(See also: How to Access the organization admin portal)
The Manage Syncs Panel allows organization administrators to create sync connections involving any calendars on the managed domains. This allows administrators to create syncs on behalf of users such that the users never needs to login to CalendarBridge.
A common use case for the Manage Syncs Panel is where ParentCo.com acquired ChildCo.com and some of its users have calendars on both domains. Rather than each of the users having to login to CalendarBridge to sync her ParentCo calendar to her ChildCo calendar, ParentCo’s IT staff could create these sync connections in the Manage Syncs Panel and the users just get the great user experience of magically having their ParentCo and ChildCo calendars in sync.
Prerequisites to using Managed Syncs
Before you can access the Manage Syncs panel, you must first authorize and add the domains to the CalendarBridge group account. See Managing Authorized Domains for instructions on how to authorize and connect your domains to CalendarBridge.
Creating a Sync Connection via the Manage Syncs Panel
Once both tenants have been authorized by a Google or Microsoft administrator, the group administrator can create sync connections via the Manage Syncs admin panel, as shown in this video and described below.
Configure source calendar
If you are creating a 1-way sync connection, the source calendar is 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.
To configure the source calendar:
1. Enter the email address associated with the calendar in control 5A. Type the username portion into the textbox and select the domain using the dropdown.
2. Select the desired calendar in dropdown 5B.
Note about calendar names: 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 the primary calendar is the account email address. Google does, however, allows users to rename their primary calendar, so the name of the primary calendar may be something other than the email address.
3. Select source calendar time zone (Microsoft Calendars only). If the source calendar is a Microsoft calendar, here (5C) you have the option to enter the time zone of the calendar. If the source calendar is a Google calendar, the time zone is detected automatically.
Configure destination calendar
If you are creating a 1-way sync connection, the destination calendar is the calendar you want events to be copied to. If you are creating a 2-way sync connection, you can pick either of the two calendars you want to sync.
To configure the destination calendar:
1. Enter the email address associated with the calendar in control 5D. Type the username portion into the textbox and select the domain using the dropdown.
2. Select the desired calendar in dropdown 5E.
Note about calendar names: 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 the primary calendar is the account email address. Google does, however, allows users to rename their primary calendar, so the name of the primary calendar may be something other than the email address.
3. Select destination calendar color. With control 5F, 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).
Configure privacy settings for the sync connection.
The controls (5G) enable configuring the privacy options for the sync connection. The available options are:
- Free/Busy only – No event information will be synced from source calendar to destination calendar. Event copies will simply have the subject “Busy” and serve to block off time on the destination calendar.
- All Fields – All information will be synced from source calendar to destination calendar. See the field descriptions below.
- Custom – You can individual select which fields to sync using the checkboxes. Unchecking all boxes is equivalent to “Free/Busy only.” Checking all boxes is equivalent to “All Fields.”
Field descriptions:
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- 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.”
- Subject
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 textbox 5H. 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.
Disable tagging of event copies (not recommended)
By default, CalendarBridge adds “(copy)” to event copies on destination calendars. If you would not like CalendarBridge to add any tag to the subject of event copies, check box 5I. 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.
Confirm configuration and create sync connection
When all of the above is configured as desired, click 5J to create the sync connection. Events will begin syncing within minutes. Sync creation generally completes within 5 or 10 minutes but can take up to 1 hour for calendars with large numbers of events and/or during periods of high usage.
Viewing and Deleting Sync Connections via the Manage Syncs Panel
At the bottom of the Manage Syncs panel is the list of sync connections created via the Manage Syncs panel. To delete a sync connection, click the three dots on the connection and then click delete.
