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Direct Integration Instructions: Google Workspace

Connect Skedda to your Google Workspace tenant

Team Skedda avatar
Written by Team Skedda
Updated over 2 months ago

After ensuring this feature is the right fit for you by reading the Introduction and Configuration article, you'll be ready to set it up!

Check out some more specifics in the FAQs section.


Step 1: Unlock the feature for your domain

If you don't already see your domain listed on the SSO and Microsoft 365/Google Workspace settings pages then the first step is to reach out to Skedda support. Ask for the feature to be enabled using the support chat widget in the bottom right.

As part of this process, we may need to verify the domain you want to use (i.e. the domain corresponding to your GW tenant) for security reasons.

Step 2: Create your butler user

Create the user account in your GW tenant that will serve as your butler. This needs to be done by a tenant administrator (i.e. someone in your organization with the ability to create user accounts). Your tenant admin can refer to the GW docs if they need assistance creating a user account. Although you're free to customize most of the details of the butler user, there is one "must do" and also a few recommendations.

Must do: Prevent others from viewing the butler's calendar

Considering that the butler will be managing many events on behalf of many users in your organization, it's important to ensure that the information isn't shared. Once you've created your butler account, go to its calendar settings and ensure that nobody is able to view/access its primary calendar.

If you're using GW, log in as the butler, go to calendar.google.com and click on the settings cog. There, under "Settings for my calendars", turn off all the access permissions for the butler's main calendar as shown below:

General recommendations for your butler user:

  • Choose an account name that will make the nature of the account clear to everyone. We often recommend "Rooms and Desks Butler" (i.e. first name "Rooms and Desks", second name "Butler"), but you can also choose something like "Skedda Butler" or "Service Account". Feel free to be creative!

  • We encourage you to appropriately secure the login to the butler user account considering your organization's usual policies. To be clear, there should be no reason for anybody to need to log in to the butler account, so one approach could be to use a secure-password generator to set a very complex login password for the user and not share it with anyone (i.e. "throw it away"). In the rare case that you do ever need to log in to the butler account (e.g. perhaps to diagnose a full mailbox), then a tenant admin can reset the login in order to gain access.

  • The butler user needs nothing more than a standard calendar and mailbox, so follow the "least privilege" principle and avoid granting it access to other organizational resources.

  • If you're planning "large-scale" usage of the integration, we recommend reviewing this FAQ.

Step 3: Connect Skedda to GW

Head to Settings > Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace in Skedda and click the button 'Enable calendar sync'.

The configuration items to complete are explained below:

  • In the configuration modal select your provider - Google Workspace.

  • Enter the email of the butler(s) you created in Step 1 in the Butlers field.

  • Under Conferencing service, there is one option at the moment (Google Meet). Learn more below why this is.

  • If you want Skedda to forward RSVP notifications from the butler to the actual booking holder, check the corresponding checkbox. See this FAQ for further information on this option. Note also that this option increases the number of "scopes" that you need to grant when you give Skedda permissions in your tenant (which we'll discuss below).

  • When creating a booking in Skedda and adding attendees, the user can always enter a query to search their own contacts (which then display for selection in the dropdown list). If you check the Allow users to search the full organizational directory checkbox, the list will additionally include matches from the organization's full directory of users. This option also increases the number of "scopes" that you need to grant when you give Skedda permissions in your tenant.

  • If you want Skedda to sync user photos from your provider and display them in useful areas of the Skedda interface, check the Sync and display user photos checkbox. See the dedicated support document on user photos for more information.

Once you've configured these items (but before you save them), grant Skedda the appropriate permissions in your tenant. A tenant admin only needs to grant this access once on behalf of the entire tenant. The big blue message gives you some information about this, but here's more info.

The person taking these steps needs to have the ability to add an API client for domain-wide delegation in the Google Workspace tenant.

  • In the Google Admin portal, navigate to Security > API Controls > Domain-wide Delegation.

  • Choose to add a new API client. The client ID for Skedda's app is: 109008754067382315209. Also, copy and paste the comma-separated list of "scopes" required for your integration from the settings modal in Skedda (as shown in the big blue message). Here's how it should then look on the Google side:

  • Click "Authorize".

Once you've added the Skedda app to your tenant, you can click the "Save" button in Skedda. Skedda will then do a number of tests to make sure it can do everything it needs to do for the integration to work correctly. If these tests all pass, you're done connecting Skedda to your tenant and you can continue with the next step! If the tests don't pass, you've double-checked everything with respect to the validation error shown and you don't know how to proceed, reach out to Skedda support for assistance.

Step 4: Create sync rules in Skedda

On the Settings page in Skedda, create your desired sync rules. Head back to this section in the introduction article to learn more.


FAQs

We have a conferencing "add-on" (e.g. Cisco Webex, Zoom) configured on our GW tenant. Can bookings be created on the Skedda side that use this add-on?

No, not at this time. The basic reason is that Skedda uses the standard Google APIs for creating events on GW, but these APIs have little to no support for using add-ons for the conferencing aspect. That is, Skedda is constrained to use the standard conferencing service in each case (i.e. Google Meet). If the Google APIs become more flexible in this respect in the future, we may be able to support conferencing add-ons.

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