Automation Basics

Everything you need to know about setting up your automation and understanding its basic behaviour & logic.

Outlook Calendar Automations - General

The Outlook Calendar Integration Plus app offers two primary automation types:
    Create a  monday.com  item/subitem based on an Outlook Calendar event.
    Create an Outlook Calendar event based on a  monday.com  item/subitem.
    Keep the event and the item/subitem in sync.

Create event based on item/subitem ->

Create an item/subitem based on an event ->

Important Notes

  • The integration supports one-way synchronization - changes in  monday.com  can be reflected in Outlook Calendar and update the event, but not vice versa.
  • During automation setup, you'll need to map fields between  monday.com  and Outlook Calendar to determine how information is shared between the two systems.

Outlook Calendar Automations - Logic & Configuration

Understanding  monday.com  Automations

Automation in  monday.com  follows a general structure - "When something happens, perform an action."
  • Trigger, "When something happens" - defines what event or action will activate the automation
  • Action, "perform an action" - defines what the automation will do once it's activated.
  • Trigger can be in  monday.com  and action in Outlook Calendar or the other way around.

Understanding Outlook Calendar Automations

Automation Logic

Automations follow this general structure: "When column changes, create an event in this calendar or update existing event using this logic."
This means that when the trigger happens (column change) and the automation starts to work it will either create a new event or update an existing event -
  • If there isn't a connected event, the automation will create a new event.
  • If there is a connected event, the automation will update the connected event based on the defined logic (see more info in the next section).

Automation Configuration - Key Components

  • Outlook logo - Selects the connected Outlook account. Events will be created in the calendar associated with this account.
  • Person changes to someone - This is the trigger that will initiate the automation.
  • Event - Determines how monday item fields are mapped to Outlook event fields. More on that here -  Mapping fields⁠ 
  • This calendar - Lists all available calendars for the connected account and defines where the event will be created.
  • This logic - Defines how event updates are handled when an event is already connected.
  • Update Connected Event – Updates the existing event based on the field mapping settings.
  • Create New Event & Keep Previous Event – Creates a new event while preserving the existing one. Useful for recurring or sequential events.
  • Create New Event & Delete Previous Event – Creates a new event and removes the old one, useful for resetting event details when significant changes occur in the existing event (as an example, if additional data was added/removed in the calendar itself).

The Integration Column

When automation runs, it creates a link between the item and the event, storing this connection in the Integration Column. Each item can only be connected to one event at a time. Any updates to the event are based on this connection.
For more info about the integration column -  ⁠⁠Syncing & The Integration Column⁠ 

When to Use Each Update Logic

  • Update connected event - This should usually be the default option.
  • Create a new event and keep the previous event -
  • Useful for recurring or sequential events, like an item with "rolling" events, and we don't want to lose the previous events. An example ->
  • Each item is a lead in our sales pipeline, and we have multiple date columns representing upcoming meetings.
  • The first meeting is scheduled, and an event is created.
  • The second meeting is set, and a new event is created with the new date, but we don't want to delete the previous meeting from our calendar.
  • Create a new event and delete the previous event -
  • This is very similar to "update connected event" with one difference, it allows to "reset" the event.
  • The details of an event can change overtime because people work on them in the calendar itself.
  • When we create a new event is created from scratch based on the mapped fields in our mapping configuration.


Let's Continue, Mapping Fields →