer 4

I was able to use the replace function by putting it directly into the delay, skipping the need for setVariable.

Answer 5

I was able to use the replace function by putting it directly into the delay, skipping the need for setVariable.

Glad to hear that you were able to resolve the issue and try out the "Delay Until" connector, tbeernot! How did it work for ya? That's a really interesting POC that you're working on there, I didn't know Tesla HVAC was accessible.. please keep us posted :) Would love to see the outcome and other findings.

Answer 6

There are some minor drawbacks to 'Delay until', most importantly: once it is started, it does not modify anymore.

From experience; once you get an email (or rather an SMS) that the HVAC is turned on, you may want to act on that. It may turn out that it is unnecessary, your appointment cancelled, so you turn it off manually. A delayed turn-off won't make a difference then.

But suppose it is colder than expected and you want to extend the preheating; extending the appointment won't work, because the delay is already set. From a UX perspective that part of the software's behaviour is not enforceable (the user is allowed to change the event in Google Calendar), so being able to trigger something on the on-event-ended really is the better solution. So I see Delay as a stopgap. :-)

Zapier has on-event-ended, but they seem to make copies of the events, I need to look at that more closely. 

Answer 7

Hey tbeernot - Got any further updates for us?

Answer 8

Oh, yes, I do. Works like a charm, given the drawbacks I mentioned above. So I still would like to have then on-event-ended.

https://tbeernot.wordpress.com/2018/10/07/going-electric-scheduling-the-hvac-on-a-tesla/

I'm considering turning this into a product, so I'm a bit thin on the technical side. Will change that once I'm not giving everything away.