Google Calendar – central management

If there are more than a handful of people in your organization, we recommend using global settings to configure the Google Calendar integration for your team. Managing sync settings globally helps to minimize sync and data errors. Central management gives admin users control over settings such as sync direction, event title display format, statuses, etc. 

If you have a very small team, you might decide to skip global settings altogether and give each user control over their integration preferences – using global settings is not mandatory.

NB! Only admin users can manage the Google Calendar integration settings globally. If you are a regular user, check out our article on individual settings for more information about individual settings and control.

1. Preparation

Before you start setting up the integration, think about what your team and organization want to gain from the integration. Do you just need to sync certain data one way for accurate reporting or do you wish to manage work in several calendars interchangeably to keep things flexible? Check out our recommendations for the most common use cases to get inspired.

If you plan to manage the Google Calendar integration centrally, we recommend going over the global settings before you prompt your team members to connect their external calendars. This way, everything is in order right from the get-go when people start connecting their Google accounts. It helps you minimize the risk of sync errors and duplicate data. 

2. Setup

To control the sync settings for all users across the site, navigate to the Global settings tab under Settings > Site settings > Integrations > Google Calendar.

Don’t forget to click the Save button whenever you make changes to any global settings.

2.1. Sync options

• Enable sync globally – if this setting is enabled, Google Calendar will be synced for all users who have their Google account connected. If you disable this setting, the sync will be disabled for all users. The users can still connect their Google accounts, but nothing is synced. In this case, users are also notified that the sync is currently disabled by the site admin.
• Sync start date – decide when events will start syncing. All events will be synced from that date onwards. Once you set the start date, it’s not recommended to change it later.
• Global sync direction – decide whether you want to enforce the same sync direction globally or let each user decide how they prefer it.
  • User preferences – every user can decide the sync direction under personal settings and toggle the event sync on/off. So if you are using global settings on your site, but would still like to give your users the power to decide whether they want to sync their connected calendars or not, then set the sync direction to ‘User preferences’. This way, each user can toggle the event sync button on and off under their personal settings. NB! We do not recommend this option for bigger teams. If your team includes more than five people, enforce a ‘To Scoro’ sync direction globally. Read more about our use-case-based recommendations.
  • Two-way / from Scoro / to Scoro – the chosen sync direction will be enforced globally, and users cannot change it individually.
• Enable time off globally - decide whether you want to enable the out-of-office events sync from Google Calendar to Scoro as time-off entries for all users or let each user decide how they prefer it.
  • User preferences - every user can decide whether to sync their out-of-office events to Scoro as time-off entries or not under their personal integration settings.
  • Enabled - enables out-of-office event sync for all users.
  • Disabled - disables the out-of-office event sync for all users.
• Sync focus time - decide whether you want to enable focus time event sync from Google Calendar to Scoro. These synced events will appear in Scoro as regular events with the Busy status. This sync is one-way only (to Scoro), and can only be enabled for all site users who have set up the Google Calendar integration.
• Default activity type - you can set a default activity type for events that are synced over from Google Calendar. This can be a big time-saver as it minimizes the need to add the activity type manually for each event in Scoro. 

Which sync direction to choose for your site?

The best sync direction depends on the exact aim of the data sync and how your team tends to use the Google Calendar in relation to the Scoro one. Check out our use-case-based suggestions to get inspired.

One-way sync is the perfect option if you manage all your events (adding, modifying, deleting) from a single calendar, either Google or Scoro.

• From Scoro - use this sync direction if you wish to manage your calendar in Scoro.
• To Scoro – use this sync direction if you wish to manage your calendar in Google.

Two-way sync is the recommended sync direction if you wish to access your calendar from Scoro and Google at the same time. However, to minimize the risk of any sync issues, it is still highly recommended to manage events primarily from one calendar and let the sync take care of the rest.

2.2. Event details

• Event title display format – decide how the events created in Scoro are displayed in the Google Calendar once they’re synced. This helps you keep data consistent and make better sense of it.

2.3. Status mapping

Here you can determine how the statuses match up in Scoro and Google Calendar. We recommend having a separate Scoro status for each external status, so no data would get corrupted or overwritten when you opt for a two-way sync.

2.4. Domain aliases

If you’re using any user alias domains in a single Google Workspace, you should list the aliases here. Setting up domain aliases helps you ensure that Scoro recognizes all users correctly when they get added to events with any of the aliases. 

If you do not use aliases at all, leave this section untouched. If you do use domain aliases, you should also add your primary email domain to this list. Add the aliases without the @ sign. We do not limit the number of aliases, so we recommend adding as many as needed to cover all possible scenarios and ensure clean data and minimize manual modifications.

• Example. Let’s say your employee Sophie Smith is using Scoro with her primary email address sophie.smith@domain1.com. She also has an alternate email sophie.smith@domain2.com set up, which she uses only for some very specific client communications. Now let’s suppose she gets added to a Google Calendar event as sophie.smith@domain2.com and that event is synced to Scoro. If you as a site admin have not set up domain aliases, Sophie will be listed under the event as a guest because Scoro doesn’t recognize her as a Scoro user due to the different domain. However, if you have listed domain2.com among the aliases, Scoro will recognize this alternate domain as well and identify Sophie for Sophie. This helps to ensure she’s always linked to events as Sophie, not a guest, no matter which email alias is used.

NB! Keep in mind that removing aliases can corrupt future data if some users are attached to future events with the alias that gets removed. We encourage you to consider all possible consequences before removing any aliases.

2.5. Users and error logs

As an admin user, you can see two additional tabs under the Google Calendar settings: Logs and Users. 

The Users tabs gives you an overview of which team members have their Google accounts connected. If you’ve set the global sync direction to User preference, you can also track which sync direction each user has chosen. You can override it with global settings. 

The Logs column helps you detect unresolved sync errors. To see the individual log list, simply click on the error count or open the Logs tab.

3. Activation

If you opt for global settings, we recommend to: 

• Ensure all team members have the correct accounts connected. Open the 'Users' tab for a full overview of connected accounts. Make sure all team members have connected their relevant Google accounts before enabling the sync. This helps to ensure team members are ready and have taken the necessary steps on their end. If someone seems to have connected the wrong calendar, ask them to disconnect and switch over to the correct one.
• Activate the integration simultaneously for all uses. This means you should first disable the global sync, set everything up, invite users to connect their Google accounts, and only then enable the sync globally. This ensures that all events get synced to Scoro from the owner’s calendar, and there’s less risk of bad data.
• Enable the sync before the weekend. Since the first sync will involve a lot of data, it can take a few hours or even a day, depending on the number of users and collective events. Therefore, it’s wise to enable the migration on a Friday evening to ensure it disturbs the workflows as little as possible.
• Check for sync errors. After the sync is enabled, monitor potential sync issues in the Logs column under the Users tab. To see the individual log list, simply click on the error count or open the Logs tab.

Once you have global settings in place, each user can go and connect their Google Calendar to start using the integration. Check out our article on individual settings to learn more about what the settings each user can see.