How Outlook Calendar Sync Works

Full transcript

0:03 This video answers one question. Between the moment you connect Outlook and the moment an entry lands on your timesheet, what does Teetrack actually do with your calendar? The answer has two halves, because there are two separate time windows, and confusing them is the most common misunderstanding. The first window is reading. Teetrack reads thirty days back and fourteen days forward, and refreshes that every half hour. That is why the kickoff from four weeks ago and the upcoming planning session are both on this calendar.

0:35 The second window is drafting, and it is much narrower. Only events from the last seven days and the next one day become draft entries. The rest of the month is there to look at, not to import. Teetrack will not write four weeks of old meetings onto your timesheet behind your back. It drafts the last week, because the last week is the part you still have to account for.

0:58 The sync runs every half hour on its own. When you've just changed something in Outlook and don't want to wait, there is a Sync now button. After a sync, the button is disabled and a countdown appears, because a calendar can be synced by hand once every five minutes. That limit exists because Microsoft throttles accounts that ask too often, and a throttled account stops syncing until Microsoft lets it back in.

1:23 The badge on the connection card tells you the state of the sync at a glance. Up to date means the last sync ran and succeeded. Sync overdue means nothing has run in over an hour, so something is probably stuck. Rate limited means Microsoft is throttling the account, and that clears on its own. Reconnect needed is the only one that needs you. It appears after a password change or a revoked consent, and syncing stays paused until you click Reconnect. Nothing you've already imported is lost while you wait.

1:54 One kind of event never comes across at all, and that's all-day events. A banner across the top of the day isn't eight billable hours, so Teetrack skips them everywhere. This day has one in Outlook. On this day view, every timed meeting is present and the banner isn't.

2:11 Because Teetrack re-reads your calendar instead of copying it once, your drafts follow the calendar. I'll move this design review an hour and a half later in Outlook, sync, and the draft moves with it. After the five-minute cooldown, I'll delete a meeting and sync again. Once Microsoft has caught up, its draft disappears too. That stops the moment you confirm an entry. A confirmed entry is yours, and nothing in your calendar can change it afterwards.

2:38 Every calendar on the account comes across, not only the default one. That evening block lives in a second calendar called Side projects, and here it is. When you want the whole connection out of the way for a while, there is a switch on the card. Turn it off and the events leave the view. Turn it back on and they return, with no disconnecting and no reconnecting.

3:00 So that is the model. Teetrack reads wide, drafts narrow, follows your calendar until you confirm, and stops whenever you tell it to. The next video is about the drafting side, and how those drafts turn into billable hours. The written guide is linked below, and Teetrack has a free plan at teetrack dot it.