What is Groove real time calendar sync?

Groove allows you to sync your Google calendar events to Salesforce and Salesforce events to Google calendar, regardless of the device you are using. Unlike any other solution Groove syncs events in real time within seconds.

The response status of each invitee will be kept up to date in real time, which means you can see and log who accepted, declined the invitation. Also, Groove's heuristic and self learning algorithms will automatically infer related opportunities, cases and accounts based on the list of invitees. You can override and teach Groove's algorithms by using the Chrome extension "Groove for Gmail" in conjunction with Groove real time calendar sync.

It is also possible to control on a org/profile/user level whether only CRM relevant events shall be synced or really every event that is not private.

Which events are synced?

Groove allows you to control which events are synced on various levels in order to maximize data quality and accuracy.

1. A Google event that is marked as private is not synced to Salesforce. If an existing Google event is retroactively marked as private is hard deleted from Salesforce for privacy reasons.

2. If you activate the option Only sync CRM related Google events, Groove will only sync the Google events to Salesforce if at least one of the invitees is a user, contact or lead in Salesforce.

3. When Groove syncs events from Google to Salesforce, it analyses the list of invitees and tries to find Salesforce users, contacts and leads (by email address) in order to add their Salesforce records as invitees. If you activate the option Add only Groove Users as Invitees Groove will include only users that have a Groove license (rather than any users). Contacts and leads will be added regardless.

4. If you activate the option Always Mirror Events in Google Calendar, Groove will always sync Salesforce events to the Google calendar of the owner of the event in Salesforce.

5. If you wish to let users decide whether or not a Salesforce event shall be synced to the Google calendar of the owner of the event, uncheck the option Always Mirror Events in Google Calendar and add the checkbox field Mirror in Owner's Calendar to the page layout of the event page. Note that this only works if the owner has created a Groove account and activated calendar sync (see above).

6. Syncing recurring events is fully supported (see compatibility limitations below).

Other Rules and Limitations

1. Google events that last longer than 14 days cannot be synced to Salesforce. This is a Salesforce limitation of the event object.

2. After a Google event was synced to Salesforce, any updates on the Salesforce event within the next 30 seconds are not synced back from Google to Salesforce.

3. If a Google event is created where the time zone of the start-time and end-time are not equal (rare), the event in Salesforce will have set the start-date and and end-date in the same timezone.

4. Note that recurring events in Salesforce have several limitations that affect how Groove is able to sync recurring events:A recurring event that lasts longer than 1 day will be converted to a 1 day event when synced from Google to Salesforce.In Salesforce the number of instances of a recurring series is limited (Daily: 100; Weekly: 53; Monthly: 60; Yearly: 10). When an event is synced from Google to Salesforce and the end date of the recurring series is beyond that limit, Groove will set the end date of the recurring series respectively in Salesforce.

5. Groove does not support reoccurring calendar events by occurrences due to limitations imposed by Google Calendar.

How to enable real time calendar sync?

For Admins

1. From setup click Develop | Custom Settings

2. Click on Manage next to Groove Settings

3. On an org level/profile level/user activate the checkbox Allow Background Calendar Sync

4. Depending on your sync preferences activate the checkbox Only sync CRM related Google events (read more below). Activating this option is recommended.

5. Depending on your sync preferences activate the checkbox "Always Mirror Events in Google Calendar" (read more below)

6. Hit Save

These steps enable calendar sync from Google to Salesforce. If you want to enable bidirectional sync (Salesforce to Google) complete these extra steps.

Enabling Salesforce to Google Sync

1. From setup click  Security Controls | Remote Site Settings in the left menu

2. From the list select the Groove Remote site.

3. Check the box for "Active." Make sure the values look like they do below with https://app.grooveapp.com being the remote site url and click save.