ActivTrak’s Google Calendar integration provides a more comprehensive picture of employees’ workdays by filling in the “blank spaces” in users’ digital activity with meeting data from their calendars.
Many employees—especially those working in an office or frequently in the field—do not spend their entire workday at a computer. Much of their time is spent in in-person or phone meetings that the ActivTrak Agent can't detect. During periods of digital inactivity, the Google Calendar integration provides an additional data source, enabling ActivTrak to fill gaps in time spent in Offline Meetings.
Setting up the Google Calendar integration involves configuring your Google instance to set up a super admin, allowlisting the OAuth2 application used by ActivTrak for Google-related integrations, and enabling ActivTrak APIs. Once the setup process is complete, the integration can be configured within the ActivTrak app.
Contents
- Requirements
- Data security & privacy
- Setup instructions
- View Offline Meeting data in dashboards
- Update the Google Calendar Integration configuration
- Learn more
Requirements
- An Admin user role in ActivTrak
- A current paid ActivTrak subscription or an active trial
- At least one deployed ActivTrak Agent that is actively collecting activity data
- An active Google Cloud instance
- An active project setup within the Google Cloud Platform
- Super administrator permissions to your active Google Workspace instance (Super admin is required for domain-wide access to all users’ calendar data)
Data security & privacy
What permissions are required?
The integration requires organizational-level calendar permissions because Google Workspace doesn't offer user-specific permission controls at the granular level needed for this type of integration.
What data does ActivTrak actually access?
While we have permission to access all calendars in your organization, we follow a strict, multi-step process that ensures we only collect data for Users who are actively tracked in ActivTrak:
- User matching: We first pull your organization's directory to identify available Users
- Agent verification: We then match these Users against your ActivTrak account to identify only those Tracked Users
- Targeted data collection: Finally, we request calendar data exclusively for Tracked Users with matching UPNs or email addresses
What this means for your organization:
- Calendar data is only collected for active Tracked Users
- UPNs or Email addresses must match between Google Workspace and ActivTrak for data to be retrieved
- Untracked Users will never have their calendar data accessed, even though the permission scope technically allows it
- If UPNs or email addresses don't match (for example, due to different User Principal Names), calendar data collection will fail for that user
This conservative approach ensures that, while we request the necessary permissions to function, we access and store only the minimum data required to provide offline meeting insights for your Tracked Users.
Setup instructions
Configure your Google instance
Allowlist the ActivTrak App. Before authenticating any of your Google accounts, allowlist the ActivTrak OAuth2 application for Google-related integrations. To do this, log in to the Google Workspace Admin Console and enter the ActivTrak OAuth2 Client ID.
Log in to the Google Workspace Admin Console.
- Navigate to Security > Access and data control > API controls
- Click Manage Third-Party App Access within the App access control panel
- Click Configure new app to add an app
- A new window will appear with a search field, as shown below. Paste the following Client ID
737466008456-cpjn7795homre29dmob052o0t4h98o7c.apps.googleusercontent.com
- Select your Scope for ActivTrak to see users, then click Continue, as shown below. Note: Most cases should select the 'All in [organization] (all users)' option.
- Select 'Trusted' when asked what access to give the ActivTrak application. Leave Allowlist for exemption blank, then click Continue
- Finally, review your settings and click Finish to confirm, as shown below. You may be prompted to enter your password again to verify your identity.
Establish a Super Admin
For this step, you have two options:
- Designate an existing user with a Super Admin role to enable ActivTrak’s Google Calendar integration
- Create a new user with a Super Admin role who will be responsible for the integration authentication. To create a new Super Admin role, click Directory > Users, as shown in the screenshots below.
Enable the ActivTrak APIs for the Google Calendar Integration
- Visit the Google Cloud Console.
- Using the search bar, find 'APIs & Services'
- Click Enable APIs and Services
- If this is your first time creating a project, click Create Project on the right
-
Title your project something friendly that you can recognize. A Project ID will automatically be generated for you, as shown below. Only edit this if you have specific reasons to do so.
- Once your project has been created and selected, search for and enable the following APIs through the Admin API Library
Configure the Google Calendar Integration in ActivTrak
- Log in to the ActivTrak application
- Navigate to APIs & Integrations > Integrations
- Locate the Google Calendar Integration card, then click the + Add Instance button
- The Google Calendar Integration drawer will open. Input the Instance Name and Calendar Domain. Authenticate the integration by connecting to Google. Then click Save.
- Once the process is complete, the card will display the View Instance button
View Offline Meeting Data in dashboards
After enabling the Google Calendar Integration, Admins will get access to a set of dashboards that display Offline Meeting data. Learn more here.
Update the Google Calendar Integration Configuration
To update your Google Calendar integration configuration (i.e., to use a different Google credential), the integration must be deleted and re-enabled to accept the update.
To delete the Google Calendar integration, click the View Instance button and click the delete icon. After deleting, please follow the previous steps in this guide to reconfigure the integration.