Connecting your Google Calendar

Why it is a separate step

When you sign in we ask only for your name and email address — the minimum. Access to your calendar is a separate permission you grant only when you need it. That is deliberate: you should not have to let us into your calendar just to find out whether the product is for you.

What we do with your calendar

• Check when you are free, so the assistant does not double-book you.
• Create an appointment when a caller makes one.

We do not read the contents of your existing appointments beyond what is needed to see whether a slot is taken.

Connecting and disconnecting

You can connect during onboarding or later from your dashboard. You can disconnect at any time, in your Google account under “Third-party apps with account access”. After that the assistant can no longer book anything; it still answers calls and notes down what was asked.

Calendars other than Google

Google Calendar is today the only calendar the assistant can write to itself. The rest is on the list, but not in the product.

“Under investigation” means exactly that: we are looking at it, there is no date under it, and we are not promising it. Ask for it at info@voicehelden.nl — the more often a calendar is asked for, the sooner it comes up.

What happens until then

The assistant keeps answering and keeps taking appointments. It just cannot write them anywhere but here: the appointment — who called, what for, which day and time — lands in your dashboard, under Afspraken, and nowhere else. You copy it into your own calendar yourself.

Note: the assistant does tell the caller the appointment is booked — it does not know whether you connected a calendar. Without a connection the appointment only lands in your dashboard, under Afspraken. You have to copy it into your own calendar yourself, or someone will turn up who did nothing wrong.

To have it land in another system as well, use the webhook: it sends a message to a URL of yours after every call.

A workaround that often helps

Outlook and Apple Calendar can display a Google calendar as a secondary calendar. Create one Google calendar for appointments that come in by phone, connect that one here, and subscribe to it in Outlook or on your iPhone. You see everything in one place; we only ever write to that one calendar.

One thing to watch when you cancel

Appointments the assistant put in your calendar are in your calendar. We cannot remove them for you when you close your account — you do that yourself.