Google Calendar

What it is

Google Calendar is a connection between Joby and one Google account. Once it is switched on, every job that reaches a status you have chosen — and that has a date and time on it — turns into an event on a Google Calendar, by itself, within about a minute.

You set it up in one place: Settings›Connections & AI›Integrations›Google Calendar. The page is titled Google Calendar and carries the line Push scheduled jobs to a Google Calendar — by lead status.

Three things are worth knowing before you go any further:

One Google account is connected per company, not per person. Everyone in the office sees the same events, because they are all on the same Google Calendar.

When to use it

• Your office already lives in Google Calendar and you would rather not ask everybody to check two schedules.
• You want the day's booked work to show up in the calendar app on a phone or tablet, next to everything else.
• Somebody who does not have a Joby login — an owner, a partner, an answering service — needs to see when work is booked. Connect the account, then share that Google calendar with them from Google.
• You want a second, independent copy of the schedule that survives whatever else is going on.

It is not the right tool if you want to book work in Google and have it appear in Joby — nothing travels in that direction. Use Appointments for customers booking themselves in, and the Leads calendar view when you just want to look at the schedule inside Joby.

Before you start

• You need to be an owner or an admin. Connecting, saving the settings and disconnecting are all blocked otherwise — you get a message reading Only an owner or admin can connect Google Calendar.
• Your role needs the Integrations permission. It sits under Settings›Team Roles in the Admin & Settings group, named Integrations. Without it the whole Integrations page is hidden.
• Have the right Google account to hand. Sign in with the account that owns the calendar the office should be looking at. A personal account nobody else can see is the most common regret here.
• The calendar must be one you can edit. The calendar list on this page only offers calendars your Google account has editing rights to. A calendar somebody else shared with you read-only will not appear.
• Your statuses should already exist. The status buttons on this page come straight from Settings›Lead Statuses. If none are set up yet, the page shows No lead statuses found. and there is nothing to tick.
• Check your company timezone. Event times are written using the timezone under Settings›Company Settings›Timezone. If that is wrong, every event lands at the wrong hour.
• Your company may use different words. "Lead" can be renamed for your account, so the wording on the page may read "Job status" or similar rather than "lead status".

Step-by-step

1. Open the page

1. Click Settings in the left menu.
2. Under Connections & AI, click Integrations.
3. Click the Scheduling category button, or type calendar into the search box at the top of the page.
4. Click the Google Calendar tile. Before you have connected it, the tile reads Available with a Connect label; afterwards it reads Connected with a Manage label. Either way it opens the same page.

2. Connect your Google account

1. On the Connect Google Calendar card, click the Connect Google Calendar button.
2. Google takes over. Choose the account you want to use, then allow Joby to manage events on your calendars.
3. You are brought back to the Joby page. A message reads Google Calendar connected, a green Connected badge appears next to the page title, and a card shows Connected: your address@gmail.com.

3. Choose the calendar

1. Under the heading Calendar, open the drop-down. It lists every calendar on that Google account you are allowed to edit, with (primary) after your main one.
2. Pick the calendar the jobs should go on. Joby pre-selects the primary one so the box is never empty.

Many companies make a separate Google calendar first — "Field Schedule", say — so that Joby's events do not mix in with personal appointments. Create it in Google, then come back and pick it here.

4. Choose which statuses sync

1. Under Sync jobs in these statuses you will see a button for each of your statuses.
2. Click a status to switch it on — it turns coloured and gains a tick. Click it again to switch it off.
3. Keep it tight. Statuses that mean "this work is actually happening" (for example Scheduled, Dispatched, In Progress) belong here. Statuses that mean "we are still talking about it" usually do not.

The page explains the rule in one line: Leads in a selected status (with a date/time) get a calendar event. Remove the status and the event is removed.

5. Save

1. Click Save changes at the bottom right of the card.
2. A short Saved message confirms it.

How to check it worked

• The connection itself: the page shows a green Connected badge beside the title and a card reading Connected: followed by the Google address you signed in with. Back on Settings›Integrations, the Google Calendar tile shows a green tick, the word Connected, and a Manage label instead of Connect.
• The settings saved: leave the page and come back. Your calendar and your ticked statuses are still the ones you chose.
• A real job: take one job, give it a start date and time, and put it in a status you ticked. Wait about a minute, refresh Google Calendar, and the event should be sitting on that day with the customer's name on it.
• Removal works too: move that same job to a status you did not tick, or clear its date and time. The event disappears from Google within about a minute. This is the quickest proof that the connection is really live.

Common mistakes

• Expecting it to work both ways. An appointment you type into Google never becomes a job in Joby, and moving an event in Google does not move the job. Treat the Google calendar as a read-only mirror.
• Connecting a personal Google account. Everything then hangs off one person's inbox. Use a shared company account, or share the chosen calendar with the team from inside Google.
• Ticking every status you have. Enquiries that are still being quoted will clutter the calendar and then vanish again as they move along. Pick the two or three statuses that genuinely mean "booked".
• Renaming a status afterwards. This page remembers the statuses by name. If you rename one under Settings›Lead Statuses, come back here, tick the new name and press Save changes again.
• Assuming disconnecting cleans up. It does not. Events already on the Google Calendar stay exactly where they are and have to be deleted in Google by hand.
• Everyone in the office is looking at their own calendar. The events go to one calendar on one Google account. Share that calendar in Google with whoever needs it.