Synchronising calendar with Google or Outlook

LeadDesk's Meeting Calendar allows agents working on Outbound projects to act as booking agents, scheduling meetings for colleagues.  These meetings are stored in the LeadDesk Calendar, but can be synchronised with a range of other calendars, including Outlook and Google.

The person whose diary the meetings are booked into are referred to as "salespeople", since the first use case for the Meeting Calendar was for agents to book appointments in a sales team's diaries. Of course, Calendar works just as well for non-sales teams.

When you are assigned the "salesperson" role, you will receive an email which provides a link to your LeadDesk calendar. You can also access this page if you want to synchronise or stop synchronising your calendar.

Setting up synchronisation

To set up synchronisation:

1. Click the link in the email to see your calendar. 

Your LeadDesk calendar will open in your default browser.

2. Click the checkbox to Accept GDPR policy.
3. Click the Enable calendar synchronization button.

LeadDesk uses a third party application, Cronofy, to synchronise calendar events. When you enable synchronisation, you will be prompted to select the calendar type you want to sync to: Click to select the correct application for the calendar you are syncing with. Select and log in to the account you want to synchronise with.  Grant permissions to enable the synchronisation. Whenever you need to grant permissions, it is important to read and understand what you are agreeing to. Check the permissions before continuing. The final part of setting up the synchronisation, is to decide if you want to sync to your main calendar, or to create a secondary calendar to sync with.

Syncing to a secondary calendar allows you compartmentalise LeadDesk appointments in your diary. This makes it easier to view those appointments separately, but will mean agents booking into your calendar will only see LeadDesk appointments. Syncing to your primary calendar means booking agents will see your other appointments as busy time (they will not see details), which makes finding free slots easier, but it is harder to review LeadDesk appointments separately. Click to select whether to sync to a secondary calendar or your primary one. Click the Save button.

What gets synchronised?

The synchronisation will:

• Sync meetings from up to 42 days in the past and 201 days in the future, including recurring meetings.
• Show meetings, appointments or events booked in your external calendar as busy time in your LeadDesk calendar. Depending on the calendar project settings, the meeting's title or description will be visible to you and to Admins, but not to booking agents.
• Show meetings booked in your LeadDesk calendar in your external calendar.
• Any time blocked out in your LeadDesk calendar as Busy or a Task will not be synchronised and the time will appear free on your external calendar.

Stopping synchronisation

If you need to stop synchronising your calendar:

1. Go to the LeadDesk calendar using the link from the email. If you do not have that email any more, ask your Admin to resend it.

2. Click the Stop synchronization button.

3. Optionally, click to tick the checkbox Also remove synchronised busy times from LeadDesk calendar. Doing so will let you remove any appointments synchronised from your external calendar into the LeadDesk calendar.
4. Click the Yes button.