Documentation

Follow this section to configure syncing between calendars you have connected to your CalendarBridge account. (If you don’t have any calendars yet connected, see Connecting Google Calendars and Connecting Microsoft Calendars)

Foreword about CalendarBridge “syncs”

Sync connections (we often just call them “syncs” or “bridges”) are how you instruct CalendarBridge to copy events from one calendar to another. Each sync connection can be 1-way or 2-way:

1-way sync: Events from the source calendar will be copied (with or without details, see below) to the destination calendar, but events on the destination calendar will not be copied to the source calendar.

2-way sync: Events from the source calendar will be copied (with or without details, see below) to the destination calendar and events on the destination calendar will be copied to the source calendar.

Note: For both 1-way and 2-way syncs, event copies are not “live,” which means edits to, and deletes of, the event copies on the destination calendar do not propagate back to the source calendar. Live copies will be enabled as an optional feature in a future release.

1. Go to your Syncs page. Click the “Syncs” link at the top navigation bar. Or just enter https://calendarbridge.com/dashboard/syncs into your browswer. If you have not yet created any syncs, it will look like this:

2. Click the “ADD SYNC +” button. This will take you to the Select Source Calendar page:

3. Select the Source Calendar. Select one of your calendars from the dropdown menu. If you are creating a 1-way sync connection, pick the calendar you want events to be copied from. If you are creating a 2-way sync connection, you can pick either of the two calendars you want to sync.

Note about calendar names: Each of your accounts likely has more than one calendar so take care to select the correct one. The calendars will be listed as “<calendar name> <account name>.” For example, “Holidays user@outlook.com,” is the calendar named “Holidays” on the account user@outlook.com.

For Microsoft accounts, the primary calendar for the account is always named “Calendar,” secondary calendars can be whatever the user named them.

For Google accounts, the default name of primary calendar is the account email address (i.e., it would appear in the dropdown as “user@gmail.com user@gmail.com”). Google allows users to rename their primary calendar, so the name of the primary calendar may be something other than the email address. To help distinguish the calendars, when you get to the Sync Direction and Options screen (step 5, below) a primary Google calendar will be identified as “Main Calendar” in the sync preview and secondary Google calendars will be identified as “Secondary Calendar”.

Once you have selected a calendar, click “CONTINUE” to move to the Select Destination Calendar form:

4. Select the Destination Calendar. Select one of your calendars from the dropdown menu. If you are creating a 1-way sync, pick the calendar you want events to be copied to. If you are creating a 2-way sync, just pick the other of the two calendars you want to sync.

Once you have selected a calendar, click “CONTINUE” to move to the Sync Direction and Options form:

5a. Select Sync Direction. Select “One Direction” if you want events to be copied from the source calendar to the destination calendar, but do not want events copied in the other direction. Otherwise, select “Both Directions” (selected by default).

Note: For both one-direction and both-direction sync connections, event copies are not “live,” which means edits to the event copies on the destination calendar do not propagate back to the source calendar. Live copies will be enabled as an optional feature in a future release.

5b. Select source calendar time zone (Microsoft Calendars only).  If the source calendar is a Microsoft calendar, here you have the option to indicate the time zone of the calendar. If the source calendar is a Google calendar, the time zone is detected automatically.

5c. Select source calendar color (two directional sync connections only). If you selected “both directions” in step 5a, then here you can select the color of event copies on the source calendar. If you don’t select a color, event copies on the source calendar will have the default color of the source calendar (set natively in Google or Outlook).

5d. Select destination calendar time zone (Microsoft Calendars only).  If the destination calendar is a Microsoft calendar, here you have the option to indicate the time zone of the calendar. If the source calendar is a Google calendar, the time zone is detected automatically.

5e. Select destination calendar color. Here you can select the color of event copies on the destination calendar. If you don’t select a color,  event copies on the destination calendar will have the default color of the destination calendar (set natively in Google or Outlook).

5f. Configure event subject tags. By default, CalendarBridge adds “(copy)” to the subject of event copies. If you would like to replace “(copy)” with some other text (e.g., some text that indicates the calendar that the event came from), type that text in this textbox. Note: event subject tags are not configurable for users on a free trial. This is to prevent confusion and aid in troubleshooting new sync connections. Once the trial converts to paid you can create sync connections with a custom (or no) tag.

5g. Optionally disable tagging of event copies (not recommended). If you would not like CalendarBridge to add any tag to the subject of event copies, check this box. This is not recommended because it can quickly become confusing as to which events originated from which calendar. If your concern is that “(copy)” looks strange to coworkers, the recommended approach is to use the “make private” setting instead. If you are sure you want to disable tagging of event copies, then it is recommended to at least set a custom color for event copies (steps 5c and 5e, above). Note: disabling subject tags is not available for users on a free trial. This is to prevent confusion and aid in troubleshooting new sync connections. Once the trial converts to paid you can create sync connections with a custom (or no) tag.

Once the sync connection is configured as desired, click “CONTINUE” to move to the sync privacy settings form:

6. Configure the options for your event copies.

• Subject
  • If this box is checked, the subject of events will be copied from the source calendar to the destination calendar. If this box is unchecked the subject of the event copies will simply be “busy.”
  • If you check this box, but want your event copies to show as “busy” in Outlook Scheduling Assistant and Google Find a Time, use the “All Private” option (discussed below).
• Attendees
  • If this box is checked, the attendees of events will be copied from the attendees field of source calendar to the description field of the destination calendar. Attendees are not copied to the attendees field of event copies to avoid the potential for invites and event updates being sent from the wrong calendar.
• Description
  • If this box is checked, the subject of events will be copied from the source calendar to the destination calendar. If this box is unchecked the description in the event copy will be left blank.
  • If you check this box, but don’t want the description to show in Outlook Scheduling Assistant and Google Find a Time, use the “All Private” option (discussed below).
• Location
  • If this box is checked, the location of events will be copied from the source calendar to the destination calendar. If this box is unchecked the location field of the event copy will be left blank.
  • If you check this box, but don’t want the location to show in Outlook Scheduling Assistant and Google Find a Time, use the “All Private” option (discussed below).
• Conference
  • If this box is checked, web conference details generated by Google Meets, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Zoom add-ins/extensions will be copied into the description of the event copy. If this box is unchecked, web conference details generated through these add-ins/extensions will not be added to event copies.
• Reminders
  • If this box is checked, the default reminder settings of the destination calendar will be applied to event copies. If this box is unchecked event copies will have no reminders set by default.
• All Private
  • If this box is checked, then all event copies will be marked as private such that other users in your organization will see your event copies as simply “busy” in the Outlook Scheduling Assistant and Google Find a Time features.
  • Note: As explained by Microsoft (here):
    “If you share your Calendar, Contacts, or Tasks folders with one or more people who have Read permissions, the Private feature will not prevent them from seeing the details of your appointments. In addition, anyone with Read access to your folders could use programmatic methods or other email applications to view the details of your private items.”

Here is what an event copy looks like if Subject, Description, and Location are checked:

Here is what an event copy looks like if Subject, Description, and Location are unchecked:

When you have all the above settings configured as desired, click “CREATE SYNC.”

Sync connection setup is now complete and you should see the form below. Repeat these steps for each pair of calendars you want to sync.

If you don’t see this screen, please contact support@calendarbridge.com for assistance.