We've built an add-on that takes care of synchronizing your Cobot booking calendar with Google Calendar. It's called Google Calendar Sync. This allows you to embed your Cobot calendar outside of Cobot so visitors can see what's available in your space without signing up for a membership.
Setting up the Integration
The first step is to create a new Google Calendar for each Cobot Resource you wish to sync (one Resource = one calendar on Google). To avoid confusion, it is a good idea to name your Google Calendar the same or similar to your Resource in Cobot.
For example: if the Resource is called 'Meeting Room' in Cobot, name the Google Calendar 'Meeting Room.'
You need a new calendar because all existing bookings in your Google Calendar will be pulled over to Cobot. If you use a personal or internal company shared calendar, all bookings will be pulled over to Cobot.
It is not possible to sync multiple resources to a single Google Calendar. You must have one calendar per resource.
1. Once your Google Calendars are set up, log in to the Admin side of Cobot » Add-ons » Google Calendar Sync » Get Started.
2. Select the Cobot space you wish to connect » 'add calendar'.
3. Log into your Google account to fetch the calendar you wish to sync. You will need to initiate a sync for each Resources/Google calendar.
Make sure you allow all requested tasks after clicking on "Sync Calendar."
Syncing Existing Bookings
After finishing this setup, all of your events (from within the last month) will be brought from the selected Google Calendar into the selected Cobot Resource’s bookings and vice versa.
Any existing events in your Cobot Resource will prevent the addition of the Google Calendar bookings at those times.
Any existing events on your Google Calendar will NOT prevent the addition of resource bookings at those times, so you may see double bookings.
Any recurring bookings in Google will result in the same number of recurring bookings into the future in Cobot. So make sure these have an end date (where applicable) in Google before syncing to Cobot.
Once this synchronization is complete, all new entries and changes will be automatically synced between calendars. Synchronization from Cobot to Google takes a few seconds, and from Google to Cobot, up to 5 minutes.
What Booking Information Is Synced
Any changes or bookings made on your Google Calendar will result in an action or post on your Cobot Dashboard Activity Feed. These will always appear in your activity feed under the administrator who sets up the Google Calendar sync.
Any bookings created in the Google Calendar will appear in the Cobot Calendar without a member or admin attached to them. When making a booking in Cobot, they will appear as they do when leaving the 'Member Name' field blank.
Any information added under the comments section in the Cobot booking will appear in the Notes section of the Google bookings and vice versa.
Once the sync is live and changes to a booking are made, Google will not send out invites/updates about synced bookings to the person or guests on the booking (or anyone).
Recurring Bookings
Once the sync is set up, any new recurring bookings created in the Google calendar will populate in Cobot. Every booking in the series will show in Cobot.
Editing individual events or the entire series within Google will update your corresponding Cobot bookings.
Recurring bookings created within Cobot will only populate the first booking in the series on Google. The rest of the series will not be populated.
Disconnecting the Calendar Sync
Go to Add-ons » Google Calendar Sync » Get Started » Stop Syncing.
You will be presented with an option to delete all synchronized bookings. If you leave it unchecked, all bookings will stay in place.
💡 PRO TIP: Know Whether an Admin or an Automation Made a Booking
Create a special 'bot' gmail account for our Google Calendar integration and give it a creative name, like 'Google Calendar Autobot 🤖'.
Add it as an admin:
Then, login as you normally would (but using the bot account) and set up the Google Calendar Sync Add-on.
Whenever a booking is made, you'll now see the name of the Google Calendar Autobot you just setup:
If you have any questions, or unable to sync your calendar, send us a message to support@cobot.me
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