Guide
Add your work to your calendar
Have your deadlines, and the time you set aside for them, show up in your own Google or Outlook calendar.
Before you start
- A connected Google or Microsoft account. Connect one first if you have not.
- No admin role needed. This is your calendar and your choice.
- WorkWiser creates a separate calendar, called WorkWiser, inside your account. It never writes to the calendars you already had.
Turn it on
Open your calendar settings
Click your avatar at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Calendar. The second section is Put your work on your calendar.
Choose one account
If you have connected more than one, pick the one you actually live in. It is one account on purpose: your work goes to a single calendar, so a deadline can never turn up twice.
Add your work
Press the button. WorkWiser creates the calendar inside that account and starts putting your work in it. It appears in Google or Outlook within a few seconds, alongside your own calendars.
Google asks for one more permission, once
If you connected your Google account before this existed, the first attempt stops and asks you to reconnect. That is expected, and it is not a fault: Google fixes what an app may do at the moment you connect it, so the extra permission can only be granted at a fresh sign in.
Press Reconnect on that message, approve the extra line about calendars WorkWiser creates for you, and come back. Nothing about your existing calendars changes, and you only do it once. Microsoft accounts need none of this.
Choose what goes across on its own
Three kinds of work, three choices
Once it is on you get a row each for Deliverables, To-dos and Reminders. Each row is either Add automatically or Ask me first.
Add automatically
Anything of that kind with a date goes across without asking, and keeps up afterwards: move the date and the entry moves with it.
Ask me first
Nothing of that kind goes across until you say so on the item itself. All three start here, so turning the feature on never empties WorkWiser into your calendar behind your back.
Add one item, or block out time for it
On my calendar
Open a to-do from Calendar, or a deliverable from its project. Beside its due date there is On my calendar. Flip it on and that one item goes across, whatever the setting for its kind says.
Answering Ask me first
On a kind set to Ask me first, a quiet line appears on the item itself: Add this to your calendar? Answer Add or Not this one. It is asked on the item and never as a pop up while you are saving something.
Block out time to do it
Under the switch there is Block out time to do it. Give it a day and a start and end time, and you get a second entry: the time you actually plan to spend, on top of the deadline itself.
A deadline and blocked out time are two different things
A due date with no time is a fact about a day, so it goes across as an all day entry that does not mark you busy. Every deadline you have would otherwise make you look unavailable for a whole day, to yourself and to anyone checking when you are free.
Time you block out is the opposite. It is time you have set aside, so it goes across as an ordinary busy entry and defends itself against being double booked.
It follows the work
Change a due date and the entry moves. Clear the date and it disappears. Finish or archive the item and both the deadline and the time you blocked out go with it.
It runs both ways. Drag one of these entries inside Google or Outlook and WorkWiser follows you: the deadline moves, or the time you blocked out moves, and deleting one takes the item off your calendar without touching the work. Change your work from your calendar has the detail.
Turn it off, or use a different account
Turn it off
The same section has Turn it off. WorkWiser removes what it put in the WorkWiser calendar and stops adding anything new. Your to-dos, deliverables and reminders are untouched, and the meetings WorkWiser reads from you keep syncing exactly as before.
If Google or Outlook cannot be reached
It still turns off. A few entries may stay behind in the WorkWiser calendar, and you can delete them there, or delete the whole calendar. Nothing else in your account is affected.
Moving to another account
Turn it off on the account you are using, then set it up on the other one. Going through Turn it off is what clears the first account out, so nothing is left behind in it.
Good to know
Only you see any of this. The WorkWiser calendar lives in your own account, and nobody in your organization can read it, not even an admin.
Changes to the three settings reach your calendar within a few minutes rather than instantly. Turning a kind back to Ask me first also takes away what that setting had added, while the items you switched on yourself stay.
Roughly the coming year is covered, along with the past month. A deadline three years out is noise, and one from two years ago is history.
Blocking out time needs a connected calendar, because the blocked out time lives in that calendar rather than in WorkWiser.
Ready to see it on your own work?
WorkWiser is in early access. Tell us where to reach you and we will send an invite when it is your turn.