Subscribe to Outlook calendar

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Would you like to use appointments and public holidays that you manage in Outlook 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. 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®.

Customer reference of subscribed appointments

It is important that appointments, which take place at customers, also have a reference to the corresponding customer in portatour®. This ensures that customers are not suggested more than once in schedules or that the last call date of customers is updated correctly.

By default, portatour® attempts to automatically determine the customer reference for subscribed appointments using email addresses. For this purpose, the email addresses of appointments (organizer, participant) are searched for in the email addresses of your portatour® customers. All custom fields with the data type 'email address' are taken into account.

If exactly one customer is found in this way, the customer reference is set automatically.

If no customer is found, the appointment is provided with a warning - visually recognizable by a red question mark and the red warning No customer found for customer reference. If more than one customer comes into question, the appointment is also marked with a warning. The customers found are offered for selection.

Use the context menu or the appointment detail page:

• Click on Select customer... to select a customer and create a customer reference manually.
• Click on Remove customer reference to remove the missing customer reference and the warning.

Address of subscribed appointments

When determining the appointment address, portatour® proceeds as follows by default:

1. The address is taken directly from the appointment in Outlook and then geocoded. If the geocoding is not possible exactly, a geocoding warning is added to the appointment.
2. If the address is empty but a customer reference is found, the address of the customer is used as appointment address.
3. If this is also unsuccessful, the appointment will be provided with a geocoding error.
4. If the appointment is marked as an online meeting, the appointment is created without location reference.

Since an exact address is important for route planning, you can change the address yourself, edit and geocode it as you would with normal appointments. However, an address changed in this way is not synchronized back to Outlook. The change is retained in portatour® as long as the appointment address does not change in Outlook.

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 created in Outlook are imported.
• Only non-all-day appointments: Only appointments that are not full-day are imported.

Customer reference

Select Determine from email addresses if you want portatour® to automatically create a possible customer reference of appointments by comparing the e-mail addresses (see above Customer reference of subscribed appointments).

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 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 is used.
• Address from appointment, otherwise address from customer reference: The appointment address entered in Outlook 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).

Updating the appointments from a calendar subscription

The regular import of appointments from calendar subscriptions is fully automatic. If you are actively using portatour® and one hour has passed since the last update, the update is automatically carried out in the background.

If an error occurs, you will receive a red warning in the main menu.

To see when the last update took place, click on the cogwheel in the top right-hand corner of the calendar view. Any errors that occurred during the update will be displayed here.

If necessary, you can start an update manually at any time. To do this, click on Update calendar subscriptions.

Working with subscribed appointments

You can recognize subscribed appointments in all views (calendar, appointment list, schedule) by the Microsoft logo.

In addition, in the detailed view you will find a section containing information about the subscribed appointment.

In online meetings you will find a 'Join meeting' button.

Compared to normal appointments, subscribed appointments are restricted in two important ways:

• Editing of subject, date and time is not possible in portatour®.
• Deleting is not possible in portatour®.

Carry out these processes in Outlook instead. To open the appointment directly there, click on Open in Outlook in the context menu or in the detailed view of the appointment. Any changes or deletions made there will be transferred to portatour® the next time the calendar subscription is updated.

Taking appointments into account for route planning

Subscribed appointments are included in the schedule by default. If you do not want this for an appointment because it should not have any influence on your day trip:

1. Click on the relevant appointment.
2. In the context menu or in appointment details under Actions, click on Exclude appointment from schedule. In the calendar, these appointments are displayed in gray with the corresponding symbol.
   
3. To schedule the appointment again, click on Consider appointment in schedule.

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®.