Overview
Keeping your calendar organized is one of the easiest ways to save time and provide a seamless experience for your clients. Delenta’s Outlook Calendar Integration ensures that your personal life, external business commitments, and coaching schedule live together in perfect harmony.
This article covers how to connect your Outlook calendar, how synced events look on your dashboard, and how Delenta handles buffer times, recurring entries, and conflict management to keep you from being double-booked.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Step 1: Connect Your Outlook Calendar
Head over to your Delenta dashboard and select Integrations from the left-hand menu.
Scroll down to the Calendar & Integrations section.
Locate Outlook Calendar Synchronisation and turn on the toggle switch to connect.
Log in with your Microsoft credentials when prompted to authorize the sync. Once complete, you will be redirected back to Delenta, where your account will show as Connected.
Step 2: Configure Your Sub-Calendars & Primary Write Calendar
Click the Settings button on the Outlook Calendar integration card. A pop-up menu titled My Calendars will appear.
Choose what Delenta reads: Check the boxes next to any sub-calendars that you want Delenta to monitor for scheduling conflicts. Delenta can read up to 3 sub-calendars per provider.
Choose where Delenta writes: Select which calendar should act as your Primary Calendar. Any new appointments created directly within Delenta will automatically be written back to this specific Outlook calendar. Note: Delenta only allows one primary write calendar at a time.
Click Save Settings.
Step 3: Customising Event Colours & Re-syncing
Navigate to your Calendar page from the sidebar and click on Calendar Settings (or the gear icon).
Under My Added Calendars, your Primary Calendar will appear at the top highlighted with a distinct background colour.
You can assign custom colours to each of your sub-calendars so you can immediately tell where a synced event originated just by glancing at your master layout.
When to use Re-sync: If you ever switch your primary calendar provider (e.g., migrating from Outlook to Google) or add a brand-new sub-calendar on the provider's side, come back to this page and click the Resync Outlook Calendar button so Delenta can accurately read your updated data.
Step 4: Understanding Buffer Settings
Delenta allows you to automatically insert breathing room around your external commitments so clients don't book back-to-back sessions.
In your Calendar Settings, navigate to the Buffers tab.
Go to the section titled Buffer Settings for External Calendar Events.
Set your preferred duration for Before session and After session (e.g., 15 minutes).
Delenta will now automatically block out these buffer windows on your availability calendar around any incoming event synced from Outlook.
How Syncing & Conflict Management Works
Free vs. Busy Synced Events
Delenta looks at how an event is marked inside Outlook to determine your booking availability:
"Free" Outlook Events: If an event synced from Outlook is flagged as "Free" (such as a multi-day all-day holiday note), Delenta will allow you to create and display booking availability right on top of it. It assumes you are still open for business.
"Busy" Outlook Events: If an event synced from Outlook is flagged as "Busy", Delenta protects your time. It will not let public availability be displayed on top of that event, ensuring clients cannot choose that slot.
All-Day Recurring Events vs. Timed Recurring Events
All-Day Recurring Events: Multi-day or recurring all-day entries synced from Outlook (like a 3-day conference) display neatly at the very top of your Delenta day columns under the "All Day" banner.
Timed Recurring Events: Recurring events that have specific block hours across multiple days (e.g., a recurring meeting from 8:00 AM, 17th Jul to 9:00 AM 19th July) will occupy those explicit hourly slots on your calendar view.
Creating Overrides
While Delenta protects your public availability from "Busy" conflicts, you still retain ultimate control:
If you manually build an appointment or session inside Delenta that overlaps with an Outlook-synced event, a Conflicts Detected warning box will pop up.
The system will tell you exactly which external event is causing the issue.
You can click Choose another time to fix it, or hit Schedule Anyway to consciously override the conflict. Delenta will happily place your coaching slot right on top of the external event if you tell it to.
Helpful Tips
The 15-Minute Visual Gap: Don't panic if you see a blank space on your dashboard grid between an external event and your open availability slot. That's just your custom buffer setting doing its job beautifully!
See the example image below with a 15 mins buffer applied before and after my Outlook synched event.
Next Step
Now that your Outlook calendar is fully integrated, head over to your Calendar View to check out your colour-coded layout. Try setting up a test availability slot to see exactly how your automated buffer padding looks to the world!