Considerations for Syncing Events

• Up to 50 event attendees sync between Salesforce and Microsoft Exchange or Google.
• Syncing attendees experience unexpected sync behavior with events created by nonsyncing 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 created in an external calendar, the attendee’s event syncs to Salesforce, assuming the attendee is set 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 nonsyncing organizer updates the event from your calendar application, 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 nonsyncing organizer can be a nonsyncing Salesforce user or an outsider to the syncing attendee’s Salesforce org, email domain, or company.
• Event invitations and cancellations for syncing events are emailed to attendees from Exchange or Google, not from Salesforce.
• 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, users can learn where to respond to event invitations based on their set sync directions.
• Attendees can be unintentionally removed from syncing events when both of these conditions are met.
  • 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.
  Exception: Under these conditions, 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.
• 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 after attendees have been syncing, 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 a duplicate event. 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.

But when matching records between Salesforce and your calendar application, Lightning Sync considers custom email fields on Salesforce records when Shield Platform Encryption is applied to some standard fields. See the Shield Platform Encryption section.

• Salesforce to Exchange
• Salesforce to Google

Using Salesforce Scheduler with other sync directions can result in sync failure or overwritten data, including canceled events.

But if you encrypt the Email field on the User object, the User Email field is duplicated in the Salesforce database when users are added to sync configurations that sync contacts or events. Even when the User Email field is encrypted using Shield Platform Encryption, this duplicate field stores user emails in the Salesforce database in an unencrypted state.

When Shield Platform Encryption is turned on, Lightning Sync matching behavior is modified. Normally, Lightning Sync matches records using the same standard Salesforce fields. But when you encrypt the Email field on Salesforce users, contacts, or leads, Lightning Sync expands its search to any custom email field you added to the record in these cases:

• When matching event attendees between Microsoft or Google and Salesforce
• When automatically relating matching Salesforce contacts or leads to your events

Because Lightning Sync relates the first matching email address it identifies, users, contacts, and leads can be matched based on the standard Email field or a custom email field.

• If a change you made in Salesforce didn’t sync to your calendar, you could have experienced a sync conflict. Sync conflicts occur when at least one of these conditions is true.
  • You’re set up to sync events both ways.
  • You, another user with access, or an automated action updates the event in your calendar application and Salesforce before Lightning Sync syncs the change
  If a sync conflict occurs, Lightning Sync gives preference to the change made in your external calendar. If automatic, mass event updates are made from your calendar application or Salesforce, you’re likely to experience sync conflicts more often. Companies usually make mass event updates when admins or developers set up automation or create custom API calls to create or update Salesforce, Microsoft, or Google events.

• Updates that are made in Microsoft or Google to the date or time of an existing Salesforce Scheduler service appointment don’t automatically sync to Salesforce. To keep service appointments in sync:
  • Make changes to or update service appointments in Salesforce.
  • After changing the date or time of a service appointment from Microsoft or Google, manually make the same change in Salesforce.

• If someone deletes the event in Salesforce or in the Microsoft or Google calendar application
• If the event occurred and no longer meets past event sync filters
• If an event sync issue occurs

• Sync for recurring events (repeating events created in Salesforce Classic) isn’t supported.
• If you’re set up to specify which Microsoft events sync to Salesforce using the Outlook integration, that feature isn’t supported for event series. If you select an event series in Outlook, the option to log that event isn’t available.
• When you edit a series from Microsoft calendar, only updates to future events sync to Salesforce. When you delete a series from Microsoft calendar, only future events are removed from Salesforce.
• When you delete individual events from an event series, the delete syncs between Salesforce and Microsoft calendars based on your sync direction. The individual events are removed from the Microsoft series regardless of whether your Salesforce admin has selected the Delete synced events option in your sync configuration.
• When you convert a series to a standalone event from Microsoft calendar, Lightning sync doesn’t remove the series from Salesforce calendar. Instead, we recommend that you delete the series from Microsoft calendar and create a standalone event.
• When you convert a standalone event to a series from Microsoft calendar, Lightning Sync deletes the matching standalone event in Salesforce and creates a series. The new series doesn’t retain relationships from the original event to other Salesforce records that you added manually. If you’re set up to automatically relate contacts or leads to events, Lightning Sync attempts to relate records based on the data you saved in the new series.
• When you make critical changes to your series from either your Microsoft calendar or Salesforce, Salesforce event descriptions and relationships to other records aren’t retained. Events that you edited to fall outside of the series are also updated and begin syncing again. Deleted events are recreated to include the critical changes and also begin syncing again. Critical changes include modifications to:
  • All-day event checkbox
  • Appointment times (StartDateTime, Duration)
  • Recurrence patterns (RecurrenceType, Instance, Interval, DayOfMonth, DayOfWeekMask, MonthOfYear, DayOfWeekIndex)
  • Ranges of occurrences (Occurrences, EndDateOnly, EndKind)
• Editing the Assigned To field for an event series is possible, but it causes issues when syncing with Microsoft calendars. To reassign an event series, delete the series, and recreate it with the desired owner.
• Changing the private flag on an individual event from a series is possible, but it causes issues when syncing with Microsoft calendars. To set a different private flag for an individual event, create a standalone event with the private flag set as desired.
• When an event series includes recurrence patterns supported in Microsoft but not in Salesforce, you can’t see or edit the pattern in Salesforce. Instead, edit these events from your Microsoft calendar.