Ganttic makes it easy to stay on top of your plans. Especially if you choose to sync your favorite calendar app with the resource planner. With a little tweak, you can turn your personal calendar events into a Gantt chart in no time. And vice versa – ensuring that all your resource plans notify the right people. Learn how to sync your Google and Outlook Calendars with a resource scheduler to get the most out of your time.
When Time Isn’t On Your Side
I’m sure you’re well aware of why resources are so important to project management. They are what make projects happen. Which is kinda the whole goal, and as PM, your primary responsibility. But the process of doing resource management is admittedly tedious and time-consuming.
Which is why successful PMs opt for resource management software. Which can definitely make it easier to get the most out of the limited number of people, machinery, and tools. Just take care not to neglect one of your other resources: time.
Yet it’s doubly ironic that one of the most time-consuming components of project resource planning is the software itself. If you mentally add up all the hours spent on planning, scheduling, rescheduling, and team communication, the result would be shocking. There’s got to be a middle ground. Luckily, it’s right in front of your eyes…
Google and Outlook Calendar Sync with Ganttic’s Resource Scheduler
Ganttic makes it easy to stay connected to plans, on your own terms. With a GCal or Outlook Calendar sync, events created in your online resource planner will automatically appear in your personal calendar. Or vice versa, or even both.
All Ganttic plans support both Google and Outlook calendars. And they are easy to implement right now.
Just follow our easy step-by-step instructions for Calendar synchronization here.
Different Ways to Sync Your Calendar App
With Ganttic’s integration to the 2 biggest calendar apps the world of planning becomes as flexible as you need it to be. If you’re the PM you can choose just to sync up your personal calendar for a quick reminder. Or you get the whole team on board.
The important thing to figure out first is whether you need one or two-way sync.
The One-Way Sync
One-way sync is good if you’re syncing your data with an existing calendar. You can choose whether you want the data to go from your calendar into Ganttic or vice versa.
What info is synched?
- Event titles will sync as the task name.
- If syncing from Google Calendar to Ganttic, event locations will become any of the link or text type custom data fields you have set up.
- From Ganttic to Google Calendar, you can sync the task and project name as the event title; task custom data fields and/or notes as the event description; and the location as any of the the link or text type of custom data fields you have set up.
- For Outlook Calendar, you can sync the Calendar’s event titles as Ganttic’s tasks.
The Two-Way Sync
With two-way synchronization, any existing data is exported from your Calendar app to Ganttic, and vice versa. This is for those who don’t want to be hindered by how they plan. Maybe you want to make a Gantt chart out of your GCal? Or perhaps you prefer to do long-term planning in Ganttic and use your Calendar for the day-to-day stuff.
It’s up to you. Just remember that, any changes you make to the plans will be synced to Ganttic for others to see. If you’re doing the scheduling for your team, you can make changes to their plans by reallocating resources in Ganttic. The plans will be updated in their Google Calendar which others may be able to view.
What info is synched?
- The items that can be synced both ways are events and task names; and the location of the event or the task. So if you drag and drop schedule a task with a name “App development” an event with a title “App development” will appear on your personal calendar. If you change the time of the event in the personal calendar, the time of the task will also change in Ganttic. You can use text and link type custom data fields to add a location to the task, and the syncing process is the same as it is with the title.
- You can customize your two-way sync with some one-way options if you are syncing with Google Calendar. You can sync the project title, custom data fields, and the notes. However, please note that if you choose to sync the task name or the project name as the event title with the one-way sync, the two-way sync of the event title will be canceled. The custom data fields and the notes will appear in Google Calendar as the event description. If you check none of the boxes, only the time slots will be synced.
FYI: The sync feature currently exports and imports tasks only. To share resources between platforms you can look into options for connecting the platforms over API. Or, for a one-off import you can always export the resource list and upload it to Ganttic manually.
Benefits of Google Calendar and Outlook Resource Scheduling
Why bother with synching your Ganttic resource planner to Outlook or Google Cal? We have 5 great reasons…
Saves Time
Not only your time in terms of planning and emailing the plans, but this goes for team members too. Who often report that email overload and constant notifications can be distracting, and prevent them from actively doing their jobs. With Ganttic’s calendar sync options you can control just how much your team members are notified. And what they get notified about. This means those inbox unreads don’t get too unwieldy, but everyone stays up to date with the latest news, on your terms.
Future-Proof Your Plans
According to some surveys, more and more organizations want to adopt more agile project management into their workflow. The only thing stopping them? When questioned, almost half of organizations reported that resistance to change prevented them from incorporating an agile methodology. Syncing your plans with your GCal or Outlook is a way to take planning to the next level, with limited effort. Since you already have the applications in place, there’s less pushback and you can successfully move forward.
One and Done
No need to double up on your data input. With synchronization, you just enter in the info once and let your sync do the rest. This not only is a huge time saver, but it reduces costly mistakes. Since there’s no need to manually input the data, there’s less human error. You’ll get the Google Cal or Outlook resource planner you’ve always wanted with minimal effort.
Manage from Anywhere
With more teams choosing to continue remote or hybrid work, making sure everyone is up to date is a constant challenge. But with calendar sync, all new plans will show up automatically in your team members calendars. That means they can see the plans even if they aren’t signed into Ganttic. This is great for dispersed teams or field workers who need to stay up to date, but aren’t sitting behind a computer.
Successful Growth
For organizations to become more successful, they need to grow. This may mean shedding some of the tools and processes that worked for a 5 person team, but aren’t sufficient for a 50 person team. Allison Stroebele from Pure Technologies knows this first-hand, who before making the switch to Ganttic, was using:
“a combination of Outlook Calendars and Excel spreadsheets at the time, (which we) were quickly outgrowing.”
Choosing a combination of tools that integrate and can be constantly built upon is setting you up for more sustainable growth down the line. But manually building a resource scheduler out of Outlook or GCal isn’t necessarily sustainable. Or easy on its own.
That’s why Ganttic works well for growing organizations. You only need to choose what’s necessary now, but it’s easy to add onto down the line. Not only with calendar synchronization, but with a complete Zapier library of apps to integrate with. Or expand even further with the API.
Either way, it shows that replacing Excel with a dedicated planning alternative might just be the push your organization needs. Don’t let your bad habits hold you back.
To Sync or Not to Sync?
Sync!
Syncing Ganttic’s resource scheduler to Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar is a good way to keep everything that’s going on in check. You can have your personal plans and you work-related tasks in one place. You can have your team sync their own tasks to Ganttic to make resource planning easier for you.
Check out our walk-throughs on our Help Desk for more info.