Scheduling customer interviews can quickly turn into a mess of back-and-forth emails. If your team manages their availability in Google Calendar, you can link your calendar to propose interview times alongside existing meetings. The integration checks availability in real time, offers flexible choices, prevents double-booking, and eliminates the need for endless emails so you can focus on gathering insights.
The Aha! Discovery integration with Google Calendar is included in the Aha! Discovery Advanced plan.
Prerequisites
Integration type |
One-way |
Aha! Discovery level |
Per user |
Required Aha! Discovery permissions |
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Supported record types |
Studies — specifically a study's scheduling page |
Aha! Discovery plans |
How it works
The integration scans researchers’ Google Calendars for busy times and removes those slots from a study’s scheduling page. It calculates availability in real time when a participant opens the scheduling page to select a meeting time. Tentative and out-of-office events on the calendar are treated as unavailable.
The integration reads busy status only to determine availability. It does not access or store meeting content.
Each person configures the integration in their personal settings. After a researcher associated with a study completes setup, their name appears in the Availability field within the scheduling page’s Times section. When selected, the integration excludes Busy periods from that researcher’s Google calendar so participants cannot book those times.
If you choose more than one researcher in the Availability field for a scheduling page, the integration checks both researchers’ calendars for busy times. Participants see time options when at least one of the selected researchers is available.
Set up the integration
Authenticate to Google Calendar
Connect your Google calendar to Aha! Discovery using the steps below.
In your Aha! Discovery account, navigate to User menu -> Settings -> Personal -> Meeting services -> Calendar sync.
Next to Google, click Link account.
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Set access permission levels:
Select Read and write to allow the integration to both check your Google calendar for busy times and add new calendar events automatically when a participant schedules a meeting.
Select Read only if you only want to allow the integration to check your Google calendar for busy times. When you choose this option, calendar events will be sent to you via email and not created automatically.
Enter your Google login and password when prompted and click Next.
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On the next screen, select what you want Aha! Discovery to be able to do:
See available on Google calendars you have access to.
View and edit events on all your calendars.
Click Allow to finish setting up the integration.
Configure the scheduling page
Configure scheduling for your study so participants see accurate time slots. You will need contributor permissions to do this.
Navigate to your study and click Scheduling.
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In the Weekly hours:
Use the dropdown menu next to Availability to select the researchers whose calendars the integration will read. All researchers linked to your study appear in the dropdown, but you can only select those who have set up the integration.
Configure Weekly hours for your scheduling page. This prevents the integration from booking time that appears open on an Google calendar but falls outside of researchers’ working hours.
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In the Meetings section:
Configure the Interview duration to tell the integration how long meetings it schedules should be.
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Configure the Schedule to further refine researcher availability. The integration will look for busy times within the available times you set here and excludes times from the scheduling page when researchers are not available:
Weekly hours: This option will generate available meeting times based on the Weekly hours and researcher Availability you set in the Times section.
Custom: This option enables you to manually specify dates and times for each session. Click +Add to select a date and set the times you want to offer. Click Apply to save your changes. Click +Add again to add additional dates.
Learn more about creating a scheduling page in the the Aha! Discovery knowledge base.