Background

Together Platform is a web application for businesses to run internal mentoring programs for employees. By integrating with Google for Work, you give your users several user experience improvements when managing their participation in the mentoring program:

• Users can see free/busy slots of their matching, so they can book mentoring sessions at the right times

• Users can see the RSVP of their matching to mentorship sessions because the user is the organizer of their own event

• Users can add a hangouts link automatically to mentorship meetings

• Users can reschedule/cancel directly from Google Calendar

Installation

Installation is simple. First, Ensure you have access as an Admin to your organization's Together instance then head to your integrations page within the platform.

Once on the integrations page, you can see the list of eligible integrations. To begin with the Google for Work Calendar integration, click the blue Set Up button beside the Calendar Integration:

Next you will be presented with 4 steps:

• First, select your vendor, in this case, please select "Google Calendar"

  • You will also see an option to enter an Integration Owner. You may enter an email to be notified in case the integration/connection fails at any point.

  • After filling out an integration owner, click the Continue button:

Second, you will select your preferred integration method, for this guide, we will be sticking with the Domain-wide integration. Once selected, click Continue.

• With the Domain-wide integration, you will be consenting to permissions on all user calendars at once. The domain-wide integration is recommended because it removes any user friction of having to personally install the integration when signing up for the mentoring program, and avoids a mixed experience where only one person out of two in a mentorship matching has their calendar integrated.

After you hit continue, you will be taken to the third step where you will be asked to install our Google Workspace app. To do so, click on the blue hyperlink titled Google Workplace app listing.

This will bring you to the app on the GWS marketplace, where you can click the install button and authorize the app for your organization:

• Note: only admins with sufficient GWS privileges will be able to install the app, so please ensure you log in to this page with the correct account.

Next, click the Continue button to select the account you would like to install the app for:

Once you select with your GWS admin account, please check off each of the required permissions then click the Continue button:

Once you finalize the installation, you will see a confirmation page like this here. Click Done to move on and then head back to your integrations page tab on the platform:

Now that you're back in the platform and have the app installed, click the blue Continue button. Once you do, a test will run that will confirm if the integration is functional and for how many users it currently is active for.

If everything looks good and the app can access all of the users that you would expect, click the blue Done button to finalize the integration:

Once the integration has been finalized, you can confirm it is active at any point by heading back to your integrations page. If you need to edit the configuration or re-test the integration later on, you can do so by clicking either button here:

Permissions

Together's Google for Work app requires:

1. Read and Modify calendars

2. View basic user profiles

Data Usage

Only metadata of calendar events tied to mentoring sessions booked in Together Platform, such as event ID and start/end time is used. Together never uses integrations for purposes unrelated to mentoring sessions.

Further Information on Calendar Integrations

• It improves the user experience when users can sign in and they are automatically integrated without having to fumble with accepting an integration. It also means the experience is consistent for all employees and they do not need two versions of documentation, should they want to read about booking time with a mentor or mentee.
• The app can be restricted to a dynamic group/list in admin.google.com if you want to decrease the scope.
• We have a SOC2 independent security audit and take credentials seriously, only ever using them for a signed-in user booking a mentorship session.
• Without the integration, you will not be the organizer of your mentoring sessions, meaning you cannot see RSVPs or manage the invite in Google Calendar.

Additional Resources

Official documentation for the Google API endpoints Together uses is available here. In general, API calls are made in the following manner:

1. A user looking to book a mentorship session would call freebusy

2. A user books a time, calling Insert

3. If rescheduling, get the event, then update it

4. If cancelling, they would delete

For an overview of Together calendar integrations, please see our article here.

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