Google Calendar in Roma

Connect Google Calendar and your operator knows your day. It sees what is booked before it suggests a time, finds a free slot, creates and moves events when you ask, and prepares your meetings each morning. You choose which of your calendars it reads.

What the operator does with your calendar

Noor asks "Do I have anything at 3 tomorrow?" and gets the answer from her calendar. "Find me 30 minutes with Sam on Thursday" reads the free and busy times and offers the slots. "Create a 30-minute call with Sam tomorrow at 3 pm" creates the event, with Sam invited and a Meet link where her account provides one. "Move my 2 pm to 3" updates it. Deleting an event, or taking someone off one, asks first.

Times follow the time zone in your Roma settings. When you name a zone in your words, "3 pm Pacific", that wins.

The operator can read the events of a day or a week across the calendars you chose, one event's details, the instances of a repeating event, your list of calendars, and free and busy times. Cancelled events and invitations you declined are left out. On a calendar shared with you as busy or free only, an event reads as Busy, with no title.

Which calendars Roma reads

The connection's page in Settings lists every calendar on the account with its colour: your primary calendar, the ones you subscribed to, and the ones shared with you as busy only. Tick the ones Roma should read. Refresh pulls in a calendar you subscribed to since you connected, without touching your ticks. Roma reads up to 8 calendars at a time, and the page says so when you tick more. These choices are on the Mac and in the browser.

A work account that will not let you connect Roma has a way round: share the work calendar into a personal Google account and connect that one. The shared calendar shows up in the list like any other.

Meeting prep, and the message after you connect

Connecting Google Calendar switches on Meeting prep, an automation that runs every morning at 7:05. It writes up the day's meetings with other people, one block per meeting, with the thread you have with each attendee when Gmail is connected too, and a web lookup for a name nobody knows. On a day without meetings it says nothing. It also runs once right after you connect, unless the day is nearly over or it already ran, so the first thing you see is its first message.

Along with it comes one message from the operator: the week's meetings, a note that Meeting prep is on, and the invitations still waiting for an answer, with Accept and Decline on each. Answering one tells the organiser. More in the automations Roma starts with and What an automation is.

Learning from your calendar

The connection's page has a switch, Use to learn about me. On, Roma reads your events to learn where you will be and what your weeks look like. Off stops new reads and keeps what it already learned. Memory explains what Roma knows about you.

How to connect

Open Settings → Connections and press Google Calendar. Sign in with Google in the window that opens, allow the calendar access it lists, and close the page when it says Connected. The row then carries a green check, and its page holds the calendar list, the memory switch and the permissions: Reading always allowed, Creating and Updating for events, Deleting asking first. The iPhone's Settings → Connections carries the same row. The general steps are in Connect an app to Roma, and the public page is /connections/googlecalendar.

How to disconnect

Settings → Connections, press Google Calendar, then Disconnect. Roma loses access at once, Meeting prep pauses, and your calendar selection is removed with the connection. Events you created stay on your calendar.

Questions people ask

Does Roma create events without asking?

Creating and updating an event run when you ask for them, and the result shows in the conversation with the event's link. Set Creating or Updating to Ask first on the connection's page to see a card before each one. Deleting always asks unless you set it to Always allow.

Why is a meeting missing?

Three usual reasons: its calendar is not ticked on the connection's page, you declined the invitation, or it sits past the eighth calendar when more than eight are ticked. After subscribing to a new calendar, press Refresh on the page and tick it.

Which time zone does Roma use?

The one in your Roma settings, which Roma asks about when your device's zone differs from it. A zone you state in your words wins for that event.

Can I connect a second Google account?

A connection holds one account. Share the other account's calendars into the connected one, then tick them in the list.