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Sharing calendars: Turning on your iCalendar feed
Sharing calendars: Turning on your iCalendar feed

Turning on your feed to share your Schedulista calendar with other calendar software

Matt Tucker avatar
Written by Matt Tucker
Updated over a week ago

Schedulista provides online appointment scheduling software for your business or organization to allow your clients to book with you 24/7.

We offer a calendar to manage your availability and appointments, classes, and events. You can also access your calendar through the mobile app.

You can share your Schedulista calendar with other personal and work calendars you have using an iCalendar (iCal) feed. You can turn on your iCal feed through your Schedulista calendar on the web app and on the mobile app.

Benefits of the iCalendar feed

  • Share your Schedulista calendar with other calendars: Apple, Microsoft Outlook, Google, Yahoo, mobile calendar apps, and more

  • Share your calendar with multiple calendars

Contents:

What is an iCalendar feed?

iCalendar is a open standard for sharing calendar information between users and software and applications on their devices. iCalendar (iCal) can be shared as an active feed or as a single computer file format.

Where can iCal be used?

iCalendar is supported by a large number of products, including:

  • Google, Yahoo, and other internet calendars

  • Microsoft Outlook through local (including the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 cloud services) or Exchange

  • Apple Calendar (formerly iCal) for Macs, iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices connected to an iCloud account

Note: For a period of time, Apple licensed the name iCalendar (and iCal) to name their calendar software; they no longer use this. iCalendar and iCal feed here do not refer to an Apple product.

One-way share

An iCal feed is read only, sharing information one way. Schedulista appointments are shared with another calendar but not the other way around. When active, you will see a web address/URL ending in .ics for your iCal feed.

Note: We offer a two-way sync through Google Calendar.

Turning on your iCalendar feed

Each calendar on your account has its own unique iCal feed. Each must be turned on individually.

If you have multiple calendars without unique logins, contact us at support@schedulista.com to help turn on iCal feeds for all calendars.

(1) On the web app: Go to the Calendar page

On the mobile app (version 7.3.1 and above): Go to the Calendar tab

(2) On the web app: Click on the gear icon in the upper right

On the mobile app: Tap on the Calendar Settings icon on the top of the Calendar tab (top left on iPhone/iPad; top right next to the plus [+] symbol on Android)

(3) On the web app: Select Sync with Google (or Sync Calendar) from the menu to go to the Sync Calendar page

On the mobile app: On the Calendar Settings page, tap on Sync with Google

(4) On the Sync Calendar page, under the iCal Feed heading, click the No button next to iCal feed enabled to change it to a green Yes button

(5) Copy the highlighted iCalendar feed URL in the new field, or write it down or type it into the personal calendar you want to share it with to subscribe to your calendar

Note: We recommend pasting the feed URL into an email and sending it to yourself to open on the device on which you'd like to subscribe to your calendar.

On Apple devices with MacOS, iOS, or iPadOS, clicking or tapping on the iCal URL in the email will prompt you to add or subscribe to the calendar.

(6) On the web app: Click the X on the top right to close the Sync Calendar page and return to the Calendar

On the mobile app: Tap Close on the top right to close the Sync Calendar page and return to the Calendar Settings page; then tap Done to return to the Calendar tab

How much appointment data is shared?

Your Schedulista iCal feed will share the following information with another calendar:

  • Client name

  • Appointment service name & duration

  • Appointments 6 months (180 days) into the future

  • Appointments 2 months (60 days) into the past

  • The next 10 occurrences in any repeating appointment series

  • If you have the two-way Google Calendar sync enabled, the Google appointments shared with your Schedulista calendar will also be shared through the iCal feed

For security and privacy, client contact information is not shared.

How often are appointments updated?

The Schedulista iCal feed is updated as soon as you make changes to your calendar. However, how frequently your personal calendar subscribed to the feed updates depends on that calendar.

The personal calendar must call to (or ask) the iCal feed to get any updates to add or make changes to the Schedulista appointments. The frequency rate of refresh/updates is controlled solely by the personal calendar.

Most calendar software does not share how often they call to an iCal feed for updates. This can be anywhere from an hour up to 24 hours. Many also don't offer a customizable setting to change the frequency on your own.

Some calendars will refresh upon closing them and reopening them. On mobile calendar apps, you may be to pull down from the top to force a refresh, depending on the phone, the OS, and/or the app. Some calendars, like Outlook Calendar, allow you to click or tap a button to manually do a refresh/update. (In Outlook, this is the Send/Receive button.)

Using your iCal feed to share your calendar with other calendar software

Once you've turned your iCal feed on, you can share with other calendar software by the steps linked below.

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