Calendar Integration

Integrate your Google, Outlook, Apple (iCloud), and CalDAV calendars with Sunsama to view events, timebox tasks, import meetings, and choose which calendars' events your tasks get scheduled around.

Sunsama comes with a built-in, private calendar. You can also integrate your existing Google, Outlook, Apple (iCloud), and CalDAV (e.g. Fastmail, Nextcloud) calendars. When your calendars are integrated, you can import events (e.g. meetings) to your Sunsama task list, timebox your tasks to the calendar to schedule them, and create and edit calendar events.

Sunsama’s built-in private calendar

Using your Sunsama calendar

By default, your workspace starts with a Sunsama-backed calendar that you can use to create calendar events. You can create “regular” calendar events (with some limitations), and schedule your Sunsama tasks to this calendar.

These calendar events are private to you. They are only visible to you from within your Sunsama workspace.

The primary intent of this calendar is to give you a place to visualize your tasks on your calendar without polluting your regular Google/Outlook/Apple calendar.

Limits of the Sunsama calendar

Your Sunsama-backed calendar is not intended to be used as a full calendar replacement.

You can’t:

  • Share your Sunsama calendar outside of Sunsama (e.g. with your Google/Microsoft/Apple calendars)
  • Invite other people to events on your Sunsama calendar
  • Create recurring events on your Sunsama calendar

For full calendaring functionality, you can connect your other existing calendars.

Connecting other calendars

Adding a calendar account

To add a Google, Outlook, Apple (iCloud), or CalDAV calendar account, go to Settings > Integrations > Calendar.

There you’ll see buttons for Google, Outlook, iCloud, and CalDAV. The CalDAV button opens a menu with Fastmail and Custom (for any other CalDAV server, such as Nextcloud). You can connect multiple calendar accounts.

To remove an entire calendar account, click the “remove” button next to that account.

Enabling calendars

You may have several calendars within your Google/Outlook/iCloud/CalDAV account, such as calendars you’ve subscribed to (except via iCloud; see the bottom of this page for more info), been invited to, or created yourself. All of those calendars should appear listed under your calendar account in your settings.

There is an “Enable” setting next to each of these calendars. Toggle on the “Enable” switch if you want to have the option to show this calendar in your Sunsama workspace or use it for timeboxing purposes. Turn this setting off if you do not need to ever see or use that calendar in Sunsama.

You can’t disable your Sunsama calendar, your primary calendar, or the calendars you’ve set as default for tasks or events.

Calendar settings

Click a calendar in the list to open Edit calendar. There you can:

  • Rename it and change its Color (in Sunsama only)
  • Make it the Default calendar when scheduling tasks or the Default calendar when scheduling events
  • Pick an Import channel for meetings you import from it, and a Timeboxing channel whose tasks get scheduled to it
  • Turn Import events on or off, to choose whether its events are imported when you plan your day
  • Make it Non-blocking for tasks (see Non-blocking calendars)
  • For Outlook calendars, Disable reminders on new events you create on it

Calendar events in Sunsama

Viewing the calendar

You can view your calendar in Sunsama in the right hand panel by clicking on the calendar icon or using shortcut Shift C. In this standard view, just one day of your calendar is shown. To show a particular day’s calendar view, click on the name of that date at the top of its task list, or scroll horizontally in your workspace. In Board view, whatever day is left justified will show in the calendar panel.

You can also switch to Calendar View by clicking “Calendar” in the left hand panel, or with shortcut J. Calendar view puts the calendar in the main center window, and you can view your task list in the right hand panel.

Calendar visibility

Events from all of your connected and enabled calendars will show in Sunsama. These enabled calendars will be listed in the “Calendar” button at the top of the calendar.

Click on the button that says “Calendars” at the top of the calendar panel, and click on a specific calendar to toggle on/off its visibility. This only affects what is visible in your view of your calendar.

Toggling the visibility of your calendars can be useful to show/not show events that you may want to know about and occasionally glimpse, but not take into account for scheduling purposes (e.g. holidays, sporting events, meetings you do not need to attend, family calendar, etc).

Show declined events

Found in Settings → Integrations → Calendar → Calendar display. Keep meetings on your calendar after you decline them. Turn it off to hide them.

This applies to every connected calendar — Google, Outlook, Apple/iCloud, and CalDAV. If you connect a Google account, we start you off with whatever “show declined events” is set to in Google Calendar; after that the Sunsama setting is the one that counts, and changing it here won’t change it in Google.

Declined meetings are never auto-scheduled around, whether or not you show them.

Non-blocking calendars

By default, Sunsama schedules your tasks around every busy event on your calendars. If a calendar is there to keep you informed rather than to block your time, like a family calendar, a partner’s calendar, or a subscribed school schedule, you can make it non-blocking. Its events stay visible, but tasks can be auto-scheduled over them.

Go to Settings → Integrations → Calendar, click the calendar, and turn on Non-blocking for tasks. Auto-scheduling, your task projections, and Autoplan then treat that calendar’s events as free time, so you don’t have to hide the calendar or mark its events non-blocking one by one.

You can still make a single event on that calendar block your tasks: hover over the event and click the calendar icon in its summary card (“Toggle to block tasks during this event”). That event’s own setting always wins over the calendar’s. The same icon works the other way, letting tasks be scheduled over one busy event.

This only changes how Sunsama schedules your tasks. Your busy/free status on Google, Outlook, or Apple calendar doesn’t change, and nobody else sees a difference. You can also ask Sunny to change it for you.

Creating new calendar events

Just like in Google, Outlook, and Apple calendar, you can create new calendar events in Sunsama. To do so, simply click, or click and drag, in your calendar at the time you want the event to be.

By default, new calendar events created via Sunsama are created on your default calendar, which is usually the main calendar associated with the account with which you created your Sunsama account. To change it, click on another calendar in your calendar settings page and turn on “Default calendar when scheduling events”.

That said, you can select any of your enabled calendars to which you have write-access to create your new event. After clicking in the calendar, select which of your calendars you want the event created on.

You can also add other event details such as title, description, privacy, availability/transparency, and invitees.

Editing calendar events

As long as you have write/edit access to a calendar, you can edit calendar events in Sunsama and those edits will be reflected in their underlying calendar. This means if you delete a calendar event in Sunsama, you are deleting it in Google/Outlook/Apple calendar.

The event page

Hover over an event to see a summary card. From the card you can:

  • Click Add to tasks to import the event to your task list
  • Click the calendar icon to block or allow auto-scheduled tasks during an upcoming event. This only changes Sunsama’s scheduling.
  • Delete the event, if you can edit it

Click an event to open its page, with the full details. The page also has:

  • Edit: if you can edit the event, click Edit to change its details. This is also where you set the event to Blocking or Non-blocking, which changes whether it shows you as busy in Google, Outlook or Apple calendar. Some events, like focus time and out of office, can’t be changed.
  • Notes: once you’ve imported the event as a task, its notes appear on the page so you can take meeting notes.
  • Email meeting notes: click the … menu and choose Email meeting notes. Choose the Recipients (the attendees are selected for you, and you can add an email), check the Meeting notes preview, and click Send meeting notes.

Meeting import

In your Calendar Settings page, beneath the list of your connected calendars, there are four settings related to how you can import your meetings (calendar events) from your calendars to your Sunsama task list. For a thorough breakdown of how meeting import works, refer to this guide: Importing Meetings.

Configure how meetings get added to your daily task list

“Show prompt” will allow you to review and confirm suggested events to import each day during planning.

“Auto-sync” will automatically add the appropriate events to your task list. Refer to the Importing Meetings page for more information.

Calendars to import from

Select which calendars Sunsama should check when importing meetings. This applies both to the auto-sync import and the events suggested during the daily planning prompt.

Exclude certain types of events

Specify which types of calendar events get excluded from being suggested or auto-imported.

Auto-complete imported calendar events

When you import an event from your calendar, should it be automatically completed when the event ends?

Timeboxing

Timeboxing refers to scheduling your Sunsama tasks onto the calendar. When you timebox a task, a calendar event is created on the calendar you choose: your private Sunsama calendar, or a connected Google, Outlook, iCloud, or CalDAV calendar.

Refer to our guide on Timeboxing and its subpages for detailed information on all the timeboxing related features.

How to timebox your tasks

To timebox your tasks to your calendar, you may:

  • Drag a task on to your calendar
  • Auto-schedule the task by hovering over it and hitting X on your keyboard

Timeboxing tasks to specific calendars

Sunsama gives you control over which of your connected calendars tasks are timeboxed to. This way you can ensure working sessions for your tasks are ending up on the appropriate calendar.

To choose where tasks are timeboxed by default, click on that calendar in your calendar settings page and turn on “Default calendar when scheduling tasks”.

To link a Sunsama channel with a calendar, so that tasks assigned to specific channels automatically get timeboxed to specific calendars, click on that calendar in your calendar settings page and select a channel with which to link it.

Refer to this guide for more detailed information: Choosing your calendar.

Sunny and Autoplan

Sunny can see your calendar and work with it when you ask. It can create, move and delete events, accept or decline invites, add a meeting to your task list, timebox a task, and change whether an event or a whole calendar blocks your tasks.

Autoplan reads your events when it drafts your day and plans your tasks around your meetings. To let it plan over a calendar’s events, make that calendar non-blocking.

Zoom integration

In the Zoom integration section of your calendar settings page, click “Add Zoom account” to connect Zoom to Sunsama. This allows you to quickly add a Zoom conferencing link to your calendar events in Sunsama. On Google Calendar events, you’ll also see an option to add a Google Meet link instead.

Google Contacts integration

Connect a Google account here so that your contacts in that Google account can be searched and used when adding invitees to calendar events via Sunsama.

Apple Calendar (iCloud) FAQs and troubleshooting

Invalid credentials

If you’re certain you’re using the correct email and app-specific password, make sure you have enabled 2FA (two-factor authentication) for your iCloud account, otherwise Apple won’t allow the use of app-specific passwords. Refer to Apple’s documentation for more information.

If you’re still receiving that error and have 2FA enabled, try typing the password without dashes. For unknown reasons, some Apple accounts only work with the app-specific passwords typed without dashes, but most require them.

Subscribed calendars

Subscribed calendars won’t be visible as they belong to devices and not an iCloud account. Refer to Apple’s documentation for more information.