Content
- Description
- Notes before start
- How to setup the calendar sync
- How does it work?
- How to manage what is synced?
Description
Google Calendar sync helps you coordinate your work schedule with two-way sync between Severa and Google. It’s safe, secure and easy to set up using OAuth authentication.
Once the authentication method has been established for an organization, individual users enable and initiate the sync in Severa. Calendar sync uses activities in Severa, make sure that activities are enabled to your company. Activities made in Severa will be retrieved for use in Google and activities made in Google will be sent to Severa.
Notes before start
- Paid Google G Suite account is required in order to use Google Calendar sync.
- Activate Google calendar sync add-on with administrator access rights via Upgrades.
- User email addresses in Visma Severa must be the same as those used in Google for the sync to work correctly.
- Synchronization is only possible between Severa calendar and Google's primary calendar.
- If user has also other syncs at the same time (for example between Google and mobile phone), user should be careful with the sync settings to avoid duplicate entries. In case it is not possible to disable the mobile phone sync, we recommend that mobile phone is set to manual sync.
- We recommend that when the calendar synchronization is enabled, all Severa users in the organization use it. If all users is not using sync, it could cause error when for example owner of the Severa activity is not Google User.
How to setup the calendar sync
To setup calendar sync you need admin access rights to google and to Severa. Instruction how to setup calendar sync is below:
How does it work?
This is a two-way server-server sync. Activities from Visma Severa calendar are synchronized to Google server and vice versa. Recurring and private/personal activities/entries are synced too.
Initial sync
Initial sync tries to match existing entries based on subject/activity name, start date, start time, end date, end time and recurrence. In the initial sync, entries older than 30 days are not synced, unless there are recurring activities with occurrences in future. After the initial sync, only changes are synced.
Triggers that activate sync
Synchronization is triggered by certain actions in Visma Severa. If user is not logged into Severa, synchronization is not started.
- Synchronization is started after login and will sync automatically when moving around in Severa (NOTE: If user does not work in Severa, sync is not activated)
- When calendar entry is modified in Visma Severa
- If some other user in your company is using calendar sync and you are participant/owner of the entry. Entry will be synced even though you do not have calendar sync in use.
What activities are not synced?
There are few situations when activities is not synced:
- When the date or time of activity is corrupted.
- Activity might remain an error if email address of the user is changed f.e from mike@test.com to mike.johnsson@test.com.
- Past activities where end date and end time is before current date are not synced. Exception for this is if the past activity is moved to future, it will be synced.
How to manage what is synced?
Restricting what is synced
It is possible to limit what activities are synced from Severa to Google based on activity types. Visma Severa's project tasks cannot be synced from severa to outlook calendar. Note! It is not possible to restrict what calendar entries are synced from Google to Severa. Private entries from Google are matched to activity type "Personal" if such an activity type exists in Visma Severa. All other entries get the Visma Severa default activity type.
What field are transferred
Compare the two images below to see what fields ere matched it the sync. Participation status is updated from Exchange to Severa.
Private/Personal entries
Personal entries in Severa are marked as private in Google and vice versa. When entry is personal/private no other user can view the details of the entry. If there is no activity type “personal” in Visma Severa’s activity type settings then default activity type is used when entries are synced. Notice that this will make private entries public and visible to all users.
Activity owner
When Google calendar sync add-on is in use, activity owner can not be changed for saved activities. When creating a new activity, owner can be changed before activity is saved. This is to prevent errors in the sync and conflicts in the entries.
If the owner of a calendar entry does not have calendar sync enabled in Severa. Activity owner is a user who is a participant of a entry and whose calendar sync starts next time.
Participants
There are 4 types of participants in Visma Severa and depending of what kind of participant is, the activity/entry and email notifications behave differently.
Visma Severa users: Visma Severa users are your co-workers, they use the same Severa and Google environment as you. Severa users can be added as participant/attendees in both systems and entries are updated in both calendars.
Contacts from Severa account card: In Visma Severa it is possible to attach activity to an account or a project/sales case. When account is added for the activity, also contacts from that account can be added as participants. Account contact is visible in the participants list in Severa, but this information is not transferred to Google calendar. Neither account nor account contact is visible in Google’s entry. Also note that no message about the calendar entry is sent to your account contact.
Reservations: In Severa it is possible to add reservations as participants for an activity. Reservations are managed in Tools > Settings > Reservations. Reservation is visible in the participants list in Severa, but this information is not transferred to Google calendar.
External contacts: When an external attendee (= a person not using the same Visma Severa as you) is added to an entry in Google, he gets email notification about a new calendar entry. When entry is synced to Severa, external participant is displayed on the activity participant list as “Firstname Lastname” or “email@address.com” and the participant colour is black. If entry is updated or deleted either in Severa or in Google, also external attendee will be notified. If external attendee declines meeting invitation, he is removed from the participant list in Severa.
Google notification emails
Google sends notification emails for attendees about new, modified or deleted calendar entries. Usually user can choose if he/she wants to send an invitation or an update etc. When the sync between Google and Visma Severa is enabled, following should be noticed when it comes to Google sending notification emails.
- When activity is created/changed/deleted in Visma Severa, notification is send via Google to Visma Severa user participants and external participants.
- If Activity type, Account or Case is changed or activity is marked as completed in Visma Severa, no notifications are sent via Google. In Visma Severa the activity is updated and users can see the changed details.
Recurring activities
- We recommend to keep recurring rules as simple as it is possible.
- We recommend that duration of recurring activities is not more than one year. Keep recurring rules as simple as possible meaning NO never ending recurring activities.
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