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Would you like to see your AssisTime appointments in your phone's calendar app, even without an Internet connection? Or maybe you keep your personal appointments in Google Calendar and want to stop clients from booking over them?

Did you know you can synchronize the AssisTime calendar with Google Calendar, or with Outlook 365?

In this article, you'll see how to turn on synchronization and how it works.

What you need

Obviously, you need a Google account (a Gmail address or a Google Workspace business account) to synchronize with Google Calendar, or a Microsoft 365 account to synchronize with Outlook.

Note that a calendar can only be synchronized with one external calendar at a time, and that only users' calendars can be synchronized (not those of rooms or equipment, for example).

Turn on synchronization

Open the main menu (the three-line icon at the top left), then go to Calendar, Customize, Calendars, and click your calendar. In the Do you want to synchronize this calendar with an external calendar? field, choose Google Calendar or Outlook 365:

Just below, you can check Make appointments imported from an external calendar confidential: your personal appointments imported from Google or Outlook will block off your schedule, but only you will see their details. Handy if you work as a team!

Click Save: a page then offers to turn on synchronization. Click the Enable synchronization with Google Calendar button (or the Outlook one). The rest happens on Google's or Microsoft's side.

Authorize synchronization

You're then taken to the Google (or Microsoft) sign-in page. Choose the account to synchronize with AssisTime, or sign in if no account is open. You're then asked to allow AssisTime to access your calendar: accept.

Back in AssisTime, your upcoming appointments are copied to your external calendar a first time. This can take a few moments if you have a lot of appointments.

With Google Calendar, a Time zone field is then added to your calendar settings: make sure it matches the time zone of your Google Calendar. AssisTime will warn you if the two don't match.

How synchronization works

Once synchronization is authorized, here's how AssisTime and your external calendar stay in sync:

• When you create, edit or delete an appointment in AssisTime, the change is sent to your external calendar right away.
• Appointments created, edited or deleted in your external calendar are picked up by AssisTime when you open your home page or your calendar.
• Before showing your availability on your online booking portal, AssisTime also checks your external calendar: a personal appointment entered in Google Calendar therefore prevents your clients from booking at that time.
• Before leaving an area where you have Internet access, open your phone's calendar app so it downloads the latest version of your calendar.

To stop synchronization, go back to your calendar settings and choose No. You can then choose whether or not to delete the synchronized appointments from your external calendar.

A calendar you can reach at any time

This way, you can access your AssisTime calendar at any time, even without Internet on your phone or tablet, and your clients can no longer book during your personal appointments!

And if you offer virtual meetings, AssisTime can also automatically add a video conference link to your virtual appointments, such as Google Meet if your calendar is synchronized with Google, or Teams if it's synchronized with Outlook: just choose the service in the Video conference field of your calendar settings.