Keep Your Calendars in Sync

If you keep more than one calendar, the people who can only see one of them get the wrong answer about when you are free. A coworker looking at your work calendar cannot see the dentist appointment on your personal one, so they book over it.

Pair two of your connected calendars and Groupthink fixes that. When something lands on one calendar, Groupthink writes a private Busy placeholder on the other. The time is held on both, and nobody sees what the commitment actually is.

Before You Start

You need at least two calendars connected to Groupthink. They can be from different accounts and different providers. See Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar for how to connect more than one account. Each account's own calendar is ready to pair as soon as you connect it. Other calendars on the same account, such as a travel calendar or a family calendar, have to be made available first. See Choosing Which Calendars Can Be Paired.

The Keep your calendars in sync card only appears once you have two calendars connected. With one connected it shows a short prompt to connect a second and nothing else. With none connected it does not appear at all.

Pair Two Calendars

1. Go to User Settings > Calendar.
2. Find the Keep your calendars in sync card, below your calendar list.
3. Click Pair two calendars.
4. Pick your first calendar under Calendar, and the other one under Paired with. The calendars listed are your own connected ones, each shown by its name and the account it belongs to, so two calendars both called "Calendar" stay easy to tell apart. The one you picked first is not selectable in the second menu.
5. Choose a Direction (see below).
6. Click Pair calendars.

Both menus end with Connect another calendar. It starts the same Google or Outlook connect flow as the calendar list higher up the settings page, so you do not have to abandon a half-filled pair to go and connect an account you forgot.

That takes you out to the provider and back. Groupthink keeps the pair you had started and reopens the form when you return. If the account brought in exactly one new calendar, that calendar is already selected in the slot you opened the menu from, unless it is the calendar you had picked on the other side. If it brought in more than one, Groupthink says how many arrived and leaves the slot empty for you to choose, rather than guessing which one you meant.

Groupthink starts writing placeholders on the next sync. You do not have to wait on the page.

Choosing Which Calendars Can Be Paired

Only each account's own calendar is available to pair to start with. If you keep other calendars on that account, such as a travel calendar, a family calendar, or a team calendar you subscribe to, you can make those pairable too.

1. Open the Keep your calendars in sync card.
2. Click Choose which calendars can be paired.
3. Open the account you want. Every calendar on it is listed.
4. Click Make available next to the one you want to pair.

The calendar is then tagged Available to pair and appears in the pairing menus above. The account's own calendar is always listed and reads Always available.

Nothing is listed until you ask for it. Connecting a Google account that carries twenty subscribed calendars does not put twenty calendars in your pairing menus.

To take one back out, click Remove on its row. Groupthink asks first, because this does more than hide it from a menu: Any pair it belongs to is deleted, and the placeholders Groupthink wrote for it are removed from both calendars. Real events are untouched.

A calendar you can only read is tagged Read-only, with the line You can only read this calendar, so Groupthink can never add busy blocks to it. It can still share its busy time with your other calendars. A read-only calendar can be the source of a pair but never its target. See Choosing a Direction.

Making a calendar available to pair does not add it to your booking links. See Known Limitations.

Choosing a Direction

The Direction menu has three options. The first is Both ways: each calendar gets placeholders for the other one's commitments. The other two are the one-way options, and they are labeled with your real calendar names and an arrow, such as Work (you@company.com) → Personal (you@gmail.com). The arrow points at the calendar that receives the placeholders.

Both ways is the usual choice for a work calendar and a personal calendar. Pick a one-way direction when you want your personal commitments reflected at work but not the other way around.

A read-only calendar can only ever be the source. If one of the two calendars is read-only, the menu offers just the directions that work and says One of these calendars is read-only, so busy blocks can only flow one way. If both are read-only, no direction works, and the card tells you to pick a calendar you can write to.

You can change the direction on an existing pair at any time. Groupthink clears every placeholder that pair had written and rebuilds them under the new direction, so the calendars land in the right state rather than in a half-corrected one. The rebuild runs in the background and takes a moment.

What Crosses Over, and What Does Not

Each pair has a What crosses over setting with two options. Masked is the default and is what every pair did before this setting existed. Full details copies the real event across.

Attendees are never copied, in either mode. There is no setting that turns that on. Copying them would make your calendar send real invitations, from you, to people who agreed to nothing, for an event that is only a copy.

A placeholder's reminders are turned off in both modes, so it never pings you about a meeting you are already reminded of on the other calendar.

Changing this setting on an existing pair deletes the busy blocks already written for it and writes them again in the new mode. Real events are untouched.

Masked

Only the block of time crosses over. The meeting's own title never crosses over, and neither do its attendees, its description, its location, or its meeting link. The placeholder carries a masked title instead: Busy, until you change it (see Renaming the Placeholder, below). Anyone looking at the other calendar sees that you are busy and nothing more. On an Outlook calendar the placeholder also carries a short line of text saying it was synced by Groupthink, which is how Outlook lets us tag our own events. Nothing from the original meeting is in it.

A masked placeholder is written private on the calendar it lands on, whatever the original event was.

Full Details

Full details copies the source event's real title, description, location, and join link onto the placeholder. The join link goes into the body as text, followed by a line saying the event was synced using Groupthink from the calendar it came from. Pick this when you are pairing two of your own calendars and a wall of identical Busy blocks does not tell you enough about what can be moved.

The join link is copied as plain text and never as a real conferencing link, so opening it takes you to the original meeting. Groupthink never creates a second meeting room.

Attendees still do not cross over. Neither does anything else beyond those four fields.

Who Can See a Detailed Copy

Read this part before you turn full details on.

A detailed copy keeps the source event's own visibility instead of being written private. An event you marked private in your calendar stays private on the other one. An ordinary event is exactly as visible on the receiving calendar as everything else on it, which means anyone you have shared that calendar's event details with will see the title, description, location, and join link.

Groupthink cannot change calendar sharing from inside the app. If the receiving calendar is shared more widely than you want, change its sharing in Google or Outlook first.

Groupthink warns you before the switch and names the calendar the details will land on:

Real event details will appear on [calendar]. Anyone who can see event details on [calendar] will see the title, description, location and join link of every event Groupthink copies there. A detailed copy keeps the source event's own visibility instead of being written private, and Groupthink can't change calendar sharing from inside the app. If that calendar is shared more widely than you want, change its sharing in Google or Outlook first. Attendees are never copied, in either mode.

Confirm with Copy full details, or back out with Keep masked. On a one-way pair the warning names only the calendar that actually receives the copies.

There is one thing Groupthink will not inherit. An event marked public is not copied as public. Groupthink writes it at the receiving calendar's normal visibility instead, so a detailed copy is never more visible than the calendar it lands on.

Events That Are Skipped

Groupthink skips events that do not block your time:

• Events you marked Free in your calendar.
• Invitations you declined.
• All-day events, and anything else that runs 24 hours or longer.
• Placeholders written by another calendar sync tool.

Placeholders are written for upcoming events out to about two months ahead.

Time Another Tool Already Holds Is Left Alone

If you are switching from Reclaim or a similar tool, both will be running for a while, and the other one is already copying the same meetings between the same two calendars. Groupthink checks the target calendar before it writes: when a block from another tool already covers that exact start and end, Groupthink writes nothing.

So on a calendar your old tool still covers, the honest result is very few new placeholders. The time is held either way. Once the other tool stops and its copies come off the calendar, the next sync fills the gaps with ours.

Groupthink says this out loud rather than leaving it to look like a broken pair. When another app has covered most of one direction's slots for a week or more, the pair's card says so: Another scheduling app is already blocking out most of these times on [calendar], so Groupthink is leaving them alone. If you've stopped using that app, delete its leftover blocks and Groupthink will keep [calendar] up to date instead.

That notice states what Groupthink can see, not what is wrong. It does not know whether the other app is still running or whether you are looking at blocks it left behind. You do, and only you can act on either.

Turn the other tool off before you revoke its access. A tool can only delete its own blocks while it can still reach your calendar. Revoke its access first and those blocks are stranded there for good. Nothing moves them when the real meeting moves, so they hold the wrong time, and Groupthink reads them as time another tool is already holding and stays quiet on those slots. One migration left 74 stranded blocks behind this way, and three recurring blocks survived even closing the account they were written from.

The order that works:

1. Pair the two calendars in Groupthink.
2. Turn calendar sync off inside the other tool and let it delete its own events.
3. Check both calendars and confirm its blocks are gone.
4. Only then revoke that tool's access to your calendar.

If you have already revoked access and the old blocks are still sitting there, delete them from your calendar by hand. Groupthink fills those slots once it sees them free.

Why a New Pair Can Look Slow to Start

Groupthink only mirrors an event once it has read whether that event is marked Busy or Free. It reads that when an event is created or changed, so events that have not been touched since you set the pair up may not have it yet.

Groupthink fills the gap in automatically on a later sync, and the placeholders appear on their own. If a brand new pair looks like it has done nothing yet, this is usually why. Give it a day before assuming something is wrong.

The other common reason for a low count is that another tool is already holding the same time — see above. Both are the sync working, not failing.

The Placeholders Do Not Come Back Into Groupthink

Groupthink tags every placeholder it writes and skips its own tags when it reads your calendars. A Busy block never turns into a meeting in Groupthink, never creates a contact, and never gets a notetaker sent to it.

Renaming the Placeholder

Each pair has a Placeholder title field with the helper text Every mirrored event on the paired calendar is titled this. Change it to anything you prefer, then click away from the field or press Enter. There is no Save button. The change applies to that pair's existing placeholders as well as its new ones: Groupthink removes the old blocks and rewrites them under the new title. An empty title is not accepted, and the field snaps back to what it was.

On a pair set to Full details the field is only a fallback, and the helper text says so: Used only when the source event has no title of its own. Events with a real title use it.

Managing a Pair

Each pair shows both calendar names, how many busy blocks it has written, and a Last synced line. A pair Groupthink knows is not working also shows a health notice, described below.

• On / Off toggle. Switching a pair off deletes the placeholders Groupthink wrote for it. They do not linger as unexplained blocks. Switch it back on and Groupthink rewrites them.
• Direction. Which way placeholders flow. See Choosing a Direction.
• Placeholder title. What a masked placeholder is called. See Renaming the Placeholder.
• What crosses over. Masked or full details. See What Crosses Over, and What Does Not.
• Refresh busy blocks. Runs the pair's placeholder check again right away instead of waiting for the next cycle. There is no confirmation message. The work happens in the background and you will see it on your calendar, not on this card. This re-checks placeholders against events Groupthink has already read. It does not fetch fresh events from Google or Microsoft.
• Remove. Deletes the pair entirely. Groupthink asks first: The placeholders Groupthink wrote will be removed from both calendars. Real events are untouched.

Last synced is the last time that pair finished a run cleanly. Every path stamps it: the hourly sweep, the sync that follows a change on either calendar, and Refresh busy blocks.

A pair you have just created reads Last synced never for a moment. Creating a pair queues the first run rather than doing it on the spot, so the line stays at never until that run finishes, and the page does not update itself. Reload it and the timestamp is there. A pair that has been in place for a while and still reads never has not completed a run, and the placeholders are the thing to check.

When a Pair Is Not Working

When Groupthink knows a pair is failing, the pair's card says so. You do not have to work it out from missing placeholders.

The notice sits on the card as a short warning with two lines. The first is what went wrong, in plain language, naming the calendar where naming it is honest. For example: Groupthink couldn't add Busy blocks to Personal. That usually means the calendar is read-only, or its connection needs reconnecting. The second line says how long it has been going, such as Failing for 3 days, with the date it started.

The message is Groupthink's own read on the pair, not an error passed through from Google or Outlook. Provider errors are not shown, because they can carry the titles and addresses of your events.

What the notice can tell you:

• Groupthink cannot reach one of the calendars in the pair. Reconnect it and the blocks start updating again.
• Groupthink could not add blocks to a calendar. Usually the calendar is read-only, or its connection needs reconnecting.
• The calendar's provider has no way to accept a placeholder at all. That pair will not work until you swap that calendar out.
• Groupthink could write blocks but could not remove ones that are no longer needed, so some of them may be out of date.
• Another scheduling app is already covering most of those times, so Groupthink is leaving them alone. See Time Another Tool Already Holds Is Left Alone.

A card with no notice is not a promise that everything is fine. Groupthink can only report the failures it can see. A pair that looks healthy and has still written nothing is usually one of the two ordinary explanations above: it is new and Groupthink has not read the events yet, or another tool is already holding the same time.

Keeping Up With Changes

Groupthink treats the source calendar as the truth and brings the other one back in line with it.

• Move an event and its placeholder moves with it.
• Delete an event, cancel it, decline it, or flip it to Free, and its placeholder disappears.
• Disconnect a calendar and Groupthink removes its placeholders before the connection goes.

Groupthink also runs a sweep every hour, so if an update is ever missed, it corrects itself rather than leaving a block on your calendar for a meeting that already moved. That is why a change you make on your calendar sometimes shows up on the other one within seconds and sometimes takes until the next sweep.

Disconnecting a Calendar Also Removes the Pair

Disconnecting a calendar takes any pair that calendar belonged to with it. The placeholders come off both calendars first, then the pair itself is gone from the list. Reconnecting that calendar later does not bring the pair back.

Nothing is lost except the pairing. Pair the two calendars again and Groupthink rewrites the blocks from scratch.

Known Limitations

• All-day events are skipped. Nothing is written for an all-day event, or for anything else running 24 hours or longer. Mirroring one would put a solid wall of unavailability on the other calendar, which is worse than leaving it out. There is nothing to configure.
• A duplicate can slip through while another tool is still running. The check described above takes a snapshot of the other tool's blocks at the start of a run. If that tool is rewriting an event at the same moment — a recurring series re-expanding is the usual case — the snapshot can miss it and Groupthink writes a second block on top. Nothing withdraws it afterwards. If you see doubled-up Busy blocks, switch the pair off: that deletes every placeholder Groupthink wrote, and your real events are untouched.
• One pair per couple of calendars. Trying to pair two calendars that are already paired gives you These calendars are already paired. Edit the existing pair instead. This is what stops two rules writing over each other.
• Placeholders stop about two months out. Nothing is written for an event further ahead than that. It fills in as the event comes into range.
• A read-only calendar can only ever be a source. It can share its busy time with your other calendars, and Groupthink can never write a placeholder onto it. Directions that would write onto one are not offered.
• A calendar you make pairable does not affect your booking links. Adding a travel or family calendar so it can hold time on your work calendar does not hide those hours on your booking links, and bookings are never written to it. Only the calendars each account brings in on its own are read for availability. If you want a calendar to do both, the placeholders it writes on your main calendar are what protects your booking link.
• Attendees never cross over, and there is no way to turn that on. This is true in both Masked and Full details.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I pair more than two calendars?

You pair calendars two at a time. Create as many pairs as you need.

Will people see what my other meetings are?

That depends on the pair's What crosses over setting, and by default the answer is no.

On a Masked pair, which is the default, the placeholder is a block of time with a masked title, written private. Titles, descriptions, locations, and meeting links are not copied.

On a Full details pair, they are. The title, description, location, and join link are copied, and the copy keeps the source event's own visibility rather than being written private, so anyone who can see event details on the receiving calendar will see them. Groupthink warns you and names that calendar before the switch. See Who Can See a Detailed Copy.

Attendees are never copied on either setting.

What happens to the placeholders if I stop using this?

Turning a pair off, removing it, or disconnecting one of its calendars all delete the placeholders Groupthink wrote. Your real events are never touched.

Do the Busy blocks count as meetings in Groupthink?

No. Groupthink recognizes its own placeholders and skips them, so they never appear as meetings or create contacts.

Does this work with Outlook?

Yes. Pairs work across any calendars you have connected, including a Google calendar paired with an Outlook one.

Does a Busy block stop someone booking that time through my availability link?

Yes. A placeholder is a real event on the calendar it was written to, so it blocks a booking slot like any other event. That is how pairing protects your booking links from a commitment they would otherwise not see.

One exception. A calendar you made pairable yourself, such as a travel or family calendar, is not read for availability. Its own events do not block a booking slot. The placeholders it writes onto your main calendar still do, which is what holds the time.

What happens if I reconnect a calendar I disconnected?

The calendar comes back; the pair does not. Pair it again and the placeholders are rewritten. See above.

Related

• Share your availability — booking links, which read the same free/busy this feature protects
• Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar — connecting a second account
• User settings — where the Calendar tab lives

Getting Help

Questions about calendar sync? Email support@groupthink.com.