Integrations

Connect your own email and calendar, and hook Slack, Zapier, Make.com, or BambooHR into your hiring workflow.

All of these are configured in Settings → Integrations, organized into three groups: Email & Calendar, Workflow, and Job Boards. This page covers Email & Calendar and Workflow. For publishing jobs to Indeed, Google for Jobs, and other boards, see Job boards & distribution instead — that's a separate group with its own docs page.

Note: a superadmin-level switch can turn any individual integration off platform-wide (used to hide something not fully rolled out yet). If one you expect to see is missing from your Settings page entirely, that's why — it's not something wrong with your account.

Gmail & Outlook (send-as)

By default, candidate and team emails go out from your FocalVAHire Mail address. Connect your own Gmail or Outlook inbox instead so those emails come from your real address — candidates reply straight to you, not to a shared sending address.

  1. Go to Settings → Integrations.
  2. Click Gmail or Outlook Email, then Connect.
  3. Sign in and approve access on Google's or Microsoft's page. You're sent back to FocalVAHire, connected.

Disconnecting at any time reverts to sending from your FocalVAHire Mail address — nothing else changes.

Google Calendar & Office 365 Calendar

Connect your calendar and your Activities — interviews you schedule, stage deadlines, anything on your Activities list — stay in sync with it automatically. Creating, editing, or deleting an activity in FocalVAHire updates the calendar event too.

Connect the same way as Gmail/Outlook above, from Settings → Integrations. Email and calendar are separate connections for the same provider — you can connect just your calendar without connecting email, or vice versa.

Note: only activities assigned to you sync to your own connected calendar. A teammate's activities sync to their calendar, not yours, once they connect their own account.

Slack notifications

Get a Slack message every time a candidate's status changes — e.g. when someone completes an interview, gets shortlisted, or is rejected.

Setup

  1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App → From scratch.
  2. Name it "FocalVAHire" and choose your workspace.
  3. In the left sidebar, click Incoming Webhooks and toggle it on.
  4. Click Add New Webhook to Workspace, choose the channel you want notifications in, and click Allow.
  5. Copy the webhook URL (it looks like https://hooks.slack.com/services/...).
  6. Paste it into Settings → Integrations → Slack webhook URL and save.

What the notification looks like

Example message: "Senior Engineer — Jane Smith moved to Shortlisted (Stage 1)"

Zapier

Connect FocalVAHire to any of Zapier's 6,000+ apps — update a spreadsheet, create a task in Notion, send a text message, or anything else Zapier supports.

Setup

  1. Go to zapier.com and create a new Zap.
  2. For the trigger, search for Webhooks by Zapier and choose Catch Hook.
  3. Copy the webhook URL Zapier gives you.
  4. Paste it into Settings → Integrations → Zapier webhook URL and save.
  5. Back in Zapier, click "Test trigger" — change a candidate's status in FocalVAHire to send a test event.
  6. Use the data from that test to set up the rest of your Zap.

Payload sent to Zapier

Each event includes:

  • event: "candidate.status_changed"
  • candidateName, candidateEmail
  • jobTitle
  • previousStatus, newStatus
  • stage (stage number)
  • timestamp

Make.com

Works exactly like Zapier above — Make.com just calls it a "Webhooks" module instead of "Catch Hook."

Setup

  1. In Make.com, create a new scenario and add a Webhooks module as the trigger.
  2. Choose Custom webhook and copy the URL it gives you.
  3. Paste it into Settings → Integrations → Make.com webhook URL and save.
  4. Change a candidate's status in FocalVAHire to send a test event and confirm Make.com receives it.

Same payload as Zapier's, above.

BambooHR

Requires a Pro plan or higher.

When a candidate is marked as Approved, FocalVAHire automatically creates a new hire record in your BambooHR account.

Setup

  1. Log in to BambooHR and click your name in the top right → API Keys.
  2. Click Add New Key, name it "FocalVAHire", and copy the key.
  3. Find your BambooHR subdomain — it's the part before .bamboohr.com in your URL (e.g. if your URL is acmecorp.bamboohr.com, the subdomain is acmecorp).
  4. In FocalVAHire, go to Settings → BambooHR.
  5. Enter your subdomain and API key, then click Save.

From now on, every time you mark a candidate as Approved, their name, email, and job title are automatically pushed to BambooHR as a new hire record.

Note: BambooHR API access requires a BambooHR account with the HR module. Contact BambooHR support if you're unsure whether your plan includes API access.

Troubleshooting

  • Slack messages not arriving — Double-check the webhook URL is correct and that the Slack app is still installed in your workspace.
  • Zapier or Make.com not receiving events — Make sure you saved the webhook URL in Settings. Try changing a candidate's status to trigger a fresh event.
  • BambooHR push failing silently — Verify your API key is correct, your subdomain matches exactly what appears in your BambooHR URL, and you're on a Pro plan or higher.
  • Gmail/Outlook/Calendar "not configured" error — This means the platform operator hasn't set up the Google or Microsoft app yet, not a problem with your account.

Slack, Zapier, and Make.com all fire in the background and never block the app — if one fails, the candidate status update still goes through successfully.