You can connect Method to a new Google Calendar in your Google account. Appointments and meetings will sync back and forth between your Method calendar and your Google Calendar.

In this article, we will look at:

Setting up Google Calendar in Method

In Method, click preferences icon in the upper right, and then select Integrations.
On the integrations page, scroll down until you find Google Calendar. Click it.
This will take you to the below screen, where you can access a number of settings as well as see your connection status.
Click Connect to Google Calendar and sign in.
Now, when you go to your Google account, you’ll see a new calendar has been created with the default name of "User Name : Company Account".

NOTE: Do NOT rename the calendar, this will break the sync.

Google Calendar Settings

The Google Calendar Settings page allows you to

See the connection status, and either connect or disconnect.
Adjust the default status or type for calendar events.
View the last time a sync occurred, and manually start a sync.

To access the settings for your Google Calendar:

In Method, click preferences icon in the upper right, and then select Integrations.
On the integrations page, scroll down until you find Google Calendar. Click it.
This will take you to the below screen, where you can access a number of settings as well as see your connection status.

Set Calendar Default Settings

Access the settings for your Google Calendar in Method as shown above.
Scroll down and click View calendar default settings.
On this screen, you will be able set the defaults for Google Calendar events:
1. Cancelled status
2. Pending status
3. Completed status
4. Appointment type

Disconnect Google Calendar from Method

To disconnect your Google Calendar from Method:CRM:

As outlined above, navigate to your Google Calendar setttings.
Scroll down and click the Disconnect from Google Calendar button.

Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT GETS SYNCED?

Activities (and also Work Orders) sync with Google Calendar, however, they have to be:

Scheduled one week ago and later.
Scheduled before six months in the future.
Not assigned to a 'Cancelled' Activity Status category.
Assigned to an Activity Type with the 'IsOnCalendar' option 'Yes'.

NOTE: Only Method's Activity table is synced with Google Calendar.

WHEN DOES THE SYNC OCCUR?

Syncs happen in the following ways:

Every 20 minutes a sync is triggered automatically.
When the Sync now link in the Google Calendar Preferences is clicked.

WHY IS A NEW GOOGLE CALENDAR CREATED?

Method:CRM's Google Calendar integration will create a new calendar instead of syncing with your default Google Calendar. This is a standard practice, and offers the following benefits:

You can easily share the calendar with other users without sharing all your non-Method:CRM appointments.
It gives you a clear way of deciding which appointments should be added from Google to Method:CRM and which ones shouldn't.
It is easier to permanently delete should you not want to sync your appointments anymore.
It is easier to reset for the purpose of troubleshooting.
If you have multiple Method:CRM accounts, there is a clear distinction between which appointments are for which account, since they each get their own Google Calendar.

If a user disconnects their Method:CRM account from Google and re-connects again in the future, the system will retrieve a list of all the calendars from Google and try to find a calendar with the same name as the one it would create in the following format

USERNAME:ACCOUNT_NAME

If a calendar exists, it will be used to sync the events going forward.
If calendar does not exists, then a new calendar will be created.

Any event created/modified/deleted within the timeframe when the Method:CRM account was disconnected from Google will NOT be synced.

If the user does not want to re-use the older calendar, then they would need to manually delete all existing calendars of that name USERNAME:ACCOUNT_NAME.

IS IT BETTER TO ADD OR MODIFY APPOINTMENTS IN GOOGLE OR IN METHOD:CRM?

It is better to create, move and modify appointments in Method:CRM for the following reasons:

Appointments in Method:CRM have more fields, including the customer, contact and activity status.
When an appointment is added in Google, Method:CRM has to guess at the desired status. It treats appointments created for the past as being 'Completed' in Method:CRM, and appointments created for the future as being 'Pending' in Method:CRM.
When an appointment is added in Google, there are no fields to allow for different types. So all appointments created in Google will sync over as Meeting.
When an appointment is moved to a different Google Calendar, it is treated as 'Cancelled' for the original user in Method:CRM, since Google gives Method:CRM no distinction between an appointment that was deleted vs. moved, so we must treat it as cancelled. If the appointment was moved to another user who also has their Google Calendar syncing with Method:CRM, then Method:CRM may be able to detect it and un-cancel the appointment and move it to the right user. If it cannot, then a new appointment will instead be created for that user.

HOW ARE THE APPOINTMENT FIELDS MAPPED?

From Method:CRM to Google where Contact is specified in Method:CRM:

Method:CRM Appointment Type, Contact, Contact Phone → Google Event Title
Method:CRM Ship to / Bill to → Google Event Location
NOTE: Method:CRM will use the Shipping Address if the first line of the Shipping Address is not empty, otherwise it will use the Billing Address. It will then look for the first line of the address that has a numeric value in it, making the assumption that this is the street address, and subsequent lines are city, state, zip and country.
Method:CRM Comments → Google Event Description
Method:CRM Due Date Start, Due Date End → Google Start Date, End Date

From Method:CRM to Google where Contact is not specified:

Method Due Date Start, Due Date End → Google Start Date, End Date

From Google to Method:CRM where Contact is specified in Method:CRM:

Google Event Description → Method:CRM Comments
Google Start Date, End Date → Method:CRM Due Date Start, Due Date End

From Google to Method:CRM on an event where Contact is not specified

Google Event Title, Location, Description → Method:CRM Comments
Google Start Date, End Date → Method:CRM Due Date Start, Due Date End

Note 1: While Method:CRM comments support HTML, Google's comments don't. When an event is modified in Google, it will sync non-HTML comments back, so you may lose some formatting.

Note 2: If you don't want Method:CRM to overwrite your title, location or comments in Google, use * as the first character in the field in Google.