Connect your calendar to start working effectively with meetings and events in Tana, and get notifications before upcoming meetings with a one-click option to transcribe. Now available on Tana Pro and Plus.
Initial setup: When you sign up for a trial or upgrade to a Tana paid subscription, you will have the opportunity to connect your Google Calendar with Tana. The Google account used for calendar sync 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.
Meeting notifications: Get notifications for upcoming meetings 2 mins before the meeting starts, clicking the notification will open the meeting node in Tana + the meeting link + start live transcription, making it easy to join and be present.
Botless meeting transcription: Start transcribing audio from a meeting with one click and get an auto-generated summary directly in Tana. After the meeting you can go through suggested action items and tag the ones you want to flow to your Task board.
Build a CRM by having meetings: When we sync your contacts to Tana, they all get tagged with #person. As you have more meetings, your CRM is basically making itself.
The Calendar integration and live meeting transcription 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
The Tana Desktop app can send you notifications about upcoming meetings, allowing you to add the meeting agent easily.
All notes are saved back in Tana on the meeting node, and connects back to your knowledge base.
When the live meeting transcription creates notes, it does the following:
Writes a concise meeting summary: Your meeting summaries are no longer siloed on a different transcription platform just for meeting notes. They now live in Tana with the rest of your knowledge, connected to your graph and ready to use as context for AI.
Creates action items based on the conversation: It suggests tasks that come out of a meeting, so you can easily add them to you task dashboard by tagging them with #task (or the supertag you use).
Builds a CRM: Meetings usually have Attendees. By syncing your contacts that you have meetings with, the calendar integration will build up your CRM in Tana over time. You can then enrich the information on these contacts by referencing them in meetings.
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.
When you install the Tana Desktop app, and have Google Calendar synched, Tana will by default send you meeting notifications.
A notification will be shown 2 mins before an upcoming meeting
Clicking the notification will open the meeting link (Google Meet, Teams, Zoom etc) and open the meeting node in Tana, so you can start taking notes or add the meeting agent.
If you would like to disable desktop meeting notifications, you can go to the system menu for Tana desktop, click Options and toggle "Meeting notifications" off:
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.
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
This means that some content coming from the sync cannot be edited by the users. If they are changed, the next sync will overwrite this with the existing information from the calendar. This means that any changes to events need to happen in Google Calendar, not in Tana.
Here's a list of information coming from Google that is mapped to the corresponding Tana calendar sync settings. See below for the full list. These would be not editable in Tana due to their Google Calendar counterparts updating them regularly:
["Google term"] -> [Tana calendar config term]
"Summary" -> Node name
Start/End time -> Date field (user field)
Attendees -> Attendees field (user field)
HTML link -> Calendar link (system field)
Conference Link -> Event meet link URL (user field)
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 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:
If you are on a Tana paid subscription, 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:
Tana syncs new events from your calendar within set intervals. If you know a new event in your calendar hasn't shown up in Tana yet, you can manually force a refresh by running the command Force calendar sync on the title of the day/week node.
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.
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: Description
Parameters
Meeting: The most common type of event.
Attendees: Min. 2
Block: A block of time with no attendees
Keywords: gym, lunch, dnd, busy, hold, traveling, driving, appt; Attendees: Must be 0
Full day event: An event that last the entire day
Note: Must be checked as a full-day event in calendar
Task: A chore that needs to be completed
Keywords: prepare, send, draft, create, finish, follow up, review, action item, to-do; Attendees: Must be 0
Investor meeting: A meeting with an investor
Keywords: 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 vacation
Keywords: 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 1:1
Keywords: 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").
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.
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
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?
How do I change the tags used in the meeting agent and calendar integration?
Dec 02, 2024
Supertags are created or assigned as part of the setup for your meeting agent/calendar integration. Here's a quick guide on how to change these tags post-setup.
Supertags that are used during calendar sync are listed under Classification of events in the Google Calendar settings:
Go to Account settings > Settings > Google Calendar settings > Classification of events
For more on what the different event types mean, see here.
When you change a tag, it needs to use the same fields that are set up for the calendar integration, otherwise the information will get lost. To check which fields are used during sync, go to Google Calendar settings > Advanced > Raw configuration:
The raw configuration defines all the fields that Tana will sync specific calendar event information to.
Supertags are used when processing the transcript to create meeting notes. These supertags are set during setup and can be changed by going into the command node that controls the meeting agent and the transcription process.
First, you must navigate to the text processing agent command for your meetings. For instructions on how to find this, go here and scroll up: Meeting agent > Text processing agent command
You should now have the Text processing agent config open. Here you will see parameters like "Tags used for X", which is the list of supertags used when processing meetings.
To change the tags, you simply add or replace tags from these lists.
However, there are several things to consider when you add/replace from these lists:
Study existing tag: Open the config for the tag you want to replace, and study how it's set up. Try and identify dependencies like specific fields that are also used in the meeting config. Try and make sure your replacement tag replaces as much of the original one as possible.
Set Base type: Make sure the new supertag you add has the appropriate Base type defined, and that it's suitable for the type of object it is:
Items typically use base tags: Project, Topic, Event
Entities typically use base tags: Person, Organization, Location
Action items typically use base tag Task
Decommission the old tag: Make sure the tag you're no longer using is merged with the one you're using, or deleted, to prevent clutter and confusion
There are likely more things to consider, let us know if we missed any via Rate this article 👍👎.
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.
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.
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.