Import Outlook Calendar into Smartsheet

Paul Newcome
Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭
edited 12/09/19 in Smartsheet Basics

I was wondering if this is possible yet, or if there have been any updates?

 

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/how-import-outlook-calendar-smartsheet

 

Importing from Smartsheet into Outlook is nice, but I would love to have a 2-way possibility. I have a lot of projects going on all at once, trying to keep up with both calendars for all of my projects at the same time can get to be a hassle.

Comments

  • Hello Paul,

    There currently isn't a two-way sync between Smartsheet and Outlook such that you could add rows to Smartsheet from an Outlook calendar.

    When you have a moment, please submit a product enhancement request using the form under Quick links on the right of the community site to let our Product team know that you'd like to see this functionality added to a future version of Smartsheet.

  • bkw1962
    bkw1962 ✭✭✭

    Sad. It's 2020 and still not done.

  • Taylor Ray
    Taylor Ray ✭✭✭

    I'm in the process of implementing smartsheets for our company. I desperately need to farm outlook calendars for existing appointments and meetings in order to combine with tasks created and assigned in smartsheets to have an accurate idea of availability. Not having outlook calendar appointments included means that we don't have the full picture of availability. Manually entering every outlook event into smartsheets is not viable. This seems like it should be a feature, people have been asking for years. This is not the only related thread. Seems back assward that we can change smartsheets from inside outlook, but we can't even read outlook data and incorporate it.

    Please advise! is this under development?

    Worst case scenario, exporting outlook calendar as .csv and importing to smartsheets looks doable. https://www.howtogeek.com/665358/how-to-export-an-outlook-calendar-as-a-csv-file/

    of course every time you update the calendar, you have to manually re-export and re-import. This is the kind of nonsense we were hoping to get away from by implementing smartsheets.


    Thank you,

  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @That Guy@Taylor Ray Exporting your Outlook calendar to .csv then importing to Smartsheet should only have to happen once so long as updates are made in SS and not in Outlook. If someone updates something directly in Outlook then yes. It will have to be double entry into SS, but once you have the calendar in SS, if you update in SS then it should be automatically pushed to Outlook.

  • Taylor Ray
    Taylor Ray ✭✭✭

    I know that, I need the reverse. Meetings come in thru outlook, need to get pushed to smartsheets.

  • Andrée Starå
    Andrée Starå ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Hi @Taylor Ray

    I hope you're well and safe!

    One solution could be to use a 3rd party service like Zapier or similar to connect Smartsheet and Outlook.

    Is that an option?

    I hope that helps!

    Be safe and have a fantastic week!

    Best,

    Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

    Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

    SMARTSHEET EXPERT CONSULTANT & PARTNER

    Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

    W: www.workbold.com | E:andree@workbold.com | P: +46 (0) - 72 - 510 99 35

    Feel free to contact me for help with Smartsheet, integrations, general workflow advice, or anything else.

  • Taylor Ray
    Taylor Ray ✭✭✭

    I appreciate your attention Andree (sorry no accents on my keyboard). We are having our IT group look into a novel solution via API. Zapier is a good suggestion, but obviously an additional cost. I'll keep it in mind as a plan B.

  • Andrée Starå
    Andrée Starå ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @Taylor Ray

    Excellent!

    Happy to help!

    Remember! Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

    SMARTSHEET EXPERT CONSULTANT & PARTNER

    Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

    W: www.workbold.com | E:andree@workbold.com | P: +46 (0) - 72 - 510 99 35

    Feel free to contact me for help with Smartsheet, integrations, general workflow advice, or anything else.

  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @That Guy

    1. If by "RFE" you are referring to product enhancement requests... You can view your own by checking the box on the form to have a copy of the submission emailed to you. Not making them or the roadmap public is a way of securing against competitors which makes sense to me. Yes... The request has been around for a while, but so have others that have been addressed, not to mention the fact that we don't know the number of submissions for each "enhancement". For example, this one could only have 10 over the course of 2 years, but another has 50 in just a few months (again that is just an example). Based on that I would say the other one would be more of a priority to a larger group of customers.
    2. Yes. People pay for Smartsheet to take advantage of efficiencies created by integrations, but no one ever said that the Smartsheet platform was perfect for everything or that it could do everything. If I am buying something with a use case in mind, I am going to ensure that I research whether or not that something has the feature(s) I need. If I come across a use case later on where I need a different feature only to find out that it isn't available on that something that I bought, I can't hold it against that something as I was never sold on it based on that feature. Now... If I was misinformed or lied to and told that it did have that feature then found out later it did not, then that would be a different story, but the blame would still not fall on that something. The blame would fall on the salesman who lied and quite possibly even some on myself for not doing better research before purchasing.
    3. If you compare the past couple of years of posts here in the Community to the features released these past couple of years, you will find that a lot of the releases take care of issues regularly brought up here in the Community.


    So yes. This one single feature has been requested for quite some time now, but without knowing what other features are being requested and on what scale, we can't presume to know what the majority of Smartsheet's customer base really wants.


    I mean let's take a look at this thread... I posted this then almost a year and a half later someone else (aside from SS employees) chimes in with a post that honestly didn't provide a lot of value. It was just a single, very basic complaint. Then it goes dormant for more than a year again before your complaint. Then another month and a half later one more complaint.


    So looking at timeline:


    Complaint

    1 year 4 months

    Complaint

    1 year 3 months

    Complaint

    1.5 months

    Complaint


    That's 4 complaints in almost 3 years with more than a year in between most of them. Based on your suggestion of looking at the Community for what the customer really wants, I would say this is a pretty low priority to the overall customer base. Granted there may be other threads for this very same thing floating around, but I am on here quite a bit and really haven't seen it much at all as compared to other requests (some of which have been resolved).

  • Manu Ed
    Manu Ed ✭✭

    Hi Paul, i read your interesting comment, but, sorry, lots of user do not make a complaint for it, in my case, i really need this feature, as it make sense to create meeting in outlook and have a sync in Smartsheet and i do not open à request. So i think those 3 complaints are not really representative ...

    Many thanks.

  • Paul Newcome
    Paul Newcome ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @Manu Ed It looks like the comment I was responding to has been deleted. I agree that looking at the complaints I mentioned is not really representative of the actual customer's wants and needs, but I was responding to a comment that basically said update request forms were useless and that Smartsheet needed to look at the Community to find out what it really wants.

    My comment was pointing out that if Smartsheet looks at the community then this particular feature does not seem very important to the customer base as a whole.

    I do wish the comment I had responded to wasn't deleted as it does provide more context for why I said what I did.


    Having said that... If there is a feature you would like to see then I strongly recommend submitting a product enhancement request form. Yes... You can post it here and hope that some Smartsheet employee happens to stumble across it tucked in amongst the hundred of new threads and comments. But submitting the request form will definitely add your "vote" to whatever feature(s) you are requesting.