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. Events from the source calendar will be copied (with or without details, see below) to the destination calendar.

• 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. Also, edits made to event copies may get subsequently overwritten to match the original event on the source calendar.
• CalendarBridge does not make copies of its own copies. See How Many Sync Connections Do I Need?
  
• When a sync connection is deleted (either or explicitly or implicitly due to lack of payment), CalendarBridge will attempt to remove any event copies it has made such that we leave no permanent impact on your calendar.

Setting up a sync connection

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 Calendars select screen.

In the center column of this screen are listed all the calendars of all your connected accounts. Each calendar is represented by a rectangle with: an icon of the account type (Google or Microsoft), the name of the calendar (top line of text), and the account that the calendar is on (second line of text).

For Microsoft accounts, the primary calendar of the account is always named “Calendar.”

For Google accounts, the primary calendar of the account is indicated by “Primary Calendar” in a third line of text.

A flag of “Read Only” means that the account indicated on the second line of text does not have permission to edit that calendar. This is the case for auto-generated calendars (e.g., the Holiday calendars), and for calendars which have been shared (using Google’s or Microsoft’s calendar sharing features) into that account with read-only permissions.

 

3. Select the Source and Destination Calendars. Select the calendar that you want events copied from, and then select the calendar you want events copied to. In the screenshot below, events will be copied from the calendar named “Calendar” on the Microsoft account associated with user@domain.com, to the calendar named “user@gmail.com” on the Google account associated with “user@gmail.com.”

 

4. For Microsoft accounts, verify the timezone of the calendar. By default, we assume the timezone of the Microsoft calendar is the timezone you are currently in. If this is not the case, select the correct timezone from the dropdown.

5. Once you have selected the source and destination calendars and set the timezone of any Microsoft calendars,  click “Continue to Privacy.” Which will bring up this screen:

6. Configure the privacy settings 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. Note: If this box is checked, subsequent updates to the original event will cause the reminder on the event copy to be reset (i.e., you may have to dismiss it again on the destination calendar).
• 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 “Continue to Options” to bring up the Sync Options screen:

7. Configure the options for your sync connection.

• • Select the color for uncategorized event copies. Here you can select the color of uncategorized event copies on the destination calendar. “Calendar Default” means the default color assigned to the destination calendar in Outlook or Google Calendar.

 

• Sync categorized event colors. With this switch in the off position, all event copies will use the color set for uncategorized events copies – regardless of whether the event has been categorized on the source calendar.  With this switch in the on position, event copies of categorized events will have the color of the original event on the source calendar.
  • Note: this requires the category names to be the same on the source calendar and the destination calendar.
  • Note: this setting is only available when the source calendar and the destination calendar are of the same type (i.e., both source and destination calendar are Microsoft, or both source and destination calendars are Google).
    
• Configure event subject tags. By default, CalendarBridge appends “(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. If you would not like CalendarBridge to add any tag to the subject of event copies, check this box.
  • Having no tag 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).
  • Custom tag has no effect when syncing only free/busy (i.e., when subjects are not synced).
  • Choose a tag that will not likely occur “naturally” at the end of an event subject. For example, wrap the tag in parenthesis or include a special character.

Once the sync options are  configured as desired, click “Review Sync,” to bring up the final review screen:

If you need to change something, click “Back,” otherwise click “Create” to establish the sync connection and return to your syncs overview page.

Note: It may take up to 15 minutes for the initial sync to complete. Until the initial sync is complete, you will see progress indicator on the sync overview page (refresh the page to update the progress indicator):

When the sync is complete the progress indicator will be replaced by “Active and Up-to-Date.”

Sync connection setup is now complete. Repeat these steps for each pair of calendars you want to sync.