How to get bookings into another calendar

Your resource bookings can be exported as an iCal feed, which most calendar apps understand. Churches use this to see room bookings in Google Calendar or Outlook, and one enterprising use we’ve seen is plugging the feed into a heating programmer so the boiler warms the right rooms at the right times.

Exporting the feed

1. Start by creating a dedicated user account for the feed, named something like ‘PLEASE.DO_NOT_DELETE_OR_MERGE’, and give it full permissions to the Resources area. This matters because feed links belong to the account that creates them: if that person is ever deleted or merged, the links stop working, and a clearly-named dedicated account protects you from that.
2. Log out, then log back in as the dedicated account.
3. Open the Resources area and open the folder or resource you want the feed for.
4. Go to the List View tab and set the date range so the list reaches as far ahead as you want the feed to cover, then update the list.
5. In the ‘Print or export this information’ box, right-click the ‘ICS for calendar applications’ link and copy the link address. (‘PDF for print’ and a CSV option sit alongside it if you ever want a printable or spreadsheet version instead.)
6. Add the copied link to your calendar app. In Google Calendar it’s under Other calendars, adding by URL. The link carries its own key, so calendar apps keep syncing without logging in.

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Good to know

• Every time the link is requested we generate a fresh, up-to-date list of all bookings for that room or folder, including setup and clear-up times.
• Google’s servers only collect updates from calendar feeds about once a day, so Google Calendar can be up to 24 hours behind; other apps typically refresh more often.
• This feed is for resource bookings. Subscribing to your church events calendar is a different, simpler feed, covered in subscribing to your church calendar.
• Anyone with the link can read the feed, so share it as carefully as you’d share the diary itself.