Exchange Calendar Sync for Easy Project Management

If you run a service company, chances are your schedule is packed. A reliable calendar and power scheduling capabilities are absolute musts when it comes to your project management software. Whether you're busy juggling meetings with clients or blocking time to sync up with your team, Accelo can help.

‌Accelo offers a variety of integrations that let you sync your data across multiple platforms. Among these integrations is Exchange Calendar sync, which lets you synchronize meetings, appointments, and tasks between Accelo and Microsoft Exchange. With Accelo, you can stay organized and up-to-date across all of your favorite tools.

• What Is Exchange Calendar Sync?
• How Do I Sync Exchange/Microsoft 365 Calendar?
• Can I Sync My Accelo Calendar with Google Calendar?
• Conclusion

What Is Exchange Calendar Sync?

Syncing your Exchange or Microsoft 365 Calendar with Accelo allows you to pull calendar events from your Outlook calendar into Accelo. This means that if you create an appointment or event in Outlook, you should also see it in Accelo within a couple of minutes.

Accelo supports bi-directional sync, which means you can also push meetings scheduled in Accelo to your Outlook calendar. 

You can view your Exchange appointments and events on your Timesheet page. If you import client meetings and appointments, they'll show up in Accelo as Scheduled Work, along with a suggestion for the amount of time the meeting took. You can click on the suggestion, enter the actual amount of time spent on the meeting, and write a brief description of the purpose of the meeting.

Note that an hour-long Exchange meeting will also block an hour from your Accelo Schedule on that day.

It's important to note that Accelo does not sync your all-day appointments from Exchange. We exclude these because they are challenging to integrate effectively into your scheduling tool and make it difficult to manage your time.

How Do I Sync Exchange/Microsoft 365 Calendar?

To sync your Exchange or Microsoft 365 Calendar, you must first connect Accelo with your Exchange email or Microsoft 365 account.‌

Exchange is a popular email solution provided by Microsoft, while Microsoft 365 is a suite of apps that includes Outlook email, as well as several other products (including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more).

The primary difference between Exchange and Microsoft 365 is that Exchange is an on-premise, hosted solution while Microsoft 365 is fully cloud-based.‌

With Exchange, you’re responsible for hosting your own email servers. On the plus side, this means you have total control over your email settings as well as server software and hardware. You also have complete authority over data backups and system updates. You can even integrate Exchange with other on-premise business applications.

Microsoft 365, on the other hand, receives regular updates, equipping you with all the latest features and capabilities with no extra work on your part. Moving to the cloud also reduces costs associated with hosting and managing your own email servers. The downside is that you have less control over the data, and it is difficult to integrate Microsoft 365 with on-premise software. For many companies today, however, the flexibility of a cloud-based solution is often worth the drawbacks.‌

To enable Exchange/Microsoft 365 Calendar sync:

• Click your User Profile Icon on the Navigation bar and select the Integrations option.‌

Select Microsoft 365 or Exchange and scroll down to Calendar Sync. 

Accelo Microsoft 365 Calendar Sync Settings

‌The Exchange integration will sync the following calendar events:

• Meetings created in Accelo - Meetings created in Accelo will be pushed into your Outlook calendar. 
• Outlook Meetings - Any meeting created in your Outlook calendar will be pulled into your Accelo schedule.  These meetings will be displayed as either team-visible Meetings or private External Events, based on the attendees.

Outlook Appointments - Any appointments with multiple attendees created from your Outlook calendar will be pulled into your Accelo schedule. Appointments that do not include other attendees (such as time you've blocked out for lunch) will not be synced.  Synced appointments will be displayed as either team-visible Meetings or private External Events based on the attendees involved.

• NOTE: Marking a calendar event as Private in Outlook will cause Accelo to ignore the event during the sync.

Check out this page to learn more about how you can integrate Accelo with Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft 365.

How Do I Sync My Microsoft 365 or Exchange Calendar with my iPhone?

Accelo empowers you to manage your business anywhere, anytime — and that means on your phone too! Accelo's integration capabilities, including calendar sync, extend to our mobile application, where you can access your calendar and all of your synchronized events no matter where you are.‌

Can I Sync My Accelo Calendar with Google Calendar?

Yes, you absolutely can!

Accelo enables you to integrate your Google email account and sync your Google Calendar meetings, appointments, and tasks. You have the option to push Accelo events to your Google calendar, pull Google Calendar events into Accelo, or both. ‌

The two options related to Calendar Sync are:

• Meetings (or scheduled activities) that you have created in Accelo will be pushed into your Google calendar. Changes made in Google Calendar are also pulled back into Accelo.
• Events created from your Google calendar will be pulled into your Accelo schedule as appointments.‌

Once your Exchange events have been pulled into Accelo, they can be pushed to Google Calendar as well. In the same vein, you can pull from Google Calendar into Accelo and then push those events into Exchange.

Visit this page to learn more about how you can integrate Accelo with Google Workspace.

Conclusion

Calendar sync is an essential feature for any service company with a jam-packed schedule. It allows you to:

• Stay up to date on meetings and appointments across all of your calendars
• Manage staff availability
• Harness capabilities from all of your favorite tools

Accelo's calendar integration allows you to use your favorite calendars across desktop and mobile while seamlessly syncing them up with Accelo's powerful scheduling tools. We support full, bi-directional sync so that the appointments you schedule in Exchange show up in Accelo, while the ones you create in Accelo appear on your Exchange and Outlook calendars.

‌Accelo provides a rich scheduling solution with a strong array of integration capabilities. However, we offer so much more than just scheduling!

‌Our cloud-based client work management platform comes with several tools and resources that can help your company manage client operations, including sales, quotes, projects, tickets, retainers, timesheets, billing, and scheduling — all from a single, centralized place. You'll be impressed by how quickly and easily Accelo integrates with the tools and technologies your team already uses.‌

Interested in taking your productivity, profitability, and company communications to the next level? Sign up for a free trial of Accelo today!