Back to Templates

Qualify Calendly leads in Airtable with OpenAI GPT-based categorization

Created by

Created by: Keith Uy || keithuy
Keith Uy

Last update

Last update 5 hours ago

Categories

Share

Calendly Lead Qualification & AI-Powered Categorization

What it's for:

This automation streamlines your sales qualification process by automatically capturing Calendly bookings, filtering qualified leads, and using AI to intelligently categorize the reasons prospects book discovery calls. Perfect for agencies, consultancies, or any business using Calendly for sales meetings who want to automatically organize and track lead intent in Airtable.

Key Features:

  • Automatically captures Calendly booking and cancellation events
  • Filters leads based on qualification criteria (e.g., minimum revenue requirements)
  • Uses OpenAI GPT to intelligently categorize booking reasons
  • Syncs all data to Airtable for CRM management
  • Handles both new bookings and cancellations

How it works:

Input: Calendly webhook triggers when someone books or cancels a meeting

n8n Processing Flow:

  1. Qualification Check - Validates if the lead meets your criteria (e.g., "$30k+ monthly sales")
  2. Event Type Routing - Determines if it's a new booking or cancellation
  3. New Booking Path:
    • Creates record in Airtable with contact details, meeting time, and booking reason
    • Fetches available categories from Airtable
    • AI analyzes the "reason for booking" and assigns appropriate category
    • Updates Airtable record with AI-selected category
  4. Cancellation Path:
    • Searches for existing record in Airtable
    • Deletes the cancelled meeting record

AI Processing: OpenAI GPT-5 analyzes the prospect's stated reason for booking and matches it to predefined categories (e.g., "Uncertainty / Strategy Gap", "Scaling Issues", etc.)

Output: Organized, categorized lead data in Airtable ready for sales follow-up

How to use:

1. Set up Airtable Base

  • Create an Airtable base with two tables:

    Table 1: "Calendly Information" with fields:

    • Name (text)
    • First Name (text)
    • Last Name (text)
    • Email (text)
    • Phone (text)
    • Event Name (text)
    • Brand (text)
    • Meeting Date (date/time)
    • Why they booked (text)
    • Categories (linked to Categories table)

    Table 2: "Categories" with fields:

    • Name (text) - Your category names (e.g., "Uncertainty / Strategy Gap", "Performance Issues", etc.)
    • id (auto-generated record ID)

  • Populate the Categories table with your desired lead categories

2. Create Airtable API Credentials in n8n

  • Go to Airtable → Account → Developer Hub
  • Create a new personal access token with scopes: data.records:read and data.records:write
  • In n8n, create new Airtable credentials and paste your token
  • Test the connection

3. Configure Calendly Webhook

  • Log into your Calendly account
  • Go to Integrations → API & Webhooks
  • Click "Create Webhook"
  • Copy the webhook URL from the "Calendly Webhook" node in n8n (click the node and copy the "Webhook URL" shown)
  • Paste it into Calendly's webhook URL field
  • Subscribe to these events:
    • invitee.created
    • invitee.canceled
  • Save the webhook

4. Set up OpenAI Credentials

  • Create an OpenAI account at https://platform.openai.com/
  • Go to API Keys section and create a new API key
  • In n8n, create new OpenAI credentials and paste your API key
  • Ensure you have credits in your OpenAI account

5. Configure Workflow Nodes

Update Airtable Node Connections:

  • Open each Airtable node ("Get Categories", "Create a Calendly Meeting", "Update Category", "Search records", "Delete a record")
  • Select your Airtable credentials
  • Update the Base ID and Table ID to match your Airtable base
  • Save each node

Customize Qualification Logic:

  • Open the "Qualified?" IF node
  • Adjust the qualification criteria to match your Calendly question structure
  • Current example checks: questions_and_answers[2].answer equals "Yes"
  • Modify the array index [2] to match your qualification question's position

Customize AI Category Prompt:

  • Open the "Category Assigner" (OpenAI) node
  • Update the system prompt to reflect your business type and categories
  • Modify the example in the messages array to match your typical booking reasons

Update Field Mappings:

  • Open "Create a Calendly Meeting" node
  • Adjust field mappings to match your Calendly form questions:
    • Phone: questions_and_answers[0].answer
    • Brand: questions_and_answers[1].answer
    • Qualification: questions_and_answers[2].answer
    • Why they booked: questions_and_answers[3].answer
  • Modify array indices [0], [1], etc. to match your form structure

6. Test the Workflow

  • Activate the workflow in n8n
  • Book a test meeting in your Calendly
  • Answer all questions including your qualification criteria
  • Check that:
    • Record appears in Airtable
    • AI assigns the correct category
    • All fields are populated correctly
  • Test a cancellation to ensure records are deleted properly

Requirements:

  • Calendly account (any paid plan that supports webhooks)
  • Airtable account (Free tier works)
  • OpenAI API account with credits (GPT-5 access recommended)
  • n8n instance (Cloud or self-hosted)

Customizing this workflow:

Adjust Qualification Criteria:

  • Modify the "Qualified?" IF node to match your specific lead qualification requirements
  • Add multiple conditions (revenue, location, industry, etc.)

Add More Categories:

  • Simply add new rows to your Airtable Categories table
  • The AI will automatically consider them when categorizing

Improve AI Accuracy:

  • Add more examples in the "Category Assigner" node's prompt
  • Include edge cases specific to your business
  • Use few-shot learning by adding 2-3 example classifications

Enhance Data Capture:

  • Add more fields to the Airtable base (UTM parameters, referral source, etc.)
  • Map additional Calendly questions to Airtable fields
  • Add tracking fields like "Date Created", "Last Updated"

Notifications:

  • Add Slack/Email nodes after "Update Category" to notify your sales team
  • Include the assigned category in the notification
  • Filter notifications to only high-priority categories

Multi-Language Support:

  • Update the AI prompt to handle multiple languages
  • Add language detection logic before categorization

Advanced Routing:

  • Add additional IF nodes to route different event types to different workflows
  • Create separate processes for VIP leads, different product lines, etc.