Overview
Before you start scheduling candidates in Gem Scheduling, you'll need to select a default scheduling calendar. Gem uses this calendar as the "owner" of all calendar events that we create on your behalf. It will be a centralized location to view all schedule events, so that it's not tied to any individual like the coordinator or recruiter. This article covers how to create a dedicated scheduling calendar in Outlook, and select it in Gem.
Requirements
- Your team must use Gem Scheduling.
- Your team must use Microsoft Outlook for your email service.
- You must be a Gem admin to set a default scheduling calendar.
- You must have sufficient permissions in Outlook to create a new calendar.
Considerations
Before setting up a default scheduling calendar, we recommend familiarizing yourself with the following considerations.
Organizer
The owner of the scheduling calendar (i.e., the person who created the calendar) will be seen as the organizer of both candidate and interviewer events. This means it may show up on the calendar event within Outlook, and the email notifications sent for all events will be seen as coming from this user.
Because of this, be mindful of who creates the calendar.
Access and permissions
Whenever we create events on your scheduling calendar, we use the Microsoft permissions of the person creating the schedule in Gem Scheduling. Because of this, it’s important that the scheduling calendar has been shared with everyone who plans on using Gem Scheduling to schedule candidates. Follow the Share the calendar instructions below to ensure that they do.
Private events
By default, when a job is set to Confidential in Gem, any interviews scheduled for that job will be added to interviewers’ calendars as private events. However, Microsoft Office 365 does not allow private events on shared calendars.
If you are using a shared calendar as your scheduling calendar, Gem will instead add interviews for confidential jobs to interviewers’ calendars as standard (i.e. non-private) calendar events.
If anyone in your organization needs to create private calendar events for confidential jobs, they will need to use non-shared scheduling calendars (i.e. their own calendars).
Create a scheduling calendar
In most cases, we recommend creating a new calendar dedicated for Gem Scheduling. Follow these steps to create a scheduling calendar in Outlook.
- Go to the Add calendar page in Outlook.
- Select the Create blank calendar item in the left-hand sidebar
- Fill out the form with a suitable name for the calendar, and then save.
Share the calendar
Once you’ve created the calendar, the next step is to edit the sharing and permissions.
- Select the three dots next to your calendar’s name in the left-hand sidebar.
- Selecting Sharing and permissions from the drop-down.
- This is where you should add all other coordinators and recruiters that will be using Gem Scheduling. When you add them, it’s important to make sure the permission is Can edit so that they can create events on this calendar.
Set the default scheduling calendar in Gem
Follow these steps to choose a default scheduling calendar in Gem Scheduling.
- Select your account at the bottom of the main sidebar, then select the Admin settings option in the dropdown.
- Select the Scheduling tab.
- In the General setup section, select Default scheduling calendar.
- Choose your scheduling calendar from the dropdown list.
Troubleshooting: Users are unable to access the scheduling calendar unless they're the calendar owner
As mentioned above, we recommend setting up a dedicated, shared calendar that everyone can use for scheduling. There are multiple ways to share an Outlook calendar, but the steps described above are the only method that will work for the purpose of Gem Scheduling. If you find that users are not able to access the sharing calendar, and only the person who originally set up the calendar can see it, we recommend going through the steps above to make sure you have shared the calendar successfully.
Have any issues or questions on this topic? Please feel free to contact your dedicated Gem Customer Success Manager directly or our Support team at support@gem.com.