How Event Attendees Sync with Einstein Activity Capture

When Do Attendees Sync?

Event attendee details sync when:

• The event organizer is a Salesforce user who’s been set up to sync events with Einstein Activity Capture.
• The event attendee is a Salesforce user, contact, or lead.
• The Chatter Free users cannot be attendees on events (The Chatter Free license is for users who don’t have Salesforce licenses but must have access to Chatter. These users can access standard Chatter items such as people, profiles, groups, and files, but they can’t, for security reasons, access any Salesforce objects or data. For example, Chatter Free users can’t be attendees at a Salesforce event. Chatter Free users can also be Chatter moderators)

For example, when event organizers create events in Salesforce, they can invite attendees who are Salesforce users, contacts, or leads only. The attendee field syncs. Attendees who don’t match to a Salesforce record are external attendees and must be invited to events from organizers’ external Microsoft or Google calendars. In these cases, the attendee field doesn’t sync to Salesforce because nothing in Salesforce is a match.

Einstein Activity Capture syncs up to 50 attendees per event.

How Do Events Sync for Organizers and Attendees?

In Salesforce, event organizers and attendees experience the same events differently.

• An event organizer can see and edit any event field. Any change an organizer makes to the event is visible to attendees.
• An attendee can see event details but can edit only the event reminder or mark the event as private. If an attendee deletes the event from the Salesforce calendar, the event is removed from the attendee’s Salesforce calendar only. The attendee’s name is saved on the event in both the Created By and Last Updated By fields.

Events sync for both the organizer and attendees according to the sync direction that admins set for the organizer. Therefore, it’s best for admins to set up event sync for whole teams, not individuals. Otherwise, when an event organizer who isn’t set up to sync events invites an attendee who is set up to sync events, the attendee experiences some unexpected sync behavior. Sometimes, events don’t sync at all.

 

How Are Event Invitations Sent to Attendees?

For events that sync, invitations and cancellations are emailed to attendees from Exchange or Google, not from Salesforce. For Lightning Experience or Salesforce mobile app users, Einstein Activity Capture is required to send event invitations to event attendees. For Salesforce Classic users, Salesforce-sent event invitations are suppressed when Einstein Activity Capture is enabled. This avoids sending duplicate invitations to users.

Attendee responses to event invitations never sync from Salesforce to Exchange or Google. In Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app, it isn’t possible for attendees to respond to event invitations. To avoid overwriting attendance statuses in Salesforce Classic, learn where to respond to event invitations based on their set sync directions.

 

How Do Events Sync When the Event Organizer Isn’t in a Syncing Configuration?

Attendees who sync their events experience unexpected sync behavior with events created by organizers.

• If the event is created in Salesforce, each attendee sees their own version of the event on their Salesforce calendar. The syncing attendees’ version of the event doesn’t sync.
• If the event is created in an external calendar, the attendee’s event syncs from the external calendar to Salesforce (assuming the attendee is set up to sync Exchange to Salesforce, Google to Salesforce, or both ways.) On the version of the event synced to Salesforce, the attendee is the organizer and only participant. Other attendees aren’t visible. The attendee can edit any field, but those edits don’t sync from Salesforce to Exchange. If the non-syncing organizer updates the event from the external calendar, the organizer’s edits override the attendee’s and sync to Salesforce. Letting the organizer’s edits override the attendee’s ensures that the attendee sees the latest meeting details. In these scenarios, the non-syncing organizer can be a non-syncing Salesforce user or an outsider to the syncing attendee’s Salesforce org, email domain, or company.

What Happens When the Event Organizer Is Added to a Configuration with Event Syncing?

If an event organizer is set up to sync after attendees have been syncing, participants can experience some unexpected behavior for scheduled events.

• Attendees can see and change a standalone event on their Salesforce calendars. When an event organizer is set up to sync, a new syncing event is created. The event organizer sees the new syncing event, but to prevent duplicates, attendees with a standalone event don't see the syncing event. If an organizer adds new attendees to the new syncing event, attendees with a standalone event see duplicates. All meeting participants are visible on the Microsoft or Google event.
• Attendees sometimes see duplicates in Salesforce after admins reset sync for event organizers and attendees.

When Are Attendees Removed from a Syncing Event?

Attendees can be unintentionally removed from syncing events when all of the following are true.

• When the organizer is set up for one of these sync directions: Both Ways, Exchange to Salesforce, or Google to Salesforce.
• When a user changes or removes the matching email address from the Salesforce user account, contact, or lead.

However, if all of the following are true, the original attendee records can remain invited to syncing events despite having been intentionally removed.

• When the organizer replaces the email address on the Microsoft or Google event with an address that doesn’t match the original Salesforce user, contact, or lead.
• When a user adds an email address on the Microsoft or Google event, and the email address matches a record that has an original attendee's email address in a custom email field.