Importing Meetings

Purpose

When you plan your day in Sunsama, you'll be given the opportunity to pull meetings and events from your calendar into your task list for the day.

The task list you build each day will be your source of truth and guide for the day. Once you plan and order your list, you'll just work your way down the list.

Importing events into your task list gives you a clear view of your daily workload, adds time spent in meetings to your daily stats, and gives you the satisfaction of checking off meetings as work.

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Importing events during planning

During the first step of daily planning you'll see a prompt to "fill in calendar events" in the left hand panel:

If you click the green button, you'll automatically import Sunsama's suggested list of events into your task list.

If you click "pick events" you'll be able to select the events you want to import.

Once you are ready, click the green button to add the events to your task list. As soon you click the button, Sunsama will also auto-sort your task list based on the start times of the items you just imported.

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Importing events automatically

If you find that you are often accepting the one-click import suggestion without any additional modifications, you can tell Sunsama to just auto-import all your events by default.

Navigate to your "Calendar settings", scroll down to "Meeting Import", and then change the setting that says "Configure how meetings get added to your daily task list" to be "Auto-sync".

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You must select "Calendars to import from"

If you choose "Auto-sync" you will also need to make sure you've got at least one calendar selected in the "Calendars to import from" setting.

Customizing import behaviors

Since you will see the prompt to fill in meeting each day, it's worth taking a time to configure defaults that fit your workflow. Going forward, you'll be able to just hit "Add X events" and quickly move on.

When you customize the import suggestions, you can control which types of events are suggested as well as which calendars Sunsama will suggest from.

Calendars to import from

In this section, you can pick and choose which calendars Sunsama will look at when auto-syncing or suggesting events to import.

If you choose auto-sync, you'll need to select at least one calendar.

If you are the kind of person who keeps a lot of calendars in view for reference e.g. events, birthdays, colleagues, or significant others, you'll want to use this setting to make sure the default suggestion list only includes events that are relevant to you.

If you do not select any calendars, Sunsama will default to suggesting events based on whatever calendars are currently in view. In daily planning you can edit the calendars in view with the "..." menu at the top of the calendar view.

Exclude certain types of events

By default, Sunsama excludes many types of (often) unhelpful events from being added to your task list. If you want to include more types of events, you can turn these filters off.

If you have Sunsama set to "Auto-sync" these events will be excluded from auto-sync. If you have Sunsama set to "Show prompt" these items will not be selected by default as part of the one-click import button.

• Exclude events without other attendees - If toggled on, ALL events without other attendees will be excluded from auto-import.
• Exclude non-blocking events: - If toggled on, events that are marked as "transparent" or "non-blocking" will be excluded.
• Exclude events with "OOO" or "HOLD" in the title: If toggled on, events with the text "OOO" or "HOLD" anywhere in the title will be excluded. For most people, you'll want to keep this turned on.
• Exclude events where attendance is not confirmed: If toggled on, events where you've yet to confirm your attendance will be excluded. Leave this turned on if you get invited to a lot of meetings you don't actually attend.
• Exclude multi-day, all-day events: If toggled on, all-day events that span multiple days will be excluded. If you use the all day section of your calendar to annotate your calendar with things that aren't tasks like travel days you should keep this turned on.

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Changing settings and rules

When you change your settings in a way that would add or remove events to your task lists, those events will automatically get added or removed from your task list. There are two exceptions:

If you've manually removed a meeting from your task list that was auto-imported it will never be re-generated and re-added to the list. It must be re-imported manually.

If you've edited the actual time of an auto-imported meeting, it won't be removed from your list.

Understanding Autocompletion

By default, events and meetings that are imported into your task list are completed automatically when the end time of the calendar event passes unless you are actively running a timer on that event.

If the events on your calendar often run longer then scheduled, the start and end times of events aren't rigid for you, or you just want the satisfaction of checking things off yourself then you change your auto-completion setting from your account settings.

There are three options:

• Always: This is the default option, all items will be auto-completed when the end time for the event passes.
• Never: This turns off auto-completion entirely.
• Only if the event has invitees: If an event has invitees, it will get completed when the end time passes. If an event has no other invitees (e.g. a task or reminder for yourself) it won't get checked off unless you manually check it off.

The last option, "Only if the event has invitees", is a good choice if your calendar events without other attendees are really just tasks and reminders for yourself.

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Removing an imported event

If you want to remove an event from your task list, you can right click on the task and click "Remove from tasks". This will remove that task/event from your task list but not delete it from the underlying calendar.

Importing a single event

If you want to add a specific event to your task list, you can hover over the calendar event and click "Add to tasks" or open the event page and click "Add to tasks" from the header.

Best practices

• Importing your events and meetings is one of the most crucial steps in daily planning. When you do this, you'll see your workload counter take meetings into account and your daily stats will then include the time you spent in meetings.
• If your calendar has a lot of events that are actually tasks and not meetings with other people, you'll want to carefully review your auto-import configuration and your auto-complete setting.