Calendar integration

Connect your calendar to start working effectively with meetings and events in Tana. Now available on Tana Core.

Overview

Connect your Google Calendar to import calendar events to Tana.

Easily take notes on all your video calls that are synced from your calendar using the Meeting agent

The connection is a one-way sync. Changes you make in Google Calendar will sync to Tana, but not vice versa

Calendar sync is an exclusive Tana Core feature. It uses AI to classify incoming events, which is only available on Tana Core.

Basics

  • Initial setup: When you sign up for a trial or upgrade to Tana Core, you will have the opportunity to connect your Google Calendar with Tana. It can be a different account than the one you use to log in to Tana.
  • See events on daily notes page: By default we create a Related content section on your daily notes page where you will see all the synced events for the day. Click on events to zoom into them and take notes (or send your meeting agent, see below)
  • Open events to schedule/send the Meeting agent to the meeting: When a synced meeting has a Meeting link (Zoom, Google Meet... Coming soon: Teams), you can send a Meeting agent to take notes for you during the meeting. For more on that, see Meeting agent.
  • Your calendar data gets enriched with each meeting: When we sync your contacts to Tana, they all get tagged with #person. With every meeting you have with them attending, the Meeting agent can help you remember things they said about themselves by adding these facts under Background info. As you have more meetings, your CRM is basically making itself.

Detail

The synergy between the Calendar integration and Meeting agent

The Meeting agent and Calendar integration are two intertwined features that are meant to work together.

The calendar integration is not just a convenient way to see your events on the day node. It is an opportunity for AI to help build out your knowledge graph:

  • It syncs your meetings to Tana so you have a place to prepare for meetings, write notes and agenda points beforehand
  • A meeting agent uses AI to attend and take notes during the meeting for you
  • All notes are saved back in Tana on the meeting node, and connects back to your knowledge base.

When the Meeting agent creates notes, it does the following:

Writes a concise, interconnected meeting summary: Your meeting summaries are no longer siloed on a different AI transcription platform just for meeting notes. They now live in Tana with the rest of your knowledge, connected to things in the transcript and in your graph.

Creates action items based on the conversation: It picks up all the tasks, agenda items and decisions that come out of a meeting

Adds new items to your knowledge base: Things will get mentioned in meetings that you don't have an existing node for. AI detects cities, states and countries, and will add them to your graph as references wherever they are mentioned. It also detects products (like "ChatGPT") and companies (like "OpenAI").

Builds a CRM: Meetings usually have Attendees. By syncing your contacts, AI can enrich the information on these contacts with facts that it learns from meetings. Joanne is not just a generic contact in your CRM anymore, they went golfing last weekend with their husband and really enjoy a good Pinot Noir (good to know when getting a birthday gift).

Go here for more on the Meeting agent.

Initial setup

Grant Google authorization

  • When you start the setup, you will be asked for a separate authorization for the Google Calendar integration. Note: You can use a different account than your Tana account for calendar sync.
  • Checking the boxes grants Tana permission to access calendar events and contacts, nothing else. We recommend checking all the boxes for the calendar integration to work properly.
  • Then, select which calendar you want to sync.
  • Once you're through the flow, your Google calendar will be ready to do an initial sync.
  • Tana will sync one week of events at the time. The sync will also trigger when you navigate to days that haven’t been synced yet.

Google Calendar configuration

  • To change anything about the configuration of the calendar later, you can go to Settings > Google Calendar settings
  • For more on that, see Calendar settings

What gets synced from the calendar, and where do they go

Two nodes are created in the Library: Google Calendar Events and Google Calendar Contacts. We don't encourage users to go here often, this is just the place where things are stored. To change target nodes for people and events being synced, see Calendar settings

The Google Calendar Contacts node

All contacts that are part of the invite list of an event are added here

By default, a person looks like this:

The Google Calendar Events node

All events are added here

By default, an event looks like this:

Changing the names of events

Event names are locked because the names are directly tied to Google Calendar. To change the name of the meeting, change it in Google Calendar, or use a title expression on the #meeting tag to override it.

Recurring events

Recurring events have a special identifier so Tana knows which events happened previously or are upcoming for the series. These can be found in the Related content section on the meeting node:

Events on your daily notes page

On a default Tana Core setup, the calendar events of the day will show up on your daily notes page as a search node in Agenda, a related content section. If you want to learn more about how this works, see Related content.

On this page, the Configure calendar sync option in the three-dotted menu on your daily notes navigation takes you to the Google Calendar settings:

Calendar settings

The calendar settings give you the option to change which calendars are being synced from your Google account, which fields are used to map information from Google to Tana, and which supertags to use to classify events with.

How to get to Calendar settings

Go to Settings, then Google Calendar settings:

General config

Here you can choose which calendars you want to sync to Tana. You can also disconnect your calendar connection with Tana.

Classification of events

When events are imported into Tana, they can be given a specific supertag according to the type of event it is.

Here's a detailed description of what each of them means:

Title: DescriptionParameters
Meeting: The most common type of event.Attendees: Min. 2
Block: A block of time with no attendeesKeywords: gym, lunch, dnd, busy, hold, traveling, driving, appt; Attendees: Must be 0
Full day event: An event that last the entire dayNote: Must be checked as a full-day event in calendar
Task: A chore that needs to be completedKeywords: prepare, send, draft, create, finish, follow up, review, action item, to-do; Attendees: Must be 0
Investor meeting: A meeting with an investorKeywords: investor meeting, VC touchpoint, funding discussion, venture meeting, capital call, shareholder update; Attendees: Min. 2, has external participants
User interview: A discussion with a user about their experience with a product.Keywords: user feedback, onboarding, product usage interview, user experience research, usability test; Attendees: has external participants; Note: not recurring
Hiring interview: An interview with a candidate or applicant for a job. Involves external participants.Keywords: interview, candidate, hiring, coding test, applicant, talent acquisition, job interview; Attendees: Min. 2, has external participants
Out of office: Time away from home, business travelling, recreation or vacationKeywords: OOO, out of office, vacation, traveling, holiday, PTO, time off, annual leave, leave of absence; Attendees: must be 0
Two person meeting: A two person meeting that is not a 1:1Keywords: NOT: 1:1, 1-1, one-on-one, check-in, catch up, personal meeting, individual sync; Attendees: Must be 2; Note: not recurring
One-on-one: A two person check-in, sync or catch up aimed at providing mentorship, feedback, or discussing personal development.Keywords: 1:1, 1-1, one-on-one, check-in, catch up, personal meeting, individual sync; Attendees: Must be 2, only internal participants; Note: recurring
Standup: A brief, regular meeting held to discuss team members' daily progress.Keywords: standup, huddle, scrum, daily meeting; Attendees: Min. 2, only internal participants; Note: recurring

Note: These classes can currently not be changed, or added to.

You can specify which tag to apply for that kind of event ("Tags to set"), and you can set a command that will trigger whenever this event is identified ("On classified").

Advanced

—Target configuration

Setting an event and contacts target ensures that when they're created, they get saved in that target location.

There are a number of restrictions on where you can save Event and Contact nodes. If you decide to choose another target, there will be some warning messages to guide you.

—Raw configuration

If you need to change a field or supertag that the calendar sync uses to populate Tana events, this is where you would do it. There's a lot of raw config exposed, so tread carefully when making changes.

Note: You'll see supertag definitions and field definitions in the config. This is a reminder that they look like this, respectively:

Enabled Calendars: Shows the calendars that are being synced. Your personal calendar is usually shown as an email.

Attendees field: The field in your meeting tag where attendees will be listed, if any. Default name: Attendees

Attendee supertag: When attendees are downloaded from an event, Tana will try to match them to instances of this supertag using their email. Default name: person

Attendee email field: The email field of the Attendee supertag that Tana will match incoming event attendees with. Default name: Email

Date field: The field used to store the date and time of the event. Default name: Date

Event URL field: The field used to store the link to the original calendar event. Default name: Calendar Link

Event details field: The field that stores the details/description of an event. Default name: Action items

Event status field: The field that stores the status of the event. Possible status options: Tentative, Confirmed, Cancelled, Declined. Default name: Event Status

Event classification config: Same as Classification of events

Event Destination: Same as Target configuration

Contacts Destination: Same as Target configuration

Other calendar services

The calendar sync is currently only available for Google Calendar. We hope to expand on these offerings in the future.

Multiple calendar sync

We do not support syncing multiple calendar accounts to Tana at the moment. There is a workaround where you can have other calendars sync to a single Google Calendar account, so they appear in Tana. For instructions on this, see Can I sync multiple calendars to Tana?



Related release notes

  • fixedCleaned up duplicate Event URL fields created by Google Calendar integration, and switched to using system field (this is stored internally, use debug node to see) ()
  • fixedFixed Google calendars being deselected on rare occasions ()
  • infoIn events synced from the calendar, the Calendar link field is no longer an optional field. It has now been moved to the metanode (visible when running debug node) ()
  • improvedWe only trigger sync to external calendar once every ten minutes or if you navigate to a day node in another week. Previously we synced a week's worth of events every time you went to a new daily node. ()
  • fixedGoogle Calendar sync will now only look for calendar events in workspaces that are set up to "Allow content from" for the root workspace (ie. nodes that would show up in a search node in your home workspace). ()
  • newReleased Google Calendar integration 📆 ()

Related FAQs

  • Can I sync multiple calendars to Tana?
    Sep 26, 2024

    Currently, Tana only accepts one calendar account which it can sync events from. We're hoping to add support for multiple calendar accounts in the future, but in the meantime, there is a workaround where you can make events from other accounts sync to a single account, which then could connect to Tana.

    To connect a Google account's calendar to another, go to the settings of the calendar you want to add to the primary calendar. Under "Share with specific people and groups", add your primary account and allow them to "make changes and manage sharing".

    Now go back to your primary account. Once properly linked, you'll see the calendar appear under "My calendars" in Google Calendar, not "Other calendars".

    Then go to Tana and Settings > Google Calendar sync > General config, you should be able to select it from the list of synced calendars.

  • Can I sync a calendar to other workspaces?
    Sep 26, 2024

    Currently the calendar sync only works on your private workspace.

    Related: Can I sync multiple calendars to Tana

  • Does Tana provide two-way calendar sync?
    Sep 26, 2024

    No, Tana's calendar integration provides one-way sync at the moment. This means that if you make changes to events in Tana, they are not reflected in your Google Calendar.

  • Why are my synced calendar events not getting tagged?
    Sep 26, 2024

    Tana performs an AI action to classify events coming in from your calendar. If an event doesn't match one of the classification profiles listed, AI is less likely to apply a tag to it.

    To learn about the event classes we currently support, see Classification of events

  • I have two Agendas on the daily node. How do I fix this?
    Sep 26, 2024

    This can happen if you go through the calendar sync setup a second time.

    You can remove the extra/old one by clicking the ellipsis menu on the Related content section you want to remove, then selecting Remove from #day

  • Where is the calendar in Tana?
    Sep 26, 2024

    Tana doesn't technically have something called "the" calendar.

    The question of "how can I do X with the calendar" doesn't really apply because there is no definitive calendar widget as seen in many other apps.

    What Tana does have is calendar views, date fields, and daily notes (also called calendar nodes).

    You can arrange child nodes in a calendar view defined by the date field you pick in the view, and you can take notes within the daily notes/calendar nodes like a journal. In more detail:

    • The calendar view: A "view", like view as table, view as list, view as cards, or view as calendar, is a setting on a node that determines how its children will be displayed. In the case of a search node, the search results are the children. One calendar view might show completely different things than another calendar view for the exact same period.
    • Date fields: Furthermore, what displays in a calendar view depends on which date field(s) you select in the view options. For example #todo nodes, found by a search node, might have multiple date fields such as >Created date, >Due date, >Date started, etc. Depending on what you select, the #todo nodes can appear on the date(s) of any/all of the above date fields.
    • Daily notes: When you press the Today button in the sidebar, you are taken to your daily notes, formerly called calendar nodes. These nodes represent different date granularities (day/week/month/year) and are connected to the dates they represent via the date object (via @today for example). But it is not common to view the calendar nodes in a calendar view, for instance.

    So, to summarize: there is no such thing as the calendar in Tana. The closest thing would be nodes with date information that are displayed in a calendar view.

    Based on a write-up by Navigator Darren Brierton