How Planhat's Google/Outlook Calendar Sync Works
As opposed to the email sync going back in time when running the initial sync, the calendar sync starts with today's date and syncs 90 days forward. The assumption is that all your historical meetings aren't that interesting (as tasks) since you've already completed them.
When Planhat decides which events to save (we don't want personal or non-relevant events to sync over e.g. when you next have a dentist appointment or when your car is getting serviced). To avoid this, we use pretty much the same logic as for email. We check to see if the invite includes some contact/end-user in Planhat (matched by email) and if it does, we assume it's a customer meeting that should be synced.
If the contact doesn't exist, but the email domain is a professional one (not @gmail, @hotmail, etc), and it's matching the "related domain" of some company in Planhat,
then Planhat can automatically create a new contact and save the event.
Automatic user creation can optionally be switched off, in cases where the user wants complete control over any contacts/end-users created. After the initial sync, the process is mostly the same, when a new event is added to the calendar we get an alert and check if it should be synced or not.
How to Enable Google/Outlook Calendar
Follow the steps below to enable your Google/Outlook Calendar sync:
Hover over your avatar in the bottom left corner of Planhat, go to "Your profile"
Select the "Calendar" tab and press "Enable Calendar Sync"
Enter your Google/Outlook credentials in the pop-up window and press "Allow"
Select the calendar that you want to sync and press "Save"
Syncing Events from Google/Outlook Calendar into Planhat
Once you've enabled the sync, in about 10-15 minutes you should see events from Google/Outlook Calendar displaying in your Planhat "Planned Activities" section in the Activities module. If you're not seeing some activities in Planhat that are in your Google/Outlook Calendar it could be because we only sync 90 days into the future.
📌 Important to note:
If an event is pushed from Google/Outlook Calendar into Planhat, if any edits are made to the event in Planhat they will not affect the event in Google/Outlook Calendar. However, if the changes are made in Google/Outlook Calendar they will be synced into Planhat.
Like other activities, events can be removed and deleted. When an event is removed, Planhat will remove the event from your Google/Outlook Calendar if it originated in Planhat. However, if the event was created from your Google/Outlook Calendar, Planhat will only remove the event from your Planhat account. It can take up to 15 minutes for the event to be removed from Planhat.
If you receive a calendar invite from someone that isn't in Planhat and you have the setting "Automatic detection of new contacts" disabled, Planhat will look for the contact, and if it can't find the contact the event will be ignored. The reason for this is that the user doesn't exist in Planhat and because Planhat can't automatically create a new user the event will be seen as non-relevant.
Planhat will try to be smart about which events it chooses to pull in. That means it won't bring in just any event from your calendar; in order for Planhat to bring in an event, there needs to be a contact invited to the event that is a customer. This way, Planhat knows that it's relevant and which company and user to map this activity to.
If an event created in Google/Outlook Calendar isn't marked as "done" within 7 days after the event due date has passed it will automatically be removed (but not counted as a complete event). By default, the event will be removed within 7 days but you can change that value. If you go to "Settings" you will see a field called "Days before removing Google/Outlook Calendar events".
If you have a recurring event in your Google/Outlook Calendar those will be synced gradually into Planhat, and not all at once.
Syncing Events from Planhat to Google/Outlook Calendar
There are 2 types of planned activities in Planhat and they are: "Task" and "Event". If you'd like to plan a meeting or customer event and push it to Google/Outlook Calendar then you need to select "Event".
Fill out all of the information you'll need for that meeting e.g. date, time if it repeats or is an "all day" event, and you can even add a location that will appear in both the calendar and in Planhat.
If you include a description it will also be included in the invitation. However, any checklist items or document attachments added from the Planhat event will not appear in the invitation that displays in your Google/Outlook Calendar.
To sync the event to Google/Outlook Calendar, make sure to check the box at the bottom of the event that says, "Save to Google/Outlook Calendar".
📌 Important to note: if an event is created in Planhat any edits that are made to the event in your Google/Outlook Calendar will not be pushed to Planhat (for example, if you cancel this event in Google/Outlook Calendar it will still remain as a task in Planhat). However, if changes are made in the Planhat task they will be synced to Google/Outlook Calendar. No other team members will be able to select the option to "save to Google/Outlook Calendar", only you will be able to.