Manage calendar synchronizations
Summarize
Summary of Manage calendar synchronizations
The Workplace Calendar Synchronization application enables ServiceNow administrators to monitor and manage the synchronization of workplace reservations with external calendar services such as Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar. This ensures that calendar events and workplace reservations stay aligned across systems, providing seamless integration and up-to-date information.
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Key Features
- Approvals: Admins can manage and approve reservations created via calendar provider applications using Workplace Core approval configurations. This helps maintain control over reservation requests that require validation.
- Events: Every synchronization action—such as creating, updating, or canceling a reservation—generates an event within the system. These events standardize communication between calendar services and Workplace Reservation Management, enabling notifications and updates. Events can be converted to JSON format and reprocessed if errors occur.
- Calendar Items: Actions from the calendar service translate into calendar items in Workplace Reservation Management. These items represent new or updated reservations and allow admins to create, update, or cancel reservations directly. They also support JSON conversion for integration and troubleshooting.
- Synchronization Deltas: When workplace items synchronize, a delta key tracks incremental changes since the last sync, optimizing data transfer by returning only updates instead of full calendar history. This feature is available for Microsoft Exchange On-Premises and Google Calendar and helps admins track new, updated, or canceled reservations efficiently.
Practical Considerations
- Admins should review synchronization prerequisites and implementation requirements to avoid connection or synchronization issues.
- Running an Instance Scan on Microsoft Exchange Online configurations helps diagnose and validate calendar synchronization setups, ensuring smooth integration.
- Monitoring the number of events and calendar items created during synchronization provides insight into synchronization activity and potential issues.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
This capability allows organizations to maintain consistent reservation data across Workplace Reservation Management and external calendar systems, improving workplace resource utilization and user experience. Admins gain control through approval workflows, detailed event tracking, and efficient synchronization, reducing errors and manual reconciliation efforts.
As an admin, monitor the number of events and calendar items in the Workplace Calendar Synchronization application whenever a reservation is synchronized.
- Approvals
- Events
- Calendar items
- Synchronization deltas
When you configure synchronization, you must keep in mind a few important conditions. Refer to Synchronization - Prerequisites and implementation.
Approvals
If there are any reservations created from the calendar provider application that requires approval, you can approve them using the Workplace Core approval configuration. For more information on how to approve a reservation or create a performer criteria, refer to Create a workplace performer criteria.
Events
- An event can create one or more calendar items.
- An event contains a request and a response to the request.
- To ensure that multiple calendar services can communicate with Workplace Reservation Management, events translate the reservations and messages from the calendar provider into standardized actions in Workplace Reservation Management.
When a workplace item is synchronized with the calendar service, an event is created to get the latest details. The response from the calendar service also creates an event. Similarly, events are created whenever a reservation is created or updated within Workplace Reservation Management for workplace items that are configured to synchronize. You can convert an event into JSON format. You can also reprocess an event if there was an error or for any reason.
Calendar items
Every action performed by the calendar service is converted to a calendar item that is handled in the Workplace Reservation Management application. A calendar item is either a new reservation or a reservation update. Using calendar items, you can also create, update, or cancel a reservation in the Workplace Reservation Management application. You can convert a calendar item into JSON format.