Sync your Google or Outlook calendar

You will connect your Google or Outlook calendars, see your real working day in Uku, and turn meetings into tasks.

• Every member can connect their own calendars. No admin rights are needed.
• Calendar sync is included in the Team, Elite, Elite Early Bird and Enterprise plans, and in the free trial.
• Your meeting titles are visible only to you. Colleagues see your meetings as Busy.

Calendar sync shows the meetings from your Google or Outlook calendar inside Uku. You see your meetings and your tasks for each day in one place, so a full day no longer looks free.

• The sync goes one way. Uku reads your calendar and never changes it.
• Uku shows meetings from 7 days back to 28 days ahead. Last week’s meetings stay visible, so you can still turn them into tasks.
• Meetings with a start and end time appear. All-day events, cancelled meetings and events marked as free do not appear.
• Repeating meetings appear on every day they happen.
• A meeting that is in two of your calendars appears once.

You connect a Google calendar with its private link, called the secret address. You copy the link from Google Calendar once, and Uku keeps your meetings up to date from then on.

Path: Calendar → gear next to + Meeting → Add calendar → Google

1. Click Get the link from Google Calendar to see the steps in Uku.
2. Open Google Calendar settings.
3. In the left sidebar, under Settings for my calendars, click your calendar.
4. Scroll to Integrate calendar and copy Secret address in iCal format.
5. Back in Uku, paste the link into Calendar link.
6. Enter a Name, for example Work calendar.
7. Click Save. Uku shows Getting your meetings…, and your meetings appear in about 1 minute.

You connect an Outlook calendar by publishing it in Outlook on the web and copying its ICS link. The steps are the same for work or school accounts and for personal Microsoft accounts.

Path: Calendar → gear next to + Meeting → Add calendar → Microsoft (Outlook)

1. Click Get the link from Outlook to see the steps in Uku.
2. Open Outlook on the web: work or school account or personal account.
3. Click Settings, then Shared calendars.
4. Under Publish a calendar, choose your calendar and Can view all details, then click Publish.
5. Copy the ICS link.
6. Back in Uku, paste the link into Calendar link.
7. Enter a Name, for example Outlook work.
8. Click Save. Your meetings appear in about 1 minute.

Choose Can view all details so you see your meeting titles in Uku. Can view when I’m busy also works, but every meeting then shows as Busy, without a title.

The calendar link works like a password. Anyone who has the link can read your calendar. Uku stores the link encrypted and never shows it again after you save it. Do not send the link to anyone or paste it anywhere else.

You can connect up to 3 calendars, for example your work Outlook calendar and a Google calendar. Each calendar gets its own name.

1. Open the Connect calendar window with the gear next to + Meeting.
2. Click Add calendar and follow the steps for Google or Outlook.

If you work in more than one Uku company, Uku asks which Company the calendar belongs to. Each company allows 3 calendars. Colleagues see your meetings as Busy only in that company.

To rename a calendar, click Rename next to it in the Connect calendar window. The name changes, and your meetings stay. The link itself cannot be changed. To use a new link, remove the calendar and add it again.

Add a meeting by hand when it is not in a connected calendar, for example a client visit you agreed by phone. A meeting you add by hand counts in your day like a synced meeting.

Path: Calendar → + Meeting

1. Click + Meeting in the left sidebar.
2. Enter a Title.
3. Choose the Date, and set From and To.
4. Click Save. The meeting appears on that day in the Calendar and the Planner.

To change or delete the meeting, click it, then click Edit. A meeting you add by hand cannot repeat and cannot last all day.

Your meetings appear at the top of each day, above your tasks, in time order. You see them in the Calendar and in the Planner on the Dashboard. You connect and manage calendars only on the Calendar page.

Point to the time figures at the top of a day to see how your day adds up:

• Tracked time — the time you have logged for the day.
• Expected — the hours you are expected to work that day.
• Estimation — the estimated time of the day’s tasks.
• Meetings — the time in meetings. Overlapping meetings count once.
• Available — the time left: Expected minus the task estimates and the meetings. Available never goes below zero.

Meetings and Available appear when the Calendar shows one person. Available appears only on your own calendar, because it uses your own expected hours.

Click a meeting to open its details. You see the title, the day and the time, and the meeting description.

• Join with Google Meet or Join Microsoft Teams opens the online meeting.
• Open in Google Calendar or Open in Outlook opens the meeting in your own calendar.
• Only you see the details of your meetings.

Turn a meeting into a task to log the work it was for. Uku fills in the time for you, so you do not type the meeting again.

1. Click the meeting.
2. Click + (Create task). The task window opens.
3. Check the filled-in fields. The start is the meeting start, the due date is the meeting end, and the estimate is the meeting length.
4. Choose the client and finish the task.
5. Click Save.

If the meeting has already ended, Uku also adds a time entry for the meeting length. Uku does not log time for a meeting that has not happened yet. On a phone, Uku fills in the estimate only, without the time entry. After you save, the meeting shows Logged and an Open task link.

Uku checks your calendars on its own and updates your meetings. The times follow your own time zone.

• Monday to Friday, 08:00–18:00: about every hour. When nothing changes, Uku checks less often, up to every 4 hours.
• Monday to Friday evenings until 22:00: every 2 hours.
• At night: once.
• At weekends: every 12 hours.
• If you have not opened the Calendar or the Planner for 14 days: once a day.

When you open the Calendar or the Planner and your meetings are more than 4 hours old, Uku updates them. To update now, open the Connect calendar window and click Sync now. Your meetings update in about 1 minute. You can click Sync now once every 5 minutes.

During the free trial, Uku does not update your meetings on its own. Click Sync now whenever you want the latest meetings.

Remove a calendar when you no longer want its meetings in Uku. Your Google or Outlook calendar itself does not change.

1. Open the Connect calendar window with the gear next to + Meeting.
2. Click Remove next to the calendar.
3. Click Remove to confirm. The calendar’s meetings disappear from your Calendar and Planner.

Tasks you created from those meetings stay.

Copy the link again from Google Calendar or Outlook and paste it exactly as copied. Uku accepts only the private links of Google and Microsoft calendars. Links from other calendar services do not work.

Open the Connect calendar window. The calendar with a red dot shows Link no longer works. The link was reset or unpublished in Google or Outlook. Remove the calendar, copy the new link, and add the calendar again.

Click Sync now in the Connect calendar window and wait about 1 minute. If the change still does not appear, wait a while and click Sync now again. Google or Outlook may need time to update the private link.

In Outlook, the calendar was published with Can view when I’m busy. Publish the calendar with Can view all details and copy its ICS link. Then remove the calendar in Uku and add it again with that link.

Calendar sync is not switched on for your company. Contact Uku support and ask for calendar sync to be switched on.