Calendly Workflows: How to Automate Meeting Emails and Texts

You booked the meeting. Now what? Calendly Workflows help you automate all the messages that happen before and after the meeting, so you can save time otherwise spent manually sending emails and texts. 

This guide builds on what you’ve already set up in Calendly and shows you how to use Workflows to help you to reduce no-shows, ensure you don’t forget to send a reminder or follow-up, and standardize meeting communications so your invitees have a consistent experience.

How Calendly Workflows work (and what you’ll set up with this guide)

A Workflow is a set of automated emails or SMS messages tied to a meeting. When the meeting is scheduled (or approaching, or completed), the Workflow triggers and sends one or more messages automatically. 

To make that happen, you’ll need to:

• Connect an email account (to send the message from)
• Set up a Workflow (from a template or create your own)
• Assign your Workflow to an Event Type

Calendly features you’ll use

• Event Types
• The different kinds of meetings you can assign a Workflow to
• Workflows
• Automations triggered by booking activity
• Integrations & apps
• Connect your email to control how messages are delivered

Step 1: Integrate your email provider or setup text notifications

While Calendly can send emails from its default address ([email protected]), it’s possible these will wind up in spam or not be recognized by your invitee. 

To improve message deliverability and so messages feel like they’re coming from you, we strongly recommend connecting your email provider so Calendly can send messages on your behalf. Calendly currently supports Gmail and Outlook.

Setting up SMS (text) notifications

Calendly can send SMS reminders and notifications to help reduce no-shows and keep meetings top of mind, even if you’re working from your phone or on the move instead of at a desk. 

Hosts can enable text notifications by entering and verifying their phone number when setting up the Workflow, while invitees are automatically prompted to provide a number during booking so they can receive reminders as well.

Step 2: Review out-of-the-box Workflows

Calendly includes ready‑made Workflow templates that are fully editable and cover the most common meeting touchpoints. These Calendly Workflow templates reflect best practices for reminder timing, but you can always edit to fit your business. 

Most popular Workflows

You can turn these on as‑is in just a few clicks or customize them to suit your needs, like updating the email subject line to a friendlier tone, attaching instructions or other helpful information to the email, or including links for your invitee to cancel or rescheduling.

Step 3: Create your own Workflow (optional)

Not finding what you’re looking for in the Workflow templates? Don’t worry, creating a custom Workflow is very straightforward. 

Calendly Workflows are built with two parts – a trigger (when the Workflow runs) and an action (what happens). When building the action in your Workflow, you can add variables (like, invitee name or Event Type) to personalize each message; include links to documents, forms, or other resources; and, choose whether your Workflows are sent via email or SMS.

You can tailor communication to the meeting goal: sales calls get prep questions, interviews get logistics, client sessions get reminders. 

Assign your Workflow

After building your Workflow, be sure to assign it to an Event Type(s). Workflows don’t run globally across your Calendly account, so that you are able to tailor messages for different meetings.

Step 4: Test your Workflow

Just like with scheduling and payments, testing matters, and it’s always best to understand how your Workflows will behave.

The easiest way:

1. Create a test booking with your personal email
2. Confirm that each email or SMS is sent at the expected time
3. Preview how variables render (e.g., “Hi Megan” instead of “Hi {{invitee.first_name}}”)
4. Check for any typos or broken links

Common Questions