Notion Integration

Connect your Notion workspace to import database pages as tasks in Sunsama.

Bring the pages in your Notion databases into your daily plan. Browse a database in a panel beside your task list, drag in what you’ll work on today, update the page’s properties without leaving Sunsama, and file tasks back into Notion as a backlog.

Installation and account management

Adding the Notion integration and connecting your databases

Go to Settings > Integrations > Notion, or click the Notion button in the right hand panel (it may be hidden under the + button). Click Add Notion workspace and grant Sunsama the requested permissions.

If you have multiple workspaces, select the one you want to integrate first. You can add more Notion workspaces later.

Select your pages

Next, select the pages in your workspace that you’d like to integrate into Sunsama.

Connecting additional pages

If you want to add another database after setting up your Notion integration, you can do so two ways:

  1. Use Notion’s “connections” feature:

    • Go to your page in Notion
    • Click the three dot menu button in the top right corner
    • Scroll down to find the “Connections” section, and find “Sunsama” to add the page. The page should now appear in your Notion integration after refreshing Sunsama.

  2. Remove and re-add the Notion integration which will let you select databases and pages to share with Sunsama. Note: This process will remove any filters and automations you’ve set up.

Connecting additional Notion workspaces or removing them

In Settings > Integrations > Notion:

  • Click Add Notion workspace to connect another workspace.
  • Click Remove next to a workspace to disconnect it, or Reconnect if Sunsama has lost access to it.

Browsing and importing tasks

Open Notion in the right hand panel (keyboard shortcut Shift N), or search for Notion in the Command Palette (⌘ K).

Browsing Notion workspaces, pages, and databases

Sunsama shows every database inside the pages you’ve shared, and the pages (tasks) in each database. Switch between Notion workspaces from the icon at the top of the panel, and pick a database from the list or find it with Quick Find.

Shape the list with the buttons at the top of the panel:

  • Properties: choose which properties show on the task cards.
  • Group: group the cards by a property.
  • Filter: build filters and filter groups to show only the pages you want. Already Imported shows or hides pages you’ve imported.
  • Sort: sort by a property. Click the small triangle to switch between ascending and descending.

Importing tasks

When you’re ready to work on a Notion page, pull it into your plan:

  1. Drag the card from the Notion panel onto your task list.
  2. To timebox it right away, switch to calendar view (J) and drag the card onto your calendar at the time you’ll work on it.
  3. Click the card and choose Add to today (or hover and press S), or pick another date.

Only the page title is imported. Notion date properties aren’t linked to the Sunsama start date or due date.

Interacting with imported tasks

An imported Notion page becomes a Sunsama task linked to the original. Click the Notion icon on the task (or hover and press G) to open it in Notion.

Notion task details

Open the Sunsama task to see the Notion page inside it. Changes you make there are saved straight to Notion. You can:

  • Change select, multi-select, checkbox and date properties
  • Remove people from a people property (add people in Notion)
  • Tick to-do items in the page content
  • Read and post comments on the page

The rest of the page content is read-only here: to edit text, open the page in Notion. Properties Notion fills in itself, like formulas, can only be viewed. A page that’s In trash or Archived in Notion can’t be changed until you restore it there.

Hiding properties in the preview

If a database has more properties than you need, hover over a property in the preview and click the eye icon to hide it. Hidden properties are collected under a “hidden properties” row at the bottom of the list, where you can show them again.

This is saved per database in your Sunsama account and only affects what Sunsama shows. It does not change the property in Notion, and it is separate from the Properties button in the Notion panel, which controls the task cards.

Interacting with Sunsama specific task information

Your associated Sunsama task acts like a worksheet for your Notion task. Inside your Sunsama task, you can add notes, time tracking information, subtasks, and comments without messing with your Notion task. Use your Sunsama task to track the minutia of the task that your collaborators might not care about in Notion.

Completing the task in Sunsama does not change the page in Notion unless you set up a completion automation (see below), and nothing syncs back from Notion to Sunsama.

Keep Notion in sync via automations

Notion automations let you control how your tasks in Notion should be updated when you import or complete a task.

How to use automations

Click the Automations tab at the top of the Notion panel, then click Add an automation step under Import Automations or Completion Automations.

The automations you add will apply only to the selected database.

Import automations

Import automations run when you import a Notion page into Sunsama. There are two types:

Update in Notion

Select which supported property of the task to update in your Notion database and configure how you’d like that property updated.

You can add multiple automation steps, each with distinct possibilities depending on that property type.

Update in Sunsama

Channel automation

This type of automation will assign a channel to the imported task. Click on the #channel to select which channel the task should be assigned to.

You can set up multiple steps for this update, each with conditions to determine if that channel should be assigned. This way you can correctly assign the appropriate channels to different tasks in your database based on certain property conditions.

Completion automations

Completion automations run when you complete an imported task in Sunsama. Use Update in Notion to set a property on the page, for example a status of Done. You can add several steps.

Use Notion as your backlog via task export

Drag tasks from Sunsama into Notion to file them away in a well organized database, instead of Sunsama’s lightweight backlog.

Export task to Notion

Drag a task into your Notion panel to export it. This removes the task from Sunsama and creates a page in the selected Notion database. The title becomes the page title, and the notes and subtasks are added as text on the page. If the panel is grouped, dropping the task into a group sets that property on the new page.

Channels, comments, objectives and time tracking aren’t exported.

Copy a task to Notion

Hold ⌘ (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) while you drag to copy the task instead. The task stays in Sunsama, linked to the new Notion page, and the page gets a link back to it.

To undo an export, press ⌘ Z (Mac) or Ctrl Z (Windows) within a minute. The first time you export, Sunsama also shows an Undo button.

Sunny and Autoplan

Sunny can read your Notion pages when you ask about them, for example “what’s on my Notion roadmap this week?”. Autoplan also looks at Notion when it drafts your day. To stop Autoplan from using Notion, open Integrations on the daily planning screen and turn Notion off.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

I am not seeing all of my Notion tasks

Sunsama loads up to 300 pages from a database at a time. If your database is bigger, create a filter in Sunsama’s Notion panel that shows the pages most relevant to you.

My databases are missing. How can I find them?

Databases may not be showing for a few reasons:

  1. You have not shared the database with the Sunsama integration.

    • Go to Notion and open the database of interest or one of its parent pages
    • Click on the three dot button in the top right corner
    • Scroll down and find “Connections”, and add Sunsama

  2. You have recently created or shared your database with Sunsama or you recently added the Notion integration. Notion does not provide immediate access to changes, so it can take a while before these databases show.

  3. The database you are looking for is just a view of the original. Notion unfortunately does not expose access to their views. As a result we are only able to show the original database in its raw format in its original location.

  4. Your databases are dangling. There are a few cases where your databases are not nested in the path you expect and are instead shown at the end of the list. This will happen when the database:

    • has a private parent in their path
    • has a block as a parent in their path instead of a page or a database

If your database is not showing in the hierarchy in the Notion integration panel, also try searching for it by name. If found, this will also “pin” it to recent databases.

Notion databases still not showing?

Try disconnecting the Sunsama connection in your Notion workspace. Then try adding it in Sunsama again.

The Notion API is notoriously immature and these sorts of issues wouldn’t be unexpected. If you continue having issues please email support@sunsama.com with a video showing where in your Notion hierarchy the database lives, what the database’s sharing settings are, and what you see in Sunsama. If you don’t have a screen recording tool you already love, we recommend using Loom.