Creating a Single Team Calendar using Outlook or GCal

Managing multiple calendars across teams can be chaotic. Some team members rely on Outlook, while others prefer Google Calendar, making it difficult for project managers to get a clear overview of everyone’s schedule.

Instead of juggling multiple individual calendars, Ganttic offers a way to sync both Google and Outlook calendars into a single, unified team calendar. This provides a clearer, more structured view of workloads, availability, and upcoming events.

When Time Isn’t On Your Side

Resources drive projects forward, and as a project manager, your primary role is to allocate them effectively. But managing resources—especially people—can be time-consuming, with much of that time spent on scheduling, rescheduling, and coordinating between multiple calendars.

With over 500 million Google Calendar users and Outlook being a staple in businesses worldwide, it’s no surprise that professionals spend nearly 5 hours a week just coordinating schedules. That’s time that could be better spent on actual project execution.

Rather than struggling to align scattered schedules, Ganttic’s sync feature offers a solution—bringing Google and Outlook calendars together into a single, transparent team calendar.

Why Create a Shared Team Calendar?

By integrating Google Calendar and Outlook with Ganttic’s resource planner, project managers gain a single source of truth for scheduling. Stay connected to plans, but 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. 

Here’s why this is beneficial:

• Unified Team View – See all team members’ schedules in one place, regardless of which calendar they use.
• Better Resource Planning – Easily identify availability and avoid scheduling conflicts.
• Automatic Updates – Any changes in individual Google or Outlook calendars reflect in Ganttic in real time.
• More Transparency – Provides visibility across departments and teams.

All Ganttic plans support both Google and Outlook calendars. And they are easy to implement right now. Here’s the steps you’ll need to take.

Syncing Google and Outlook Calendars with Ganttic

Ganttic offers two-way sync with both Google and Outlook calendars. This means that scheduled events in Ganttic appear in your personal calendar, and vice versa, ensuring that changes made in one system are reflected in the other.

To start, choose between a one-way or two-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.

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.

Creating a Team Calendar with a Google Calendar Sync

Syncing Ganttic with Google Calendar enables a seamless flow of information between individual and team schedules.

• Event titles will sync as the task name.
• 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. 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.

Check out our step-by-step guide, or watch this video:

How to Create a Team Calendar in Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is widely used in corporate environments, making seamless scheduling crucial for productivity. With Ganttic’s Outlook integration, you can:

• Sync meetings, tasks, and events from Outlook to Ganttic and back.
• Event titles as Ganttic’s tasks. 
• Use one-way or two-way sync, depending on your preference.
• Ensure that last-minute changes in Outlook are reflected in Ganttic automatically.

Watch the tutorial here or read our instructions for setting up an Outlook connection to Ganttic:

The Advantage of a Unified Team Calendar

Why bother with synching your Ganttic resource planner to Outlook or Google Cal? We have 5 great reasons…

A Bird’s-Eye View of Team Availability

Syncing Google and Outlook calendars with Ganttic isn’t just about organizing schedules—it’s about transforming the way you view and manage time. Instead of scattered, disconnected calendars, Ganttic provides a structured, visual way to oversee team availability and tasks. This shift from traditional calendar views to a more comprehensive planning tool makes it easier to spot scheduling gaps, balance workloads, and avoid conflicts.

For a deeper dive into how you can turn Google Calendar into a powerful Gantt chart for better planning, check out this article.

Get a Team Vacation Planner Too!

When different teams use separate tools to manage their schedules, misalignment and miscommunication can become major roadblocks. By bringing Outlook and Google Calendar events into a shared Ganttic calendar, departments gain a single source of truth for scheduling. Whether it’s HR tracking employee availability, operations managing shifts, PTO and vacation tracking, or project managers overseeing deadlines, everyone has access to the same up-to-date information. This leads to fewer bottlenecks, improved cross-team collaboration, and more efficient project execution.

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 events, as well as a resource calendar with minimal effort.

Simplified Coordination Across Different Departments

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.

• Google Calendar Sync with Ganttic
• Outlook Sync with Ganttic