Using the Zoho Calendar in Outlook/Office365

Using the Zoho Calendar in Outlook/Office365

Introduction

This guide goes over the in's and outs of using the Zoho Calendar in Outlook. The purpose of this guide is to give insight on how to use the Zoho / Microsoft Calendar integration in the context of YPC Media. As a new user it's quite simple, everything you do should be out of zoho. For our users who have been here before Zoho and during the transition, your ultimate goal is to phase out the use of your Microsoft/Outlook default calendar & instead use Zoho for everything. When you initially set this up, you'll be juggling two calendars, but the goal is to phase out the Outlook calendar. We can post events to our zoho calendar directly from outlook, but we do want to cease use of the default outlook Calendar. Our previous processes were based on sharing the outlook calendar, which we no longer do. Click here to navigate to the section of this article that covers the new method to see your coworkers calendars.
Zoho Documentation on this integration

Initial Setup

  • We can add our zoho Calendar to outlook by heading to (in zoho crm) Settings > Marketplace > Microsoft > Meetings. Be sure to check “Add Customer's Meeting Invitation”.
    Use the settings cog in the top right, And find Microsoft under Marketplace

  • This will add your zoho calendar into your microsoft outlook. These are, unfortunately, 2 separate calendars. 

  • We overcome most of this issue by overlaying them. In the outlook Ribbon, go to View > Overlay. Then select the calendars you want to look at (in this case, Calendar & Zoho CRM).



Making Zoho Cal your Primary in Outlook

Making your Zoho Calendar your primary in outlook (so that events are automatically saved there when created in outlook) is very simple. All we have to do is Rt click > Move Up til the Zoho Calendar is at the top. The top calendar is where your items will save by default.   

Expectations & Limitations

  • As you may have noticed, this integration ADDS a calendar to your outlook, as opposed to syncing events to your current default “Calendar” in outlook. This dictates how we use this tool.

  • First of all, use this integration, and do not add yourself as a participant in meeting invites from zoho. You will see & be notified of your meetings via outlook due to the second calendar, and you can see them all together with the overlay setting.

  • Any meeting created in this Zoho CRM Calendar in Office 365 will be automatically captured in Zoho CRM.

  • When a lead or contact invites you to a meeting and once the invitation is accepted, it will be synchronized with your zoho calendar (this requires the Add Customer's Meetings Invitation feature to be enabled).

  • Recurring meetings cannot be synced with Office 365



Limitations (What won't sync as you might expect)

  • Sending an invite from outlook ON YOUR DEFAULT OUTLOOK CALENDAR will not sync to Zoho. Not even when they accept the invitation. (there may be an exception to this if they reply via email to say yes, this is a feature outlook & many other clients have). The solution here is to either create meeting invites in zoho OR on the zoho calendar within Outlook.

  • If you create ANY item on your calendar, with or without attendees, it will not sync to zoho unless created ON THE ZOHO CALENDAR WITHIN OUTLOOK. 

  • Using zoho to handle this will ensure everything is where it should be. 


Use with Calendly

  • Calendly (& other products) rely on a connection to your calendar to check for conflicts.

  • All we need to do is add the second calendar to our account. We can add multiple calendars in a free account, so long as it’s just one calendar source. To do this, head to Account > Calendar Connections

  •       

  • Once here, head to your Office 365 connection, & edit the conflicts section to include both your default “Calendar” as well as “Zoho CRM Calendar”. Save & you’re all set.

  1. Finally head to the Add To Calendar & set it to your Zoho CRM Calendar

Calendar Sharing in Zoho

Previously at YPC, we'd manage calendar sharing completely in outlook, by manually sharing calendars to our coworkers as needed via outlook. In Zoho, the concept of sharing is a thing of the past. In Zoho, your data is already shared for you based on position. In order to see it, we're going to head over to our own Calendar within Zoho (the calendar icon on the top right bar). From here, you have a dropdown in the top left which, by default, says My Meetings or My Meetings & Calls. Select this dropdown to see All Users, specific groups, or individual / groups of Users.



NOTE - You may choose to remove Calls from this view, this is because calls are, many times, logged events that have already happened. Some users, however, schedule calls. So this option is a preference. It can be found by going, from the calendar page, to Options > Preferences & Removing Calls from your Activity Type.




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