A how-to guide for connecting Autotask Projects to your Outlook Calendar

Working with Autotask, at a certain point we all need to start working in the Projects Module. According to Autotask, the definition of a Project is as follows: A project is a carefully planned set of steps required to meet a specific business objective. Whether it is client facing or internal, short or long term, a project will likely include the following elements: a schedule with phases, assigned tasks with set deadlines, a project team, a budget, and reports to monitor progress. Autotask projects provide all of these elements.

Autotask allows the user to configure all these elements. However, that doesn’t mean they then show up in your Outlook calendar.

For that, you need the Autotask -> Outlook Integration. This integration is one of the most used integrations for Autotask. It’s free and allows a sync in whichever direction you like.

After you’ve setup the Outlook integration

After you’ve setup the Outlook integration you will want to plan the Project tasks into people’s calendars with Service Calls.

Service Calls are a block of time that you plan on a resource to work on that particular task. This Service Call is then visible in your Outlook if you have the sync set to Autotask -> Outlook.

This process works but it does require a lot of steps. The sheer amount of steps and data entries can sometimes be discouraging to MSPs.

Some MSPs even choose not to work with Projects at all for this reason.

That’s why we created the Project Management screen in Proxuma. This screen allows you to see all your projects in one overview and drag & drop them to wherever you want.

The Projects have Service Calls embedded in them, which you can then drag into people’s calendars in our Planning Screen.

On the Planning screen you will see everyone’s availability, including things like travel time and lunch breaks. This is because Proxuma has its own Outlook Integration.

The Service Calls show up in people’s Outlook, and the planner can rearrange the service calls on the fly by dragging and dropping them within Proxuma. Everything a planner does in Proxuma gets synced to Autotask and Outlook at the same time, the moment an action in Proxuma takes place.