Calendar Items Sync Special Patterns: Attendees Lists, Private Items, Items Unsyncing and Deletion¶

For users of the Email Sidebar on:

8 min read

Tip

Also refer to this article for information on general calendars syncing exceptions

Attendees Lists and Meeting Acceptance Statuses¶

Outgoing meetings (organized by RGES user)¶

Сalendar items sync between MS Exchange and Salesforce does not always follow the one-to-one mirroring pattern (i.e. when the contents of matching objects’ fields in email client and Salesforce are reciprocally synchronized). Instead, different rules are applied to Salesforce-to-Exchange and Exchange-to-Salesforce items sync to ensure that no attendees are lost from an event in email client.

Specifically, if you update a calendar item’s list of attendees:

When a new attendee is added to an event in Salesforce: he/she will be added to the matching Exchange item, with Unknown attendance status
When an attendee is removed from an event in Salesforce: no changes will be made in the matching Exchange item’s attendees list
When a new attendee is added to a calendar item in Exchange: he/she will be added to the matching Salesforce item, with a corresponding attendance status (see the note below for more information)
When an attendee is removed from an event in Exchange: he/she will be removed from the matching Salesforce item, regardless of the attendance status

In addition to that, due to the specifics of MS Exchange’s status assigning mechanisms, when you create a calendar item, its attendees’ statuses can only be properly synced from Exchange to Salesforce but not the other way around:

When a calendar item is created in email client and then synced with Salesforce (up-synced), its attendees’ statuses will be conveyed exactly
When an event is created in Salesforce and then synced with email client (down-synced), any attendees’ statuses including Declined will be set to Unknown

Note

While the Accepted or Declined attendance statuses are transferred from Exchange to Salesforce exactly, NoResponseReceived, Tentative, Organizer, Unknown statuses are all changed to Undecided

Continuous Attendees list syncing¶

In order to ensure real-time handling of People records (WhoIds) involved in a synced meeting, optional continuous syncing of the invitees list was implemented. If it’s not enabled, the attendees list is synced only on events’ initial sharing and remains unchanged afterwards.

Incoming meetings (organized by an external contact, RGES user is an invitee)¶

When you up-sync (email client → Salesforce) or down-sync (Salesforce → email client) an incoming meeting (one organized by another person - an external or in-org contact), due to a limitation in MS Exchange its Accepted meeting status will be changed to Unknown in either of these cases.

Syncing Non-responded or Declined meetings¶

In the latest RGES updates, a special setting was introduced to manage the possibility to sync in Salesforce of inbound meetings which were left unresponded or were declined by the invitee (who is a RGES user). Some companies require that in order to get meetings registered in Salesforce even if they were not explicitly accepted. If this setting is disabled, an attempt to sync in Salesforce of a non-responded or declined meeting results in a sync error “ISE-013: Meeting for attendees cannot be synchronized until the organizer synchronizes it.“

Detailed explanation of specific calendar items handling cases¶

Tip

Make sure to refer to this table to see the whole scope of items handling scenarios

The events handling patterns are governed by the principle of making user calendars in Salesforce and in email client one-to-one identical through Revenue Grid synchronization, with several exceptions caused either by convenience of use considerations or specific limitations in email client. One of the key factors to be considered is whether an event has external attendees, as that affects items processing in email client.

Use case 1: applies both to events which have attendees and ones which have no attendees

If you create a calendar item in email client and save it in Salesforce, then unassign the “Salesforce” category from the event in email client: the event will not be removed from Salesforce and the “Salesforce” category will be automatically reassigned to it on the following sync session. This behavior is defined by an events handling policy that allows deleting events from Salesforce only if they were deleted from email client, not just unsynced.

Use case 2: applies to events which have attendees (meetings)

If you are an event’s owner (set in the Assigned To event field) and organizer in Salesforce and the event got synchronized with your email client calendar (down-synced) by RG Email Sidebar, and then you delete it in Salesforce: the event will be removed from Salesforce but will remain in email client, the “Salesforce” category will be unassigned from it. This behavior is determined by a limitation in email client.

Use case 3: applies to events which have no attendees (appointments)

If you create a calendar item in email client and save it in Salesforce, then delete it from Salesforce: the event will be removed from Salesforce but will remain in email client, the “Salesforce” category will be unassigned from it. This behavior is determined by a limitation in email client
If you create a calendar item in email client and save it in Salesforce, then delete it in email client: the event will be removed from Salesforce as well (up-synced), to maintain one-to-one calendars synchronization
If you create a calendar item in email client and save it in Salesforce, and then the event anyhow leaves the sliding time window covered by sync: the “Salesforce” category will be unassigned from it in email client; no changes made to the event in email client will be reflected in Salesforce. This behavior is defined by the sliding time window mechanism (two weeks in the past from the present date)
If you create an event in Salesforce and it gets “down-synced” to email client, then you unassign the “Salesforce” category from it in email client: the event will not be removed from Salesforce and the “Salesforce” category will be automatically reassigned to it on the following sync session. This behavior is defined by an events handling policy that allows deleting events from Salesforce only if they were deleted from email client, not just unsynced
If you create an event in Salesforce and it gets “down-synced” to email client, then you delete it in email client: the event will be deleted both from email client and from Salesforce, to maintain one-to-one calendars synchronization
If you create an event in Salesforce and it gets “down-synced” to email client and then the event anyhow leaves the sliding time window covered by sync: it will be automatically deleted in email client, but will remain in Salesforce. This behavior is defined by the sliding time window mechanism
If you create an event in Salesforce and it gets “down-synced” to email client, and then you delete it in Salesforce: the event will be deleted both from email client and from Salesforce, to maintain the one-to-one calendars sync principle
If you create an event in Salesforce and it gets “down-synced” to email client, then RG Email Sidebar Add-In gets deactivated: the event will remain in Salesforce but will be automatically deleted in email client

Note

Please note that major RG Email Sidebar updates may also result in removal from email client or Gmail of events which fall under the case ( 8 ); however, this only concerns events which occurred in the past. This is required by certain synchronization engine updates

Private Calendar Items¶

Calendar items flagged as private are handled according to the following rules:

When a private calendar item is assigned the Salesforce category in email client: the event is saved in Salesforce without the Private attribute
When a private calendar item is saved in Salesforce by clicking the Save button: the event is saved in Salesforce without the Private attribute
When events auto-syncing is enabled, private events are not automatically saved in Salesforce

Items Unsyncing / Deletion Patterns¶

Tip

Also see this article to learn about the user-initiated unsyncing possibility

Note

There’s also the Global setting ServiceEventDeletionStrategy that makes it possible to perform automatic deletion of calendar items from MS Exchange calendar by RGES Sync if they were deleted from Salesforce calendar by the users

The table below summarizes the outcomes of different user actions on specific kinds of calendar items, enforced by Revenue Grid synchronization.

Tip

Also see the details how to use the handy Unsync category use scenario

User action / Item type	If SF category is unassigned in email client	If deleted in email client	If SF Unsync category assigned in email client	If moves out of the sliding time window	If deleted in Salesforce (ServiceEventDeletionStrategy disabled)	If RGES is deactivated
Appointment (no attendees) created in email client	SF category gets restored	Gets deleted in Salesforce	Gets deleted in Salesforce	SF category is removed in email client	SF Category is removed in email client	SF category is removed from email client master category list
Appointment (no attendees) created in Salesforce	SF category gets restored	Gets deleted in Salesforce	Gets deleted in Salesforce	Gets deleted in email client	Gets deleted in email client	Gets deleted in email client
Meeting: Organizer in email client; Owner a RGES registered user	SF category gets restored	Gets deleted in Salesforce	Gets deleted in Salesforce	SF category is removed in email client	SF category is removed in email client	SF category is removed from email client master category list
Meeting: External Organizer (not a RGES registered user)	SF category gets restored	Gets deleted in Salesforce	Gets deleted in Salesforce	SF category is removed in email client	SF category is removed in email client	SF category is removed from email client master category list
Meeting: In-org Organizer (is a RGES registered user)	SF category gets restored	The attendee is deleted/declined in Salesforce	The attendee is deleted/declined in Salesforce	SF category is removed in email client	SF category is removed in email client	SF category is removed from email client master category list

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