Sync appointments with external calendar

Sprintful supports syncing with your external calendars. This article highlights what can be achieved and how it works. If you are having trouble with time slots not being blocked, please see the section " Diagnosing Calendar Sync".

How Syncing Works

After adding an external calendar, Sprintful will:

1. Read your availability from the external calendar. This means if you have a meeting on your Google/Outlook calendar, it will block that time on your Sprintful booking page (see below screenshot, red arrow #1). Make sure you instruct Sprintful to read availability from the relevant calendars by switching on the knob next to it (in the screenshot, it is switched off).
2. Create meeting events on your external calendar. This means if someone books a meeting with you using your Sprintful booking page, a new event will appear on your Google/Outlook calendar (see below screenshot, red arrow #2). If you want to enable this feature, make sure to choose an external calendar to write to.
3. Note that, if you delete an event (that was created by Sprintful) from your Google/Outlook calendar, that event will remain on Sprintful's database, and as such the time slot will not be released. Instead, to cancel events, use the link in the calendar invite to cancel it. This will also trigger the right notifications and workflows.

Diagnosing Calendar Sync

First, we assume that you added an external calendar already and your booking page is configured to sync with that external calendar (as described in the section above). A good place to start is:

• Diagnose Page. Go to Dashboard > Pages > click on "Settings" of the relevant booking page and choose "Diagnose". This will show in details what time slots are available, what is blocked, and why is it blocked.
• Integration Page. Go to Dashboard > Integrations > click on "Settings" of the relevant integration and choose "Edit". If there is an error with your integration, the edit page will show it and might ask you to re-authorize if needed.

Here are common problems you might face:

• Sprintful shows me as available when it shouldn't.
  
  If your Sprintful booking page is showing a time slot as open but it should be blocked, because you have a meeting in your external calendar that is blocking that time range, then
  • Make sure your integration is working properly, as described in the previous paragraph.
  • Make sure you've configured Sprintful to read availability from that external calendar (i.e. switch on the knob), as described in the screenshot in "How Syncing Works", arrow #2.
  • Make sure the event in your external calendar is marked as "Busy". If the event is not marked as "Busy", then Sprintful will not block that time slot.
• Sprintful shows me as unavailable, where it shouldn't.
  
  If your Sprintful booking page is showing a time slot as busy but it should be available, then:
  • Check the Diagnose page (as described in previous paragraph) to understand why the time slot has been blocked
  • If it's because an event in your Google/Outlook calendar, then either mark that event as "Free", or configure Sprintful not to read availability from that calendar, as described in the screenshot in "How Syncing Works", arrow #2.

Event Status in External Calendar 

Events created on external calendars (such as Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar) have a status field, which is either set to "Busy" or "Free". If an event status is set to "Free", then Sprintful will not block the time range that overlaps with that event. If it is "Busy", then it will block it. See below for a screenshot from a Google Calendar event. Outlook Calendar events have a similar UI.

Supported External Calendars

Sprintful supports integration with:

• Google Calendar
• Outlook Calendar
• Microsoft Exchange

Adding an External Calendars

Simply navigate to Dashboard > Integrations, and click on "New Integration". From there, choose "Google Calendar", or "Outlook", or "Microsoft Exchange" depending on your requirement.