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What's the simplest way to get Google Calendar data into a database/spreadsheet?
I'm trying to reduce the services/apps I pay for, and one of the easy ones to lose (I think) is my time tracking app. As a freelancer, I have realised I really don't need to be putting my time into Harvest, because all I ever enter is what was in my Google Calendar in the first place.
So I figure if I can get my calendar data into a database (like Notion) or even just a spreadsheet, i'm home and hosed. I've found a lot of the automation services like automate.io or Zapier would require me to pay for a subscription to do the amount of automation required to get the job done, and i've also discovered that while there are add ons to Google Calendar and Google Sheets that can carry data across, I haven't found them to be reliable in my testing.
So - i'd love tips on the simplest possible way to do this.
My setup is - each project has it's own calendar under my Google Workspace calendar account. I would then tally up the calendar time blocks on a given calendar when it's time to invoice that client. Simple as that. Or it will be - once I figure out a simple and reliable way to do it.
Thanks!
- p_l 5y agoYou can configure Google Calendar to expose ICS-formatted HTTP endpoint, then use any of the ICS format parsers for your favourite language to parse them, clean up, and load into whatever database you want. You can also use Google Apps Script to create an action that will load your Calendar data into Google Sheets spreadsheet.
- natIVeli 5y agoOh wow. Thank you. But also - a lot of that went straight over my head. I'm a music producer, so parsers and endpoints and scripts are a little beyond me. But i'm Googling this stuff now. And if there's a simpler solution that would be cool too.
- p_l 5y agoIf you can accept external solution, Zapier seems to have something - I wouldn't be surprised if others do as well. But just in case: ICS is essentially a somewhat standard format for storing calendar entries. If you ever got a calendar event as attachment in file, you probably got it in ICS file (especially common when targeting Apple devices, as ICS is supported by built-in Calendar). So a lot of calendaring etc. software can import ICS, and those that can import over web can be given link that you used to be able to generate from calendar settings in Google Calendar.
- p0d 5y agoI think in your world you are asking others to tell you how to easily write a song. Point is, it's not easy :-) I 'd stick with the paid solutions you mention. I got paid a lot of money for writing code which takes data in a spreadsheet and turns the data into events in Google Calendar . A $10 a month solution is worth it I think.