Navigate Staff: How do I sync my Google calendar to Navigate?

For Carthage Faculty and Staff


Answer

Navigate: Syncing Your Google Calendar 

Objective: Calendar sync is a way to make sure Navigate appointments are shown on your professional calendar and constraints on your professional calendar are reflected in the Navigate platform. Syncing your calendar to the Navigate platform allows appointments to flow between your Navigate calendar and professional calendar, blocking off that time and preventing double booking. 

Warning! Only sync your calendar in the live platform and not in your training platform. Sync only one professional calendar with Navigate.

  1. From your Staff home screen, go to the Calendar icon on the left-hand menu
  2. Click the Settings & Sync button on the far right.
  3. Click Setup Sync.
  4. Select Google Calendar
  5. Select Calendar for Two-Way Sync or Free/Busy Sync 
    • Select Calendar for Two-Way Sync (Highly Recommended Option): All calendar items sync back and forth between your Navigate calendar and your professional calendar (i.e., Navigate calendar ↔ professional calendar). Events from your professional calendar will display as Busy in your Navigate calendar. Limited details from Navigate will display in your professional calendar.
    • Select Calendar for Free/Busy Sync: Choose this option if you only want events from your professional calendar to display as Busy on your Navigate calendar (i.e., professional calendar ↔ Navigate calendar).
  6. Click Save. It may take a few minutes to fully sync your calendar.
  7. Note: Events synced are limited to 3 months in the past and 6 months in the future. You may notice that the events sync until Google stops them (approximately two years).
  8. Only items marked as Busy or Tentative will show on your Navigate calendar. Events labeled as Free will not sync to Navigate. 
    • If you typically mark your office hours or available appointment times as “busy” on your Google Calendar, those will need to change to “free.” If they remain as “busy” when you set your availability to meet with students, Navigate will block those times as unavailable.

Troubleshooting

  1. Make sure you have followed the steps to sync your calendar. Visit The Navigate Help Center article, Syncing Your Google Calendar to Navigate
  2. Only sync one calendar at a time.
  3. Only sync your calendar with the live/production site. Syncing with both the production site and training site may cause errors.
  4. Make sure your name or email has not changed
  5. Check the type of appointment

a. Calendars will only sync Busy times from your professional calendar. Tentative appointments may not show as busy in Navigate. Any calendar appointment that is marked as ‘Free’ or ‘Private’ will not sync over.

b. Most all-day events default to "free" in calendars. You will need to mark those busy to avoid having those days appear available to appointments in Navigate. In the opposite case, all-day free appointments with no end day might sync as busy – should that occur, include an end date in your appointments for them to sync as free time in your Navigate platform.

c. There are a couple of conditions that may prevent a long-running recurring appointment from fully syncing (whether it has no end date or distant end date or distant start date)

i. We only sync events up to one year in the future. If a recurring event stretches beyond that, instances that occur after one year won't get synced i

ii. If a recurring event has more than 750 instances, we may not reliably sync all occurrences of the event. Our normal sync process only examines the first 750 instances in a recurring series. If all 750 instances occur before the sync window (-3 months in the past/+12 months in the future), this would result in no instances getting synced. Depending on exactly when the event was created and how often it occurs, we may see a situation where some instances of the recurring event are synced and others are not (this may happen if the 750th event occurs in the middle of the sync window).

 iii. There is a catch-up process that regularly syncs Exchange events that were created outside the future 12-month window initially, but have moved within the window as time has advanced. This process is not constrained by the 750 instance limit, which is why the user may be seeing examples of some instances of a recurring event that would seemingly violate the 750 instance limit.

  1. Retry Sync lets users reconnect to the Navigate servers if calendars are not syncing.
  2. Disconnect Sync lets a user disconnect their personal calendar from Navigate. Users might do this if they leave the institution or have changed their email address. Disconnecting your calendar takes about 30 minutes to finish so your user may still see Navigate items on their calendar for a short time.

Related Navigate Help Center Articles (requires logging into Navigate): Tips for Syncing Your Calendar, My Calendar Isn’t Syncing Correctly

 

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  • Last Updated Mar 01, 2023
  • Views 1138
  • Answered By Autumn McCune

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