Connect Outlook Calendar for suggestions

To connect your calendar for suggestions, you need at least a Plus subscription.

Connect your Outlook calendar to Keeping and you get time entry suggestions based on your appointments. Keeping reads your calendar through an ICS link, which you create by publishing your calendar. This works with Microsoft 365, Exchange and Outlook.com accounts.

Step 1: Publish your calendar and copy the ICS link

You publish a calendar in Outlook on the web (outlook.office.com or outlook.com) or in the new Outlook for Windows. Both work the same way.

1. Open the Calendar.
2. Click the gear icon (Settings) in the top right and go to Calendar > Shared calendars.
3. Under Publish a calendar, select the calendar you want to connect.
4. Choose the permission Can view all details. With the other options Keeping only sees that you're busy, not what an appointment is about.
5. Click Publish.
6. Two links appear: an HTML link and an ICS link. Click the ICS link and choose Copy link.

Was the calendar published before? Then the links are already shown and you only need to copy the ICS link.

Using classic Outlook for Windows or Outlook for Mac?

Classic desktop Outlook and Outlook for Mac can't publish a calendar as an ICS link. Your calendar is stored online in the same place, though. Sign in to Outlook on the web with the same account and follow the steps above. You don't need to change anything in your desktop app afterwards: appointments you create there also end up in the published calendar.

Don't see Publish a calendar, or can't publish? On a work account, your administrator may have turned off calendar publishing. Ask your administrator to turn it on.

Step 2: Add the calendar in Keeping

1. In Keeping, go to My account > Calendars.
2. Click Add a calendar.
3. Paste the copied ICS link into the Calendar URL field and give the calendar a name, such as Work.
4. Under Use for, choose which organisations get suggestions from this calendar.
5. Save the calendar.

Keeping then reads your calendar. Under Status in the overview you can see how many appointments were found and when the calendar was last updated.

Keep the ICS link to yourself

Anyone with the ICS link can see your appointments. Don't share the link with anyone. Think someone else got hold of it? Under Shared calendars in the settings, click Unpublish and publish the calendar again. You then get a new link. Copy it and edit the calendar in My account > Calendars.

How often is the calendar updated?

Keeping fetches your calendar automatically in the background. Just added an appointment and want to see it right away? Choose Sync now for the calendar in My account > Calendars. Keep in mind that Outlook also updates a published calendar with some delay.

Want it the other way around, with your Keeping time entries in your Outlook calendar? Read Time registrations in Outlook.com.