How do I keep outside calendar events from causing double bookings?

If you also keep events on a Google, Outlook or iCloud calendar, you can have ASNSpark! CRM read those events and block off those times. That way a family cannot book a care consultation while you are at a hospital discharge planning meeting that only lives on your Outlook calendar.

This article covers which calendar does what. To connect a calendar for the first time, see the article on connecting your Google Calendar.

The two roles an outside calendar can play

• Linked (primary) calendar: the one outside calendar that ASNSpark! CRM writes your new appointments to and reads events from. You can only pick one, and you need write access to it.
• Conflict calendars: extra calendars that are only checked for busy times. Their events block your booking slots, but nothing is written to them and no appointments are created from them. Add as many as you need, such as a personal calendar.

Your linked calendar is checked for conflicts automatically, so it will appear grayed out in the conflict list.

Set your linked calendar

1. Go to Calendars, then Calendar Settings, then the Connections tab. You can also reach your calendar settings from Settings, then My Profile, then Calendar.
2. Make sure your outside account appears under connected calendars. If it does not, click + Add New and sign in.
3. Under Linked Calendar, click Add, choose the calendar and click Save.

Add conflict calendars

1. In the same area, find Conflict Calendars (sometimes shown as Check for Conflicts).
2. Click Edit and turn on Use as Conflict Calendar for each calendar that should block your time.
3. Click Save.

Only events marked Busy block your time. Events marked Free are read in but leave you bookable.

Choose how events sync

In the linked calendar's advanced settings, choose one of two options:

• One-way sync (default): outside events show up as blocked time. No contacts are created and no workflows run.
• Two-way sync: outside events come in as real appointments. Guests on those events are created as contacts, and appointment workflows can run for them.

Be careful with two-way sync. If you invite a referral partner to a Google event, they will become a contact and may receive your appointment confirmations or workflow messages. Most teams are better off with one-way sync.

If you do use two-way sync, the Allow Contact Creation setting lets you pick which calendar those appointments land on, or choose None to turn it off. Allow Trigger decides whether workflows run for those synced appointments. Recurring outside events are not turned into appointments.

Best practices

• Write appointments to one work calendar only, to avoid duplicates.
• Add your personal calendar as a conflict calendar so family commitments block your slots.
• Make sure your outside calendar's time zone matches your ASNSpark! CRM profile.
• Reconnect after you change your Google or Microsoft password.

Troubleshooting

Marking an appointment as Showed or No Show does not update the outside calendar, so contacts do not get an "event updated" email.

Have a question about your own account? Submit a ticket and our team will follow up.