Kaizen #8 - Handling Recurrence and Participants in the Events Module via API

Kaizen #8 - Handling Recurrence and Participants in the Events Module via API

Hello everyone!

We are back this week with an exciting post—Handling recurrence and participants in the Events module through API.

First things first—What is the Events module?
"Events" is a part of the Activities module in Zoho CRM. 
An event is an activity that happens at a given place and time. You can find Events on the user's Zoho CRM's home page, Activities home page, Calendar, and in other related records.

What are the types of Events?
Events are of two types—Recurring and non-recurring events.
Recurring events: These events repeat/recur at a set frequency. You can set them to repeat by day, week, month, or by year. You can also set them to repeat a fixed number of times. 
Non-recurring events: These are one-time events.
Both these events can also be all-day events.

Now, let us see how to handle a recurring event and add/update participants via API.

1. Creating a Recurring Event through API
You must use the Insert Records API to insert a record in the Events module.

Request URL: {{api-domain}}/crm/v2/Events
Request method: POST

Sample input to create a recurring event that repeats every two weeks

{
    "data": [
        {
            "All_Day": false,
            "Event_Title": "Kaizen_9_Weekly",
            "Start_DateTime": "2020-02-02T10:00:00+05:30",
            "End_DateTime": "2020-02-02T11:00:00+05:30",
            "Participants": [
                {
                    "type": "contact",
                    "participant": "3652397000001281003"
                },
                {
                    "type": "lead",
                    "participant": "3652397000000415063"
                },
                {
                    "type": "user",
                    "participant": "3652397000000186017"
                }
            ],
            "Recurring_Activity": {
                "RRULE": "FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=SU;INTERVAL=2;UNTIL=2020-03-15"
            },
            "Remind_At": "2020-02-01T09:45:00+05:30",
            "Who_Id": {
                "id": "3652397000000649013",
                "name": "Patricia Boyle"
            },
            "Venue": "Chennai",
            "$se_module": "Accounts",
            "What_Id": "3652397000000624046",
            "$send_notification": true
        }
    ]
}


Mandatory keys
The following table lists the mandatory fields you must specify while creating a recurring event. Not including any one of these fields results in the MANDATORY_NOT_FOUND error.

Key
Data Type
Description
Event_Title
String
Title of the event. Accepts a maximum of 255 characters, alphanumeric, and special characters. 
Start_DateTime
DateTime
The date and time (in ISO8601 format) at which the event begins. 
End_DateTime
DateTime
The date and time (in ISO8601 format) at which the event ends. 
Recurring_Activity
JSON Object
JSON Object that contains information about the recurrence pattern of the event in the key "RRULE".

Other Keys

Key
Data Type
Description
All_day
Boolean
Represents if the event takes place all day.
Participants
JSON Array
Contains the ID and type of each participant in individual JSON objects. Possible participant types are "lead", "contact", "user", and "email".
Remind_At
DateTime
The date and time in the current user's time zone (in ISO8601 format) at which a reminder is sent to the participants. 
Who_Id
JSON Object
The name and ID of the contact that the event is related to; that contact may or may not be a participant of the event.
What_Id
JSON Object
The name and ID of the Account, Deal, Product, Quote, Invoice, Campaign, Vendor, Case, Purchase Order, or Sales Order that the event is created for.
$se_module
String
The API name of the parent module given in the key "What_Id". This key is mandatory when you include the "What_Id".
Venue
String
The place where the event takes place. Accepts a maximum of 255 characters, alphanumeric, and special characters.
$send_notification
Boolean
Represents if you want to send invitations to the participants of the event. The value true sends out invitations, and false does not. 

We will now discuss the Participants and RRULE keys in detail.

1.1 Participants
The Participants key is a JSON array of participant JSON objects. You can add four types of participants to an event—lead, contact, user, and email. 
You must include each of these participant types as individual JSON objects inside this array as shown below.

"Participants": [
        {
            "type": "contact",
            "participant": "3652397000001281003"
        },
        {
            "type": "lead",
            "participant": "3652397000000415063"
        },
        {
            "type": "user",
            "participant": "3652397000000186017"
        },
        {
            "type": "email",
            "participant": "carissa-kidman@yahoo.com"
        }
]

Where, 
type - The type of participant. The possible values are lead, contact, user, email
participant -  The record ID of the lead, contact, or user.

1.2 RRULE
RRULE is the key in the Recurring_Activity JSON object that determines the recurrence pattern of the event. 
RRULE holds multiple key-value pairs for different types of recurring events (i.e Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly). You must separate each key-value pair by a semicolon.

Mandatory key-value pairs for RRULE
Key
Possible Values
Description
FREQ
DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, YEARLY
Frequency; represents how often the event repeats. 
INTERVAL
1–99
The gap between each event. For example, for a weekly recurring event, if the INTERVAL value is 2, the gap between the first and the next event will be two weeks. 
COUNT
1–99
The number of events you want to create. For example, if the COUNT value is 3, three events will be created. 

Note
You must specify FREQ and (INTERVAL or COUNT) in RRULE.

Other key-value pairs in RRULE
Key
Possible Values
Description
BYMONTHDAY
1–31
The day of the month the event repeats on. Applicable only for  monthly and yearly events.
BYDAY
SU, MO, TU, WE, TH, FR, SA
The day of the week the event repeats on. Applicable for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly events.
BYSETPOS
1, 2, 3, 4, -1 
The week of the month the event repeats in.
Applicable only for monthly and yearly events.
1 - Event repeats every first week of the month
2 - Event repeats every second week of the month
3 - Event repeats every third week of the month
4 - Event repeats every fourth week of the month
-1 - Event repeats every last week of the month.
UNTIL
Date in yyyy-MM-dd format
The date until which the event must repeat.

Therefore, according to the sample input given at the beginning of the post, the event starts on Feb 2, 2020 at 10:00 AM and ends the same day at 11:00 AM.

According to  "RRULE":"FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=SU;INTERVAL=2;UNTIL=2020-03-15", the event occurs every Sunday, with an interval of 14 days (2 weeks), and recurs until Mar 15, 2020.
Therefore, the sequence is as shown below.
  1. The event begins on Feb 2, 2020.
  2. The first recurring event happens on Feb 16, 2020.
  3. The second recurring event happens on Mar 1, 2020.
  4. The last recurring event happens on Mar 15, 2020.
Therefore, the response will have four JSON objects—one for the first event as specified in the Start_DateTime key, and one for each recurring event.

Note
You can only create one set of recurring events using the RRULE in a single API call.

A few other examples of RRULE:
  • "RRULE": "FREQ=MONTHLY;COUNT=3;BYDAY=WE;BYSETPOS=2".
    This RRULE creates three events that recur every Wednesday in the second week of the month.
  • "RRULE": "FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=2;COUNT=3;BYMONTHDAY=14".
    This RRULE creates three events that recur on the 14th day of the month, and repeat once in two months.

2. Updating an Event
You must use the Update Specific Record API to update an event.
In this section, we will discuss
  1. Adding a participant to an event
  2. Updating all future events
2.1 . Adding a participant to an event
Details you need to add a participant to an event
  1. The event's record ID. You can obtain this from the response you received while creating the event.
  2. The ID of the participants that are added already. The GET Specific Event response will have a unique ID for each participant in the "Participants" JSON array.
The sample input is as follows.

{
    "data": [
        {
            "All_Day": false,
            "Event_Title": "Kaizen_10_Weekly",
            "Start_DateTime": "2020-02-02T11:00:00+05:30",
            "End_DateTime": "2020-02-02T12:00:00+05:30",
            "Participants": [
                {
                    "type": "contact",
                    "participant": "3652397000001281003",
                    "id": "3652397000001326102"
                },
                {
                    "type": "lead",
                    "participant": "3652397000000415063",
                    "id": "3652397000001326100"
                },
                {
                    "type": "user",
                    "participant": "3652397000000186017",
                    "id": "3652397000001326098"
                },
                {
                    "type": "email",
                    "participant": "john-butt@gmail.com"
                }
            ],
            "Remind_At": "2020-02-01T10:45:00+05:30",
            "$send_notification": true
        }
    ]
}
As you can see, a new participant of type email and email ID john-butt@gmail.com is added. Since the ID of the existing participant with the email ID carissa-batman@yahoo.com is not specified, it gets deleted.

Note
  • participant is the record ID of the participant (lead, contact, or user).
  • ID is the unique ID of the participant for that event.
  • While adding a participant, you must specify the IDs of other participants for the event. Otherwise, only the new participant is added, while the rest are deleted.

2.1 . Updating all future events
While updating an event, you can choose to update all future events with the new change.
Use the boolean key update_all_future_events. The value true updates all future events, and the value false updates only that particular event.
Here is a sample input.

{
    "data": [
        {
            "All_Day": false,
            "Event_Title": "Kaizen_10_Weekly",
            "Start_DateTime": "2020-02-02T11:00:00+05:30",
            "End_DateTime": "2020-02-02T12:00:00+05:30",
            "Participants": [
                {
                    "type": "contact",
                    "participant": "3652397000001281003",
                    "id": "3652397000001326102"
                },
                {
                    "type": "lead",
                    "participant": "3652397000000415063",
                    "id": "3652397000001326100"
                },
                {
                    "type": "user",
                    "participant": "3652397000000186017",
                    "id": "3652397000001326098"
                },
                {
                    "type": "email",
                    "participant": "carissa-kidman@yahoo.com"
                }
            ],
            "Remind_At": "2020-02-01T10:45:00+05:30",
            "update_all_future_events": true,
            "$send_notification": true
        }
    ]
}

Points to Note
While creating recurring events,
  • You must specify either COUNT or INTERVAL in the RRULE. Otherwise, the system creates 365-day events.
  • For WEEKLY recurring events, you must include BYDAY in RRULE. Otherwise, the system creates 365-day events that recurs weekly.

While updating a recurring event,
  • You must specify the record ID of the event you want to update. 
  • You must set the value of the key update_all_future_events to true to update all future events. Otherwise, the system updates only that event and the other recurring events that you created previously will remain unaltered.
  • While adding a participant, you must specify the IDs of other participants. Otherwise, only the new participant is added, while the rest are deleted.
  • You cannot update RRULE through the API.
  • You cannot update check-in related information through the API.

We hope you found this post useful. Please reach out to us if you have questions, or let us know in the comment section.
Cheers!
















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