Meetings & calendars

Overview

Three things live here, and they are easy to run together:

• Staff calendars — each staff member's Outlook diary on OneHQ's Calendar and Team Day, so anyone can see who is actually free. Whole firm, connected once.
• My calendar — each person's own say over what colleagues see: when they are busy, or also what the meeting is called.
• Bookings — clients booking themselves online through Acuity or Calendly, landing on the client's record.

Staff calendars is not Bookings. Most firms type most appointments straight into Outlook, and that is what Staff calendars shows — whatever is in the diary, however it got there.

Staff calendars

Connected once for the whole firm, under Settings → Integrations → Staff calendars: your Microsoft 365 administrator presses Connect, signs in and accepts, and OneHQ can read every staff member's calendar from then on. No Azure portal, nothing per person, nothing to install.

OneHQ reads diaries and keeps no copy of them. Microsoft signs you in as whichever account the browser last used, so if the approval comes back refused, check the account shown on Microsoft's page: it has to be an administrator of your organisation, with a work account rather than a personal one.

The practice sets a default for what colleagues see of each other's meetings — busy only, or the meeting's title too — and each person can override it for themselves under My calendar.

My calendar

Your Outlook calendar shows on the Meetings screen beside everyone else's, so colleagues can see when you're busy before they book you. That part is what makes booking work and isn't optional; what is yours to decide, under Settings → My integrations → My calendar:

• What colleagues see — just that you're busy, or what the meeting is called. Follows the practice default until you choose.
• Client meetings on records — whether your diary's client meetings are written onto those clients' records (see below).
• Calendar Live — whether your diary is read for the live view at all.

A meeting you mark private in Outlook is never shown to anyone and never lands on a record, whatever the settings say.

Meetings on the client's record

An Outlook appointment with a client becomes a meeting on that client's record — with a reminder and an arrival, like a booking — but only when OneHQ is certain whose it is. The rules are deliberately conservative:

• An event becomes a meeting only when an attendee's email address matches exactly one client. No guessing from the subject line, no solo events, and two different clients among the attendees is ambiguity, not two meetings.
• Private, free, all-day and cancelled events never do.
• Events that aren't a client's are never stored at all — the switch governs client meetings landing on records, not your diary generally.
• The first read goes 60 days back, then it keeps up with the diary from there.

If you also use Bookings, a booking that Acuity or Calendly has put into your Outlook is recognised as the same meeting, not a second one.

Bookings

Connect Acuity or Calendly under Settings → Integrations and every online booking lands on the client's record and the Calendar, matched to the client by their email. Reception can see who is coming in today without opening the booking tool.

Two settings belong to the practice rather than the booking tool, so they work the same whichever you use: who hears about every new booking, and the wording of the running-late text a staff member can send a client in one press.

Frequently asked questions