Auto-scheduling

Purpose:

Quickly timebox tasks to the calendar with keyboard shortcut X.

Walkthrough:

How to auto-schedule · 0:10

There are two ways to auto-schedule a task:

• hover over, or click on a task and type X on your keyboard.
• right click on a task and click “add to calendar”.

Setting up your Schedules · 0:33

Tell Sunsama when it can auto-schedule a task by setting up schedules. Click on “Schedules”from the main dropdown menu. There you can set up your overall working hours in Default Schedule. You can also set up custom schedules on a per channel basis, which will override your default schedule.

Sunsama will not schedule tasks outside of your schedules unless you tell it to (see below).

Sunsama auto-schedules tasks around events in your calendar · 2:38

In general, Sunsama will not auto-schedule tasks to overlap with any events on your calendar. This may require Sunsama to split the task into multiple blocks (see below), and does not apply to declined meetings or events marked as "available" or "free" in your underlying calendar (see below).

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Sunsama only auto-schedules tasks around events that are in view. So be mindful of which calendars are visible when timeboxing.

For example, if you have calendars with long events that do not block your time, simply toggle off their visibility during auto-scheduling.

Overcommitted? · 4:09

If there is no available time to schedule a task, Sunsama will show you an “Overcommitted?” pop up giving you three options.

• Schedule anyway: Sunsama will disregard your schedule settings and schedule the task for as soon as possible without overlapping with any other calendar events.
• Schedule another day: Sunsama will timebox the task to a future day if there are no available times in your schedule on the current day.
• Defer: Sunsama will move the task to tomorrow and not attempt to schedule it. You can timebox it during your next daily planning session.

Splitting a task around events · 5:18

Sunsama will try to schedule the task in one block with a duration of the planned time of the task if possible.

• If a task's planned time is 1 hour or less, Sunsama will only split the task if it has to.
• If a task's planned time is greater than 1 hour, Sunsama will more readily split the task to fill available time.

If if there is no room on the schedule to schedule the task in one block, Sunsama will split the task into multiple blocks that add up to the planned time of the task.

You can prevent Sunsama from splitting a task by auto-scheduling with the keyboard shortcut Shift X.

Scheduling a recurring task with an “at roughly” time · 7:42

Sunsama will auto-schedule that instance of the recurring task to the “at roughly” time as long as that time slot is still available on your calendar.

If that time has passed, Sunsama will auto-schedule the task for as close to the estimated time as possible. Sunsama never auto-schedules tasks to the past.

How Sunsama auto-schedules around meetings:

In general, Sunsama will not schedule tasks to overlap with any events on your calendar that are marked as busy. The only exception is when there is a meeting on your calendar that you have declined or RSVP’ed “No” to. The event may still show in your calendar, but Sunsama will not schedule around a declined meeting.

If your calendar has a lot of events that are just annotations of when you like to do certain things that don't block your availability you should mark those events in your calendar as "free" or "available".