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 important (as tasks) since you've already completed them.
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 an 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 a Company in Planhat,
then Planhat can automatically create a new End User and save the event.
Automatic End User creation can optionally be switched off, in cases where you wants complete control over any 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
Click on your name in the top-right corner of Planhat, and select "Profile"
Go to the "Calendar" tab
If you haven't already done so when setting up the email sync, click "Enable Google account access" and then "Enable", and then click through to give the relevant access
Confirm the calendar 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 Planhat. 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 End User (contact), and if it can't find the End User the event will be ignored. The reason for this is that the End User doesn't exist in Planhat, and because Planhat can't automatically create a new End 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 an End User in Planhat. This way, Planhat knows that it's relevant and which Company and End 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 the "Settings" Global Tool (the "Account Setup" section at the top) 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
You can optionally choose to sync individual tasks (of type "Event") manually from Planhat back to your external calendar.
If you include an End User as an "Involved Contact", they will receive a calendar invitation when you sync the event.
Preliminary step for you (as a Planhat admin) in your Planhat tenant
This process is going to work via a particular checkbox within task Previews. This is a Preview Template section (widget), rather than a field.
If this option is not showing but you would like to include it, you may need to adjust the Preview Template (within the "Profile" tab for the Task model within the "Data Model" Global Tool), as shown in the screenshots below. You can see our Preview article here for more general instructions.
Click the image to view it enlarged
Preliminary step for you (as a general Planhat user)
To enable this feature, ensure your calendar is connected to Planhat, and at the bottom of the "Calendar" tab of your User Profile, ensure your calendar (or the relevant calendar if different) is selected at the bottom.
How to sync an event to your external calendar
Note that that task events are not all synced out of Planhat automatically; instead, you choose which ones you would like to sync.
For a task to be eligible to be synced in this way, make sure that for "Main Type" you select "Event" (rather than "Task").
🚀 Tip
For details of the "Start Date" and "Due Date" fields (shown in red in the screenshot above), see our separate article here. Note, for example, that you can have all-day tasks/events, or set specific clock times.
When viewing the task's Preview, you will see a section called "Sync to calendar", with a checkbox "Save to Google Calendar" (or Outlook equivalent).
When you select (tick) the checkbox, you will see a message in the bottom-right corner of your Planhat tenant confirming that this has been synced to your calendar.
If you change your mind and want to remove it from your external calendar, you can deselect the checkbox in Planhat and it will do that for you.
Any description you enter for the event task in Planhat will be included in the sync.
However, any checklist items and attachments on the event task in Planhat will not be synced to your Google/Outlook Calendar.
If you make changes to the event task in Planhat (e.g. add to the description), then this update will be automatically pushed to your external calendar. However, if you make a change to the calendar event in Google/Outlook (e.g. delete it there), that won't be synced back to Planhat.
If you select an "End User" in the "Involved Contacts" field on the event task in Planhat, as shown below ...
... then when you click the checkbox to sync the task event to your calendar, the contact will also receive a calendar event invitation. If you update or cancel the event in Planhat, the invited End User will be automatically emailed about this too.
Click the image to view it enlarged