Subscribe to Outlook or Google calendar

Would you like to use appointments and public holidays that you manage in Outlook or in the Google Calendar also in portatour® for scheduling without having to enter them twice manually? The calendar subscription function transfers appointments automatically to portatour® on a regular basis.

Manage calendar subscriptions

Add calendar subscriptions

To add a calendar subscription, proceed as follows:

1. In the main menu, open the Options.
2. Select Calendar subscriptions > Add.
3. Click on Log in with Microsoft or Login with Google. Log in with the access data of the respective account.
4. Allow access to the calendar data. If access is blocked by your organization, contact your IT administrator. A window for configuring the calendar subscription opens.
5. Assign a freely selectable name for the subscription (e.g. 'Company account'). All calendars that are available in your account are listed below.

6. Select the desired subscription type for each calendar in the selection box:

   1. Do not subscribe to not subscribe to appointments in this calendar (e.g. birthdays).
   2. Subscribe to appointments to import appointments which are not all-day appointments.
   3. Subscribe as days off to import only all-day appointments that affect portatour® as 'days off' - typically for public holiday calendars.
   4. Subscribe with custom settingsto configure settings yourself (for details, see below Use custom settings ).

   

7. Click Save.
8. Go to the Calendar to check whether appointments have been successfully imported from the subscription. Please note that the automatic import process can take up to one minute for many appointments.

Edit or delete calendar subscriptions

To edit or delete a calendar subscription:

1. Go to Options > Calendar subscriptions and click on the name of the desired subscription.
2. Then select Edit or Delete:
   1. Edit opens the editing window known from adding the subscription.
   2. Delete removes all subscribed appointments of the respective subscription from portatour®.

Use custom settings

When adding or editing a calendar subscription, select the subscription type Subscribe with custom settings to use individual settings. Starting from the settings of Subscribe to appointments, you have the option of changing the various subscription settings individually.

Time span

If necessary, change the time span of the appointments to be transferred. The maximum time span is from 3 months in the past up to one year in advance.

Filter

Select here which appointment you wish to subscribe to:

• All appointments: All appointments in the relevant calendar are imported.
• Only all-day appointments: Only all-day events are imported.
• Only non-all-day appointments: Only appointments that are not full-day are imported.

• For all days: Appointments are imported for all days, even if there are no working hours entered in portatour® on some days of the week (e.g. Saturday and Sunday). This is the default setting for the subscription type 'Subscribe to appointments'.
• Only for working days: Only appointments that take place on working days entered in portatour® are imported. This is the default setting for the subscription type 'Subscribe as days off'.

Customer reference

Select Determine from email addresses if you want portatour® to automatically establish a possible customer reference for the appointments by comparing the email addresses.

If portatour® does not find a suitable customer and therefore cannot automatically create a customer reference, you have the option of being automatically notified by a warning message. To do this, select one of the following options under If no customers found:

• Do not create a warning: portatour® will not notify you if no customer reference could be established.
• Create warning: portatour® always displays a warning message if no customer reference could be established. This means that warning messages are also displayed for company-internal appointments (= organizer/participant with email address with the same domain).
• Create warning if organizer/participant from another domain: A warning will only be created for an appointment without customer reference if the organizer or a participant is not from your company (email address does not end with '@example.com').

Select No automatic determination if you prefer to set up the customer reference manually. portatour® will then not synchronize the email addresses.

Address

You have various setting options for the address determination of the subscribed appointments.

Under Automatic determination, select whether the appointment address should be determined automatically and, if so, which source should be used for this:

• From customer reference: If the appointment has a customer reference, then the address of the portatour® customer is used for the appointment.
• Address from appointment: The appointment address entered in Outlook or Google is used by portatour® for route planning.
• From customer reference, otherwise address from appointment: If the appointment has a customer reference, then the address of the portatour® customer is used for the appointment. Otherwise, the address from the subscribed appointment from Outlook or Google is used.
• Address from appointment, otherwise address from customer reference: The appointment address entered in Outlook or Google is used if available. Otherwise, the address from the customer reference will be used if there is one.
• None: No automatic address determination is performed. Select the appropriate procedure for you at If not resolved automatically.

At If not resolved automatically, you specify how portatour® should handle the missing appointment address if no address was automatically determined or could not be determined:

• Geocoding error: An empty address with geocoding error is used for the appointment. The appointment is not included in the schedule until the address is corrected. Open the appointment and click on Edit address to correct the appointment promptly (see Geocode address).
• Without location: The appointment is saved without location reference. You will not receive a warning message. portatour® schedules the appointment like a phone call at any location.
• Home location: The stored home location is used as appointment address.
• At a 'my place'...: Select one of your 'my places' at which the affected appointments should be scheduled. To do this, click into the field Select....
• With manual address...: Enter a specific address at which the affected appointments should be scheduled. To do this, click in the Enter... field and geocode the desired address (see Geocode address).

Define the procedure for online meetings at If marked as an online meeting:

• Do not overwrite address: The address determination rules defined above are followed for all appointments, including for online meetings. For example: You have selected From customer reference for automatic determination and select Do not overwrite address for online meetings. If you have an online meeting with a customer, portatour® will still schedule the drive to the customer as if it were an on-site appointment.
• Overwrite address with...: Different rules apply to online meetings with regard to the address of the appointment. In the next selection box, specify how or where portatour® should schedule online meetings.
  • Without location: The appointment is scheduled like a phone call at any location.
  • Home location: Appointments marked as online meetings are always scheduled at the home location.
  • My place...: Select one of your 'my places' at which you always hold online meetings, e.g. the company headquarters. To do this, click into the field Select....
  • Manual address...: Enter a specific address where you would like to hold your online meetings. To do this, click in the field Enter... and geocode the desired address (see Geocode address).

Notes on calendar subscriptions

• By default, subscribed appointments are taken over in the time span from one month in the past to 3 months in the future. To adjust this period for a calendar, click on Show settings in the administration of calendar subscriptions below the calendar, then on Use as custom settings and edit and then adjust the time span (see above Use custom settings).
• All appointments are accepted regardless of their status (e.g. tentative, private, draft, ...).
• Recurring appointments are also adopted. In portatour®, however, they are handled as separate individual appointments.
• If you export appointments from portatour®, subscribed appointments are also included in the export file. You can recognize them by the value 4 in the 'Creation method - ID' field or 'Calendar subscription' in the 'Creation method - Name' field.
• If you import appointments into portatour®, existing subscribed appointments are neither editable nor will they be deleted. Corresponding lines in the import file are ignored.
• If you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the source system, then calendar subscriptions are not possible. Ensure that the desired calendars are synchronized directly to Dynamics and from there regularly imported to portatour®.

Further information

• You can find out what to keep in mind when working with subscribed appointments and how to edit them at Working with subscribed appointments.