In many companies, assignment planning has long been digital—yet appointments are still also maintained manually in Outlook or another calendar. Jobs from personnel planning, leave, public holidays and other availability information are therefore entered in several places at once. What initially sounds like a minor additional task quickly becomes a real time drain in day-to-day work.
Maintaining calendars twice does not just mean more work. It also increases the risk of information getting out of sync, changes being overlooked or appointments appearing in the calendar twice by mistake. Especially when things are constantly changing in everyday operations, a simple calendar entry can quickly turn into unnecessary coordination work.
Two systems, double the work
The basic issue is easy to explain: the actual planning takes place in CrewBrain, while personal day-to-day work is often also managed in Outlook or another calendar application. If the two systems are not connected, information has to be transferred manually.
This applies, for example, to:
- Job requests
- Confirmed bookings
- Stored scheduled times
- Leave
- Public holidays
Every manual transfer takes time—and if anything changes, it may have to be done again. The more people are involved, the greater the coordination effort becomes.
Changes are the real sticking point
As long as an appointment is entered once and then remains unchanged, the additional effort may still seem manageable. The real challenge comes with short-notice adjustments.
If a start time changes, an assignment is cancelled or a new appointment is added, these changes also have to be updated in several places. This is exactly where misunderstandings arise: the assignment has been updated in CrewBrain, but Outlook still shows the old information. Or an employee relies on a calendar entry that is no longer current.
This is an unnecessary risk, especially with dynamic schedules.
There are different ways to reduce calendar maintenance
There are several options for anyone who wants to avoid maintaining calendars twice. Different approaches can be useful depending on how calendar information is intended to be used.
An iCal subscription is a practical way to make CrewBrain appointments visible in an external calendar. This allows assignments to be displayed in your own calendar environment as well. The appointments generally appear in a separate subscribed calendar, which is already sufficient for many use cases.
External calendars are also a useful addition—especially when external appointments need to be visible in CrewBrain. This makes it possible to include additional calendar information in planning, which is particularly helpful when reviewing availability.
Office 365 synchronisation takes things one step further and connects both directions: on the one hand, requests, bookings and, optionally, leave and public holidays from CrewBrain are transferred directly to the user’s Outlook calendar—not just to an additional calendar view, but directly to the user’s selected default calendar. On the other hand, Outlook appointments can be displayed in CrewBrain as external calendars. This means calendar information is not only additionally visible, but also particularly closely integrated into everyday work.
Office 365 Sync connects planning and everyday calendar use
This is precisely where CrewBrain’s Office 365 synchronisation offers a key advantage. While an iCal subscription makes CrewBrain appointments visible in a separate calendar, Office 365 synchronisation integrates requests and bookings directly into the user’s selected default calendar. Especially for teams that use Outlook as their central work calendar, this considerably reduces the need to switch between different calendar views.
Leave and public holidays can also be transferred optionally. If jobs have scheduled times stored, these will also appear directly in the calendar.
This not only saves manual maintenance, but above all helps keep information consistent. New jobs are transferred to Office 365 almost in real time, and existing entries are also automatically transferred once the connection has been set up.
This turns two separate systems into a much smoother process.
External Outlook appointments can also be included in planning
External calendars are particularly useful when external appointments need to be considered in availability planning. Office 365 synchronisation complements this approach by not only making external Outlook appointments visible in CrewBrain, but also transferring CrewBrain appointments directly back into the everyday Outlook workflow.
Employees can see all their appointments in one place, while schedulers can better assess when someone is genuinely available. This creates much greater transparency, especially for teams with many parallel assignments.
Less maintenance, more clarity
Even an iCal subscription or integrated external calendars can help make calendar information more accessible. However, the process becomes especially seamless when planning and the personal work calendar are connected directly.
CrewBrain supports this with, among other things:
- Automatic transfer of requests and bookings to Outlook
- Optional synchronisation of leave and public holidays
- Transfer of scheduled times from jobs
- Display of Outlook appointments as external calendars in CrewBrain
- Individual configuration of visibility for each user
Conclusion
Maintaining calendars twice often seems like a minor issue at first. In everyday work, however, it quickly adds up to unnecessary effort, outdated entries and additional coordination.
Depending on the requirements, iCal subscriptions or external calendars can already help make calendar information more visible and easier to plan with. However, if CrewBrain and Outlook need to work together as closely as possible in everyday work, Office 365 synchronisation provides the more seamless option. Appointments no longer have to be maintained multiple times, changes remain easier to track and both employees and schedulers benefit from greater clarity in their daily workflow.
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“For a long time, we were looking for a scheduling software that would make our daily work comprehensively and sensibly easier. We became aware of CrewBrain in the summer of 2016. After six months of intensive cooperation, we were able to fully integrate CrewBrain into our daily work in 2017. Since then, our time expenditure for project and personnel planning has halved. Our employees benefit from the good overview and the mobile app. Practical features such as travel expense accounting and special views are gradually being added to make our daily work much easier.”
– Malte Jäger, Managing Director, BigRig Berlin GmbH
