How calendars and events fit together
Powerlily events keep appointments and milestones attached to the correct lead or project. A staff member can also connect their own Google Calendar so assigned jobs and appointments appear alongside their other commitments.
Use Powerlily as the operational source of the event. The connected calendar is a personal scheduling view and conflict signal for the assigned person.
What currently connects
Powerlily currently supports Google Calendar connections. Each staff member authorizes their own Google account from personal account settings. The connection is not shared across the company.
Connection tokens are encrypted at rest. A user can disconnect or reconnect their own calendar without changing another team member’s setup.
Connect Google Calendar
- Open your account settings.
- Find the Google Calendar integration.
- Select Connect Google Calendar.
- Choose the intended Google account.
- Review and approve the requested access.
- Return to Powerlily and confirm the connected email address.
Connect the account you actually use for work scheduling. If you have multiple Google Workspace identities, check the selected email before approving access.
Choose your calendar settings
After connecting, two settings control how Powerlily and Google Calendar work together.
- Push my jobs to Google Calendar: Assigned installations, site visits, appointments, and supported schedule items are added to your Google Calendar with their reminders.
- Share my free/busy with dispatch: The schedule board can warn the team before booking you over a personal commitment.
Free/busy sharing exposes occupied time ranges, not the title, description, attendees, or other details of your personal calendar events.
Create an event
Use an event for work that belongs at a specific date and time, such as a consultation, site assessment, design review, inspection, customer call, or internal meeting.
- Open the calendar, lead, or project where the event belongs.
- Select Create event.
- Enter a clear title and useful description.
- Choose the start date and time.
- Add an end time when the event has a defined duration.
- Link the event to a lead or project when applicable.
- Add staff attendees and reminders.
- Enable a customer reminder only when you intend to contact the customer.
- Save the event.
Link the event to the right record
An event can belong to a project, a lead, or the company calendar as a standalone event. It cannot belong to both a lead and a project at the same time.
Lead and project events inherit access and branch context from their parent record. Link customer-specific appointments so the team can reach the right contact, address, history, and related work from the event.
Add staff attendees
Select the active team members who should attend or be responsible for the event. Added attendees receive the applicable Powerlily notifications and reminders.
Only eligible staff from the same company can be attendees. Customers are not added to the internal staff attendee list. Customer communication uses the event’s explicit customer-reminder controls.
Configure staff reminders
An event can have multiple reminder offsets. Common choices include:
- At the event start
- 10 or 30 minutes before
- 1 or 2 hours before
- 1 or 2 days before
- 1 week before
- A custom time up to four weeks before
If no attendees are selected, reminders can fall back to the event owner derived from the linked lead or project. Staff reminders are delivered through supported in-app, push, and email notification channels.
Add extra reminder email addresses
Where the event form provides additional reminder recipients, enter valid email addresses for people who need the reminder but are not Powerlily staff attendees. Use this carefully and avoid exposing private project information to unintended recipients.
Send an explicit customer reminder
Customer reminders are opt-in per event. Enable the reminder only when the event is customer-facing and the customer has appropriate contact details and permission for the selected channel.
Supported customer reminder timing includes 1 hour, 3 hours, 1 day, or 2 days before the event. Powerlily uses the customer email or phone from the linked project or lead. It does not silently substitute the company’s own address when customer contact information is missing.
Email and SMS delivery depend on the customer data, company communication setup, consent, and suppression rules.
Create a recurring event
Use recurrence for a genuine repeating commitment instead of manually creating copies.
Recurring events can repeat:
- Daily
- Weekly on selected weekdays
- Monthly by day of month, numbered weekday, or last weekday
- Yearly
You can set an interval, an ending date, or a maximum number of occurrences. The company time zone controls the repeating wall-clock time so a 9:00 a.m. event remains at 9:00 a.m. across daylight-saving changes.
Edit a recurring series
When changing a recurring event, choose the intended scope:
- This event only: Changes only the selected occurrence.
- This and following: Changes the selected occurrence and future occurrences while leaving earlier history intact.
- All events: Applies the appropriate series-wide change across the series.
An individually moved occurrence remains customized and is not recreated at its original date by a later series update.
Delete a recurring event carefully
Use the same scope choices when deleting from a recurring series. Deleting one occurrence should not remove the full series unless that is the selected action.
Before removing this and following or all events, check customer reminders, attendee schedules, and any linked project work that depends on those appointments.
How recurring events appear elsewhere
Each generated occurrence is stored as a normal event. That allows reminders, Google Calendar syncing, the mobile feed, dashboards, and other Powerlily views to treat each date as real scheduled work.
Powerlily maintains upcoming occurrences on a rolling horizon. You do not need to recreate an open-ended series each year.
What syncs to Google Calendar
When outbound syncing is enabled, supported events and assigned schedule items are pushed to the owner’s connected Google Calendar. Creating, changing, or deleting the Powerlily item updates its corresponding external event.
Recurring Powerlily events sync as their individual occurrences. This keeps one-off changes and reminders aligned with the actual operational record.
Use free/busy information in dispatch
When free/busy sharing is enabled, dispatch can see that a person is unavailable during a time range and avoid accidental double-booking. Powerlily does not import the personal event’s title or other private details.
A busy-time warning is scheduling context, not an automatic prohibition. Your company should define who can override a conflict and when.
Reschedule an event
When an event moves to a future time, previously sent reminder records can be rearmed when their new reminder time is still ahead. Customer reminder state can also be reset when the updated reminder time has not passed.
After rescheduling, confirm:
- The correct recurrence scope was used
- Staff attendees remain correct
- Reminder offsets still make sense
- The customer reminder is still appropriate
- The Google Calendar event shows the new time
- No crew or personal busy-time conflict was introduced
Reconnect an expired calendar
If Google access expires or is revoked, the connection changes to Reconnection needed and syncing pauses.
- Open account settings.
- Find the Google Calendar connection.
- Select Reconnect.
- Authorize the correct Google account again.
- Confirm the connection is active and review both sync settings.
Disconnect Google Calendar
Select Disconnect in account settings when you no longer want Powerlily to use that calendar. Events Powerlily added are removed from the connected calendar as part of disconnection.
The underlying Powerlily events remain in Powerlily. Disconnecting the external calendar does not delete the operational record.
Calendar and reminder habits
- Use the company’s correct time zone.
- Link customer work to its lead or project.
- Add only the staff who need to attend.
- Use multiple reminders only when each one adds value.
- Enable customer reminders deliberately.
- Confirm customer consent and contact details before SMS.
- Use recurrence for repeatable work, not unrelated appointments.
- Choose the recurrence edit scope carefully.
- Resolve calendar reconnection warnings promptly.
- Check free/busy warnings before dispatching work.
Troubleshooting
Connect Google Calendar does not work
Confirm that Google Calendar integration is configured for the Powerlily environment and that your browser allows the Google authorization redirect. Try again from account settings and choose the intended Google account.
An event is missing from Google Calendar
Confirm that your connection is active, Push my jobs to Google Calendar is enabled, and you are the owner or assigned person for the event or schedule item. Check whether the connection requires reauthorization.
Dispatch cannot see my busy time
Confirm that Share my free/busy with dispatch is enabled and the connection is active. Busy-time synchronization can take a short period to refresh.
A teammate did not receive a reminder
Confirm that they were selected as a staff attendee, the reminder time had not already passed when it was added, and their notification channels are available.
The customer did not receive a reminder
Confirm that the reminder was explicitly enabled, the linked lead or project has valid contact details, the reminder time was still in the future, and email or SMS delivery was permitted.
Editing one occurrence changed too much
Check which recurrence scope was selected. Use This event only for a one-off exception and This and following when the new pattern begins from that occurrence.
The event time changed around daylight saving time
Confirm the company time zone. Recurring rules use the company’s local wall-clock time, while an incorrectly configured time zone can make the intended schedule appear wrong.
Related guides
- Tasks, Events, Notes, Files, and Project History
- Scheduling Crews and Managing Installations
- Using Lilypad for Field Execution
- Conversations, SMS, and Team Collaboration
- Team Members, Roles, and Permissions
