Google Calendar: participant RSVP problems

Google Calendar: participant RSVP problems

The majority of our users don't directly interact with Zoho CRM, nor do we want them to, as their primary tools are Gmail and Google Calendar.

As such, we want to sync their calendars with the CRM to capture meeting activity ("Events").

The built-in Google Calendar API does everything right except: 1) the RSVP status of participants, and 2) the handling of multiple Participants.

For example:
  1. An internal CRM user schedules a meeting via Google Calendar with an external invitee, who already exists in the Contacts module.
  2. In Google Calendar, the external invitee is classified as "Awaiting".
  3. The meeting is created in the Events module with the internal user as the Host and the external invitee listed under "Participants" (see the attached screenshot), NOT Invited or No Reply.
  4. The external invitee responses Yes to the Google Calendar invite.
  5. In Google Calendar, the external invitee is now classified as "Yes".
  6. In the CRM, the external invitee's Event Participant status doesn't change.
  7. In the CRM, the Event entry DOES show in the external invitee's Contact record under "Invited Events", but not Open or Closed Interactions.
Additionally:
  • multiple Guests (Google Calendar's terminology) / Participants (CRM's terminology) break the sync process, and
  • Participants can't be reported on in the CRM.
At this point, we're considering writing our own API and our own custom module to fix all of these problems. Is anyone else having these problems and have you found a solution?

Thanks!