Guide
Connect your own calendar
Connect a Google or Microsoft account, and choose exactly which of its calendars WorkWiser reads.
Before you start
- No admin role needed. A calendar connection belongs to you, so every member can connect their own.
- Find it under your avatar at the bottom of the sidebar, then Calendar. On a phone, open the menu first.
- You need to be able to sign in to the Google or Microsoft account you want to bring across.
Connect an account
Open your calendar settings
Click your avatar at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Calendar.
Choose Google or Microsoft
Click Connect Google or Connect Microsoft. You are taken to the provider to sign in.
Grant access
Sign in and allow WorkWiser to read your calendar. You come back to WorkWiser and the account appears with its calendars listed underneath it.
Connecting on its own syncs nothing
A new account arrives with every calendar switched off, on purpose. WorkWiser reads no events at all until you turn one on, so connecting can never bring across more than you meant to. The screen says so under each account until at least one calendar is on.
Choose which calendars sync
Open the account
Each connected account lists its calendars, and the line above them counts how many are syncing.
Turn on the ones you want
Flip the switch beside a calendar. WorkWiser starts reading it on the next sync, and you can turn it off again whenever you like.
Leave the rest off
Holidays, birthdays and every shared team calendar usually add noise rather than signal. Nothing makes you take a whole account.
Choose what WorkWiser stores, and what your team sees
Store times only
Under each calendar you have switched on, there are two more switches. The first one, Store times only, stops WorkWiser keeping the title, the location, the join link and the organiser of anything on that calendar. You still see when you are busy, and the block reads simply Busy.
This is the setting for a personal calendar you want on screen without its contents. It is per calendar, so you can leave your work calendar readable and hold a private one back.
Let colleagues see when you are busy
The second switch shares that calendar’s busy times with everyone in your organization. They appear on their Day and Week views as plain grey blocks behind their own work. Nobody ever sees a title, a location, a join link or who you are meeting, whichever way the first switch is set.
It is off to start with, on every calendar, and turning it off again removes your blocks from their calendars straight away.
Store times only clears what is already stored
Turning it on does not only change what happens next. It also wipes the titles, locations, join links and organisers WorkWiser had already copied from that calendar, because a switch that only applied to future syncs would leave a meeting you synced last week readable forever.
That cannot be undone from inside WorkWiser: those details are not stored anywhere else here. Turning the switch off again makes WorkWiser read the whole window afresh, and anything still on your Google or Microsoft calendar comes back with it.
Keep it current
Sync now
WorkWiser reads your chosen calendars for you every few minutes. Sync now, at the top of the screen, asks for your events straight away. It appears once at least one calendar is switched on, and it asks every account you have connected at the same time.
Refresh calendar list
This is the other one, and it does something different: it re-reads the list of calendars in an account. Use it after you create or delete a calendar over at Google or Microsoft. You will find it in that account’s own menu, next to Reconnect and Disconnect.
Reconnect
If an account ever says it needs attention, open its menu and choose Reconnect. That happens when the provider withdraws our access, usually after a password change.
Turn a meeting into logged time
Open a meeting on Day or Week
Your synced meetings show on every view, and Day and Week place them at the hour they happen. Those two are the ones that open a panel: click a meeting for what it is, plus Join and Copy link when it carries a video link.
Choose Log this meeting
The Log Time drawer opens with the day, the start and the end already filled in from the meeting itself, and the meeting title in the notes.
Say what it was for, and save
The project, and the deliverable or time category, are left blank on purpose. WorkWiser never guesses which piece of work a meeting belongs to, and nothing is logged until you press Log Time.
What it fills in, and what it leaves to you
The times come from the meeting as it sits on the day you clicked. A meeting that runs past midnight is two blocks on your calendar, one on each day, so you log the part you opened.
An all day event carries no times at all, so only its date comes across and the drawer offers its usual one hour block for you to correct.
A calendar set to store times only has no title to bring, so the notes start empty. The time is still real, and it still fills in.
On a block WorkWiser put on your calendar itself, the action reads Log this time instead. That block is time you set aside here, not somebody else’s meeting, and it works exactly the same way.
You will find it on Day and Week, because those are the two views that open a meeting panel. Month and List show your meetings as well, and clicking one there takes you to that day.
It needs permission to log your own time. Almost everyone has it; if yours has been turned off, the action does not appear.
Send your work the other way
The second section on the same screen
Everything above is about what WorkWiser reads from you. Under it there is Put your work on your calendar, which is the opposite direction: your deadlines, and the time you set aside for them, appearing in your Google or Outlook calendar.
It writes to one calendar of its own, and nowhere else
WorkWiser creates a separate calendar called WorkWiser inside the account you choose. That is the only place it ever writes. Your existing calendars are still read only, exactly as before.
It is off until you ask for it, and the full walkthrough is in Add your work to your calendar. Once it is on, the changes you make to those entries over in Google or Outlook come back here too.
Good to know
A connected calendar is yours alone, and stays that way unless you choose otherwise. Nobody else in your organization sees it, not even an admin, until you turn on Let colleagues see when you are busy for one of its calendars. Even then all they get is the times.
Disconnecting an account deletes everything WorkWiser copied from it, along with your choice of calendars. Your calendar over at Google or Microsoft is never touched, and you can connect it again at any time.
WorkWiser only reads your own calendars. The one thing it ever writes to is a calendar called WorkWiser that it creates for you, and only if you ask it to. It never creates, edits or deletes anything in the calendars you already had.
The WorkWiser calendar is not offered in the list above, and it needs no switch of its own. It is ours: WorkWiser writes to it, and watches it for the changes you make there. Listing it as another calendar to read would only show you everything twice.
Meetings you declined are left out. The ones you accepted, and the ones you have not answered yet, come across.
Related
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.