Calendar and contact synchronization between MS365 and InLoox

Note In order to be able to configure the following settings, you must be an InLoox administrator and Office 365 administrator.

Contact synchronization

With global contact synchronization, all contacts available in the Microsoft 365 tenant are synchronized to InLoox. The stored data such as name, e-mail address, telephone number, etc. are transferred. In InLoox, you can find these contacts in the menu item People.

To set up the global contact synchronization, proceed as follows:

1. In InLoox Web App, click on your profile picture at the bottom left.
2. Click on Account Settings.
3. Click on Integrations.
4. Under Microsoft 365 - Contacts, click on the Connect button on the right.

Info After the initialization of the contact synchronization, the contacts are synchronized daily. Changes to the contacts within Microsoft 365 are therefore also updated in InLoox and always kept up to date.

Calendar synchronization

With the Microsoft 365 calendar synchronization, appointments from the Outlook calendars of fully licensed users (read & write) are taken into account for resource overview and enable a realistic assessment of availability and workload. 

The following data is transferred from the calendars:

• Start, duration & end of the appointment
• Category of the appointment (if assigned)

Not transferred are the title of the event, content/description and other participants.
This means that only the data relevant for the workload is transferred, thus ensuring data security.

To set up the global calendar synchronization, proceed as follows:

1. In InLoox Web App, click on your profile picture at the bottom left.
2. Click on Account Settings.
3. Click on Integrations.
4. Under Microsoft 365 - Calendars, click on the Connect button on the right.

Info After the initialization of the calendar synchronization, the calendars are synchronized regularly, about every 10-15 minutes.

Further setting options for the resource allocation by calendar

"Ignore elements with category": Categories can be defined here for appointments which are to be excluded for the workload. This is useful for specially created appointments such as "Focus time" or "Lunch break".

Calculation mode:

• Use exact working times: Only the times of appointments that lie within the defined InLoox working time calendar are used for the workload.
  Example: A daily working time of 09:00 - 17:00 is defined in your working time calendar. You have an appointment that lasts a total of two hours, from 16:00 to 18:00. However, only one hour (16:00 - 17:00) is used for the resource overview, as the remaining time of the appointment is outside the defined working time calendar.
• Use daily working hours: In this mode, every appointment is used for the workload calculation, regardless of whether it falls within or outside the working time calendar. This mode is generally more intuitive.