Overview of Synchronizing Outlook Meetings with InterAction

If your organization has enabled the calendar synchronization features of InterAction, you can add selected Outlook meetings to InterAction. Once a meeting is added to InterAction, the InterAction version and Outlook version of the meeting are synchronized. This synchronization updates the InterAction version of the meeting with any changes you make to the meeting in Outlook.

You can add a meeting to InterAction when you create it in Outlook, or when you accept (or tentatively accept) a meeting from a person outside of your organization. You can also add an existing Outlook meeting to InterAction. Your organization can configure rules that determine whether meetings should be automatically added to InterAction. Note that you cannot add recurring or private meetings to InterAction.

Subsequent changes to the calendar item in Outlook (for example, change of time, date, location, attendees) are updated in InterAction. This is a one-way synchronization. Meeting information stored in InterAction cannot be edited.

If documents are attached to meetings in InterAction for Microsoft Outlook, these documents are added to InterAction during calendar sync and can be viewed in the InterAction Web Client.

What Happens After a Meeting Takes Place?

After a meeting has taken place (that is, the date of the meeting is past), the meeting becomes an InterAction activity.

Note that for a while after the conversion, the activity continues to synchronize with Outlook (for an amount of time determined by your system administrator). If you are the meeting organizer, you can update the Outlook version of the meeting with notes or other changes, and the InterAction version (the activity) is updated with those changes. Also, if you update the original Outlook meeting to a future date (for example, if the original meeting was rescheduled to a future time), the calendar item is converted back to a meeting in InterAction.

Why Should I Add Meetings to InterAction?

There are two main reasons why adding meetings to InterAction is extremely beneficial. One has to do with accurate information and the other has to do with quickly retrieving information.

Invariably, meetings are set up in Outlook and times change, attendees are added, and meetings are cancelled. If you simply created an activity in InterAction that a meeting is to take place, any changes or updates in Outlook would not be reflected accurately in InterAction. By adding the meeting to InterAction, any changes made to the Outlook calendar item are reflected in InterAction through the calendar sync.

Secondly, think about how much easier it would be to determine how many of your colleagues are meeting with a top client in the next month by simply doing a search using InterAction for Microsoft Outlook. Search for the client, and quickly view all the upcoming meetings applicable to that company contact.