New feature: two-way Outlook Calendar integration

Resource scheduling is one of the most important jobs within an agency, so you know who’s doing what and when. Until someone reminds you they have back-to-back meetings or an appointment on a day you’ve scheduled an important job with them. Or, more realistically, it’s the first you’ve heard of it. Because what’s in their calendar isn’t in yours, and vice versa.

Which is where Synergist’s new two-way Outlook calendar integration will help to improve your planning. Giving you complete visibility over your team’s availability and making sure you're not setting unrealistic expectations from your team.

Better agency scheduling

Synergist customers can already add bookings which will translate across into Outlook, but until now, this has been a one-way process. The new two-way integration means meetings in Outlook Calendar will appear in Synergist, and vice versa.

Syncing Synergist with your Outlook Calendar means that meetings and recurring events will also be visible in your Synergist Calendar Booking schedules.

Giving you full, clear visibility of existing events and helping you avoid overbooking or clashing commitments.

It’s updated in real time, so when an event is added, it’ll be visible in both systems within minutes.

Not only does this help you with your scheduling, it helps your team to plan better, too. If they can see what’s already in, they can fit meetings, calls and appointments into what they know is a free space... rather than booking, finding they then can’t make it, rescheduling, and all the other associated time spent navigating other people’s diaries.

Preserving your privacy

While this combined data brings a host of benefits, these are absolutely not at the expense of privacy. There will be times when your team members want appointments to be kept private, and of course, we would never compromise that.

If you mark a meeting in Outlook as private, Synergist will simply mark that an individual has an event or appointment on a particular day or time. Giving a full view of availability without invading personal space or privacy.

Automation, but you're still in control

While the synchronised system will deliver a host of benefits, you're still in control of all calendar entries.

Synergist will highlight any Outlook entries that clash with a booking in Synergist, but won't override bookings - that's for resource managers to resolve.

Edits made to a booking in Synergist will pass over to Outlook, and vice versa. However, edits need to be made on the system they were created in, in order to be accurately re-synced into both systems.

Connecting Outlook 365 calendars

We've designed it so that you only have to do it once. Your Synergist admin simply links your Synergist system and Microsoft 365 domain, then all resources will be set up.

You can sync your Outlook Calendar with Synergist in four simple steps:

• Go to your System Parameters 'Settings' tab "Calendar Syncing" (you'll need to be an administrator)
• Enter your Outlook domain and authorise Synergist to access your Microsoft account (you'll need Outlook admin).
• Choose which company calendars to sync
• Once the sync is complete, existing bookings will be synced from one calendar to another. Any bookings that are made for dates prior to the current date will not be synced.

This new update to Synergist is a fantastic enhancement, giving your agency even more tools for effective planning and time management. And with time being an agency’s chief commodity... it all points towards powering your profitability.