Outlook categories

Route by category lets you keep one personal calendar. Put an Outlook category on a meeting, and Tato tags it to the project you mapped that category to, then decides whether to join it.

It does the same job as project calendars, without a separate calendar per project. To move a meeting to another project, change its category instead of moving it to a different calendar.

Before you start

Connect your Microsoft calendar. You can do it from the banner on the Tato home screen, or at the top of Settings → Meetings, which still works if you dismissed the banner. The routing options only appear once your calendar is connected.

How to set it up

1. Open meeting settings

Go to Settings → Meetings. Under Meeting routing, you'll see three options:

Option	What decides which meetings Tato joins and which project they go to
Auto-join all	Your join rules only. Meetings aren't tagged to a project.
Route by calendar	Each Outlook calendar is mapped to a project. See project calendars.
Route by category	Each Outlook category is mapped to a project.

You can only use one at a time.

2. Choose route by category

Select Route by category. Tato pulls your upcoming meetings straight away, so the preview fills in without waiting for the next scan.

3. Categorize a meeting in Outlook

Categories live in Outlook, not in Tato. To add one to a meeting:

Open the meeting in Outlook.
Select Categorize (the tag icon) in the toolbar.
Pick a category, or select New category to create one. Name it after the project so it's easy to map later.
For a recurring meeting, select Series first so every occurrence gets the category.
Save the meeting.

Categories are personal to your mailbox. You can categorize meetings other people organize, and nobody else sees your categories.

A category shows up in Tato once it's on at least one meeting in the next 14 days. If you've just added one, select Refresh to see it now. Otherwise Tato checks again within 24 hours.

If the list is empty, nothing in the next 14 days has a category yet. Categorize an upcoming meeting in Outlook, then refresh.

4. Map each category

Every category gets one row with three settings:

Sync: whether Tato looks at meetings with this category at all.
Auto-join: whether Tato joins meetings with this category. You can only turn it on when sync is on.
Project: meetings with this category are tagged to this project. Leave it on Any project to join meetings without tagging them.

Changes apply to your upcoming meetings as soon as you make them.

5. Decide what happens to meetings with no category

The first row is always No category. It works like any other row, for meetings that don't have a category. Turn sync off here if you only want Tato to see meetings you've categorized.

6. Check the preview

The panel next to the table lists your meetings for the next 7 days and the project each one will go to. Use it to confirm your mappings before the meetings start.

Meetings with more than one category

A meeting with several mapped categories is tagged to every matching project. Tato joins it if any of those categories has auto-join on.

Tato matches categories by name, ignoring capitals. If you rename a category in Outlook, it shows up in Tato as a new category, and you'll need to map it again.

How Tato decides whether to join

Tato scans your calendar every 10 minutes. For each upcoming meeting, it works through these checks in order:

If none of the meeting's categories has sync on, Tato drops the meeting. It won't be joined or tagged.
If none of its synced categories has auto-join on, the meeting is Tentative.
If the title contains one of your excluded keywords, the meeting is Tentative.
If you've turned on custom join rules, those rules decide. See how Tato detects and joins meetings.
Otherwise, the meeting is Confirmed and Tato joins it.

Tentative means Tato knows about the meeting but won't join it on its own. You can still send Tato to it manually.