Microsoft Calendar Sync

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction
• What is Sync Out?
• What is Sync In?
• Summary Key Points
• Screenshot Example of Outlook Calendar

Introduction

The BarBooks & Outlook Calendar Sync allows seamless integration between your BarBooks diary and Microsoft Outlook, ensuring appointments, court dates, and client meetings are kept in sync across platforms, reducing the need for manual entries and minimising errors.

The feature operates in two directions:

1. BarBooks Diary to Microsoft Outlook (Sync Out)
   

2. Microsoft Outlook to BarBooks Diary (Sync In)
   
   

What is Sync Out?

Sync Out pushes your BarBooks diary bookings (e.g., cases, events, leave) to a dedicated “BarBooks Calendar” in Outlook. This calendar is created automatically and will show in your Outlook account.

The sync out process will sync 90 days of historic and all future dated diary bookings to your BarBooks Calendar in Outlook. The following booking types will be synced:

• Matter

• Event

• Check First

• Leave

BarBooks to Outlook - Synced Data Fields

The below noted BarBooks diary booking fields will sync to your Outlook calendar.

• Title

• Type

• Sub Type

• Other (Event Type)

• Client

• Matter

• Barristers

• Clerks (Event Type)

• Date Created

• Contact Ref.

• Description

• Meeting Link

• Court

• Created By

• Location

• Areas of Law

• Firm

• Solicitor
  

BarBooks diary bookings that have been sent to you by your clerk or entered by you directly and synced out to your BarBooks Calendar in Outlook should NEVER be amended in Outlook. Such amendments will NOT be synced into your BarBooks diary, and will therefore not be visible to your clerking team.

ALL amendments/deletions to BarBooks diary bookings, originally created within the BarBooks application by you or the clerks, MUST be made in BarBooks itself.

When amendments/deletions are made to bookings in your BarBooks diary, this will ensure that they sync across to your BarBooks Calendar in Outlook.

What is Sync In?

Sync In allows confirmed bookings from a nominated Outlook calendar to automatically sync into your BarBooks diary. This is useful for capturing external appointments and meetings and displaying them in BarBooks. Only *confirmed Outlook bookings will sync into BarBooks.

*confirmed: These are bookings created in Outlook that will have been confirmed in Outlook.

The sync process will sync 90 days of historic bookings and all future dated confirmed bookings from your selected Outlook calendar into your BarBooks diary, which will be visible to you and the clerks.

Outlook to BarBooks  - Synced Data Fields

The following fields will be synced from your Outlook calendar to the BarBooks Diary:

IMPORTANT - Outlook - Booking Amendments & Deletions

Outlook bookings that have synced into BarBooks CANNOT be amended or deleted in your BarBooks diary by you or the clerking team. They can only be amended or deleted in Outlook, after which, the amendments will be synced across to your BarBooks diary and visible to you and the clerking team.

Your clerking team can ONLY view your nominated Outlook calendar synced bookings in BarBooks and nothing else.

BarBooks uses colour coding to visually and clearly separate different types of diary bookings.

Synced-in Outlook bookings displayed in your BarBooks diary can be identified by you and your clerking team by the green shading on all Outlook bookings.

Native BarBooks diary bookings will show with either blue, orange, yellow or purple, depending on the booking type.

All Outlook bookings will sync into your BarBooks diary with a booking type of “Calendar Integration”.

Summary Key Points

You MUST have the BarBooks Calendar selected/ticked in order to see BarBooks diary bookings in your Outlook calendar.

See below a screenshot of your calendar choices in your native calendar.

Syncing Directions:

• Sync Out: This syncs BarBooks bookings into a dedicated Outlook calendar.

• Sync In: This allows syncing of a selected Outlook calendar's bookings back into BarBooks.

Booking Statuses:

• Only CONFIRMED bookings in Outlook will sync to BarBooks. TENTATIVE Outlook bookings will NOT sync to Barbooks.

Data Fields Synced:

• Specific fields from BarBooks and Outlook bookings are synced, with certain limitations (e.g., comments in BarBooks do not sync).

Amendments and Deletions

• Amendments to bookings created in BarBooks should ONLY be made in your BarBooks diary and not in your Outlook calendar, as changes in Outlook will not sync back to BarBooks.

• Outlook bookings made that are synced into BarBooks can ONLY be amended or deleted from Outlook. A clerk cannot delete an Outlook booked event on your behalf.

• Third party invitations sent to you in Outlook will update in BarBooks, but only once confirmed by you in Outlook. 

Identification of Synced Entries:

• BarBooks uses colour coding to differentiate synced Outlook bookings from native BarBooks bookings.

Screenshot Example of Outlook Calendar