PulseCalendar is not syncing
What to check when events do not appear, appear twice, or do not update.
This brings together what to check for symptoms such as meetings not appearing under “Coming up” on the home screen, a calendar shared with you not showing, or times being shifted. For setting the calendar connection up in the first place, see Connecting your calendar.
Pulse supports Google Calendar and Microsoft calendars. It pulls events from the calendar of the Google or Microsoft account you signed in with and shows them under “Coming up” on the home screen of the desktop app (macOS and Windows). Only events visible on the calendar of the account you signed in with can be pulled in. Change which calendars are shown from Settings > Calendar, or from the gear icon beside “Coming up”.
Today's meetings listed in start-time order at the top of the home screen, each row showing the meeting name, the time and participants' avatars.
Checks by symptom
If that is not what you are seeing, work through the section for your symptom, from the top.
No events at all appear under “Coming up”
Check there are events on the calendar itself
Open Google Calendar or the Outlook calendar with the email address you are signed in to Pulse with, and confirm the events appear there.
Check which calendars are shown
Click the gear icon beside “Coming up” and confirm the calendars you want are ticked.
Grant the permission again
If neither is the problem, Pulse may not have been granted calendar permission. Open “Settings” from the menu at the bottom left, choose “Sign out”, and sign in again with the same account. You are asked for calendar access during sign-in; allow it.
If it still does not appear, your network or IT department's restrictions may be blocking the connection to the calendar. Go on to “Where your corporate network is involved” below.
Events from a calendar shared with you do not appear
Where you cannot see events from a calendar someone has shared, that calendar may not have been shared correctly with the email address you are signed in with.
The case to watch is where the shared calendar's provider differs from the provider you signed in with. If, for example, you are signed in with a Microsoft account and someone shares a Google Calendar with you, sharing to that email address is not enough on its own. The events have to appear on the calendar of the provider you signed in with — the Microsoft calendar, in this example. How to share a Google Calendar is explained in Google's help.
Where sharing has been set up correctly, that calendar appears as a checkbox in Pulse's calendar settings.
- Click the gear icon beside “Coming up” to list the calendars visible from the connected account.
- Tick the calendar you want. It can take a few minutes for the sync to come through.
If it still does not appear, check the sharing permissions. Some company policies prohibit sharing calendars externally. Also, where the sharing permission is “free/busy only”, Pulse cannot retrieve the events; a permission that shows all event details is required. Ask them to choose the setting equivalent to “See all event details” in the per-person permission dropdown.
The calendar sharing settings screen, with the per-person permission dropdown open showing “See only free/busy (hide details)” and “See all event details”.
Meeting times appear shifted
Pulse shows the time exactly as stored on the connected calendar.
Where a time looks shifted, open Google Calendar or the Outlook calendar and check what time the event is stored at. Correcting the time zone setting on the calendar side comes through to Pulse as well; it can take a few minutes.
If you have many meetings with overseas offices or clients, a per-event time zone on the calendar may have been set to something unintended. Events created by someone else in a different time zone are worth checking too.
Where the calendar is right and only the app's display is shifted, check the time and time zone on your computer.
System Settings > General > Date & Time — open it and confirm “Set time and date automatically” and “Set time zone automatically using your current location” are on. Where a company device-management policy has fixed them, check that the time zone set matches where you actually work.
An Outlook or Exchange calendar will not connect
Pulse supports calendars on cloud Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online). On-premises Exchange servers are not supported. If you use Outlook against an Exchange server other than Microsoft 365, calendar integration may not be available.
If you cannot connect on Microsoft 365, sign out and sign in again following Signing in with a Microsoft account. Calendar permission is requested again during sign-in.
Where your organisation's settings require administrator approval, an administrator in your IT department has to approve Pulse in the Microsoft admin centre. The approval steps are also covered in Signing in with a Microsoft account.
A calendar in an Outlook “public folder” does not appear
Calendars placed in an Outlook “public folder” work differently from ordinary calendars and cannot be read by Pulse. That applies on cloud Microsoft 365 too.
If your team runs its shared schedule in a “public folder”, you will need either to recreate it as an ordinary calendar and share that, or to switch to copying events onto personal calendars.
It used to appear and now does not
Where events have stopped appearing, or you have changed calendar sharing settings, disconnecting and reconnecting can resolve it.
Sign out
Click your workspace name at the bottom left and choose “Sign out” from “Settings”.
Sign in again
Sign in again with the same Google or Microsoft account.
Allow the permission
When calendar permission is requested, allow it again.
Check the calendars
Settings > Calendar — open it and confirm the calendars you need are on.
It takes a few minutes for the sync to catch up. If meetings still do not appear under “Coming up” after a few minutes, go back to checking whether the events exist on the calendar itself.
The Google Calendar connection keeps dropping
Where it drops again soon after reconnecting, your organisation’s Google Workspace security settings may be revoking Pulse’s access.
Ask an administrator in your IT department to add Pulse to the allowlist under “Security > Access and data control > API controls > Manage third-party app access” in the Google Workspace admin console. Where tokens for apps that are not allowlisted are set to expire periodically, reconnecting on the user side simply repeats the same cycle.
Where your corporate network is involved
Calendar sync works over traffic to Pulse’s servers and to the Google or Microsoft services. Where sign-in works but only the calendar fails to sync, authentication has gone through and it is only the later token refresh or calendar API traffic that is being blocked.
Try with network tools such as a VPN turned off; if that helps, talk to your IT department. How to recognise blocking on a corporate network — proxies and SSL inspection, always-on VPN, blocking by endpoint protection products — and the list of destinations that need to be allowed are covered in Network and allowlists.
Where you cannot get approval on a company-issued machine
Where administrator approval is required and you cannot proceed yourself, ask your IT department. For calendar integration there are three things to ask for.
- On Microsoft 365: application approval for Pulse in the Microsoft admin centre (the permission needed is reading calendar events)
- On Google Workspace: allowing Pulse under API controls in the admin console
- On the network: allowing HTTPS to Pulse’s destinations, and, where SSL inspection is in use, confirming certificate distribution
A template for the request is in Network and allowlists. Keep the “calendar integration approval” item and use it as it stands.
If none of this resolves it
If the steps above do not resolve it, contact tharada@the-unchain.com. Including the following helps us investigate faster.
- The type of account you sign in with (Google or Microsoft) and the domain of that email address
- The date and time of the meeting that does not appear (in a form that shows the time zone) and the calendar name
- Whether it is an event on your own calendar or on a shared calendar
- Settings > Calendar — whether that calendar appears in that list
- Whether no events appear at all, or only events on a particular calendar
- Your network environment (corporate LAN, VPN or not, proxy or not)
Where only the note for a particular meeting is missing, see Notes are missing as well.