Before you can synchronize Outlook Calendar with InterAction, you must turn on the appointments option in the InterAction Administrator. This displays the configuration options on the dialog boxes used to configure appointments.
For more information on configuring InterAction appointments, see the following sections:
- Enabling Microsoft Outlook to InterAction Sync for Calendar Items
- Make Activity Types Available for Calendar Items
- Enable Calendar Sync.
- Specify Appointment Settings
Enabling Microsoft Outlook to InterAction Sync for Calendar Items
In InterAction Administrator, you can enable appointments in InterAction. Unlike user contacts however, appointments cannot be enabled for individual user accounts. Also, once appointments are enabled within InterAction, they cannot be disabled. The option automatically becomes inactive. Note though, that if a user’s contact list is not set for synchronization, the user also cannot synchronize calendar items.
Calendar Sync is a one-way synchronization from Outlook to InterAction. By adding appointment information to InterAction, users can easily view appointments based on a particular company or contact, review past meetings, and plan for future ones.
When creating a scheduled process, you must also specify to synchronize calendar items. See Scheduling Microsoft Outlook to InterAction Sync.
Enable Calendar Sync
Prior to enabling calendar synchronization, synchronization with user contact lists must also be enabled. See Enable Microsoft Outlook to InterAction Sync for User Contact Lists.
- Log on to InterAction Administrator.
- On the main window entity list, double-click Activities, Appointments, and Document References.
- Choose Settings.
- Under Appointment Settings, select the Display Appointments in InterAction... check box.
- Specify how long past-dated calendar items continue to synchronize with Outlook. Once an appointment occurs (is in the past), it becomes an activity in InterAction. Synchronization continues to occur for the specified time. For example, any notes added to the calendar item in Outlook after the meeting would be added to the InterAction activity through synchronization.
- Determine if you wish to send an email message to the appointment originator if synchronization issues occur. See What are Synchronization Issues? for more information. You can also specify the email address that the message is sent from. If there is a value specified on the Configuration > Messaging tab, that value is displayed here.
Make Activity Types Available for Calendar Items
For information on creating and editing activity types, see the Configuring InterAction guide.
- Log on to InterAction Administrator.
- On the main window entity list, double-click Activities, Appointments, and Document References.
- Select the Types button.
- Highlight an existing activity type and choose Edit or create a new activity type by choosing New.
- Select Make this activity type available for calendar items.
When adding meetings and appointments to InterAction from Outlook, only the types with this check box selected are available.
Specify Appointment Settings
- Log on to InterAction Administrator.
- From the main window entity list, choose Activities, Appointments, and Document References.
- Choose the Settings button.
- Review your appointment settings and modify accordingly:
Appointment Settings
| Field | Description |
| Default ‘Who can see this’ for activities/appointments |
This value determines the default value for this field when adding an appointment to InterAction from Outlook. The options are:
|
| Default type, unless specified in Outlook, when creating an activity |
This value determines the default appointment type when creating an appointment in Outlook. The options are:
|
| Automatically add each person’s associated company too | When this option is selected, all associated companies in InterAction are included as contacts on the appointment. |
| Only add the contacts the user selected | When this option is selected, only the contacts added to the appointment are included in InterAction. Associated companies for the people are not included. |
| Add all people on the Outlook item to the activity/ appointment | When this option is selected, all contacts that are added to the appointment are included in InterAction. |
| Exclude Our Personnel and Our Consultants from the activity/appointment | When this option is selected, any contacts on the item that are also in the Our Personnel and Our Consultants folder are excluded from the appointment. |
| When viewing a list, display only one row for an activity/ appointment if the number of contacts on it exceeds: | This field lets you specify the threshold after which an activity or appointment with multiple contacts is displayed in a single row. This primarily affects the alert list in the Web Client. |
| Display the check box to make the activity/appointment available to external contacts. | When this check box is selected, the Make available to external contacts check box is available in the InterAction Windows Client and Web Client when creating new activities. |
| Label: Make available to | Enter the text you want displayed on the check box. |
| Display ‘Appointments’ in InterAction and allow configuration of synchronization with Outlook Calendar Items | Select this option to enable calendar synchronization. Note that this is a one-way synchronization from Outlook to InterAction. |
| Synchronize past-dated Outlook Calendar Items for: | Specify how long a past-dated appointment in InterAction (synchronizing activity) continues to synchronize with the applicable Outlook calendar item. |
| If synchronization issues occur, alert the appointment originator via e-mail |
Select this option to send an email to the person that added the appointment into InterAction if a contact on the appointment could not be resolved or a document attachment is excluded from the appointment. See What are Synchronization Issues? for more information. |
| Send e-mail message from: |
Specify the email address that appears in the From line of the email generated due to synchronization issues. If there is a value specified on the Configuration > Messaging tab, that value is displayed here by default. |
| Automatically log appointments when... |
For InterAction for Microsoft Outlook, this setting lets you select which contact types at least one of the attendees on the appointment must have to trigger the automatic logging of the appointment in InterAction. See Configuring InterAction for Microsoft Outlook to Automatically Log Appointments for more information. |
| Select the activity type groups displayed... |
For InterAction for Microsoft Outlook, this setting lets you choose the activity types that display in Interactions and Upcoming Meetings. See Selecting Activity Type Groups for Interactions and Upcoming Meetings for more information. |
What are Synchronization Issues?
You can configure InterAction to send an email to the appointment originator if a synchronization issue occurs on the appointment. To do this, select the If synchronization issues occur, alert the appointment originator via e-mail field in Activities, Appointments, and Document References Settings in InterAction Administrator.
Synchronization issues include the following:
- The synchronization process cannot make an exact match between a contact on the appointment and a contact in InterAction. This may occur if the contact is not found in InterAction or if multiple matches are found.
- A synchronizing appointment is changed to be recurring. When this happens, synchronization is stopped, the appointment is deleted from InterAction, and the alert email is sent.
- A document attachment is excluded from the appointment (if documents are enabled in InterAction Administrator). A document attachment is excluded from the appointment if the file type is in the document exclude list. Your administrator can set up a document exclude list to prevent certain file types from being included in InterAction.
For more information on excluding documents or document linking, see the Configuring InterAction guide.