Subscribing to an iCal feed of events, bookings and leave
The Calendar and Bookings modules include a wide range of features and functionality to help you plan and manage every aspect of your organisation's events and resource bookings. To help module users stay in the loop of what's going on, they can optionally subscribe to private iCal feeds of events, user leave and bookings, enabling them to see pertinent information in their own preferred personal diary application. Once subscribed, as you make changes to events and bookings in ChurchSuite, people's diaries remain up to date.
In this article
An iCal events feed for your members
Subscribing to a feed of Calendar events
Subscribing to a feed of bookings
An iCal events feed for your members
The instructions in the majority of this article are for ChurchSuite module Users, who can optionally subscribe to private iCal feeds of the Calendar module's events and leave bookings and the Bookings module resource bookings, which may not be intended to be visible to your members, e.g. staff leave, events with restricted visibility, customer room bookings etc. For this reason, your Users should not share their User iCal feeds with non-users, such as members or website visitors. The iCal links are user-specific and, therefore, intended to be for the private use of each user.
For your members:
Members with access to My ChurchSuite can view all of your public-facing events in the My Events section of My ChurchSuite. My Events include all events with visibility for Show in My ChurchSuite enabled. Similarly, members and non-members can view all your upcoming events on an embedded Calendar and/or Events feed on your website. These embedded features show all events with visibility for Show in Embed enabled.
However, you can optionally share a link to an iCal feed of your public-facing events. This feed includes ALL events with visibility for Show in Embed enabled. It excludes your other Calendar module entries, such as public holidays, user birthdays, leave bookings and resource bookings. Note that this is an 'all sites' feed of all public-facing events for all sites—it's not possible to subscribe to a site-specific public-facing calendar iCal feed.
The public-facing iCal feed for your members is:
webcal://accountid.churchsuite.com/ical/embed.ics
For example, if your ChurchSuite account URL is kingshope.churchsuite.com, the iCal feed would be:
webcal://kingshope.churchsuite.com/ical/embed.ics
In the remainder of this article, we'll focus on the feeds that Calendar and Bookings module Users can subscribe to.
Subscribing to a feed of Calendar events
Head into the Calendar module and go to the Events tab. Click More, then Subscribe to feed.
Select the User option and choose which feed you'd like to subscribe to - All events, or you could choose just to subscribe to a specific event Category feed. Choose one of the Leave Requests options to subscribe to a feed of leave requests - either just your personal leave requests, or all leave requests.
Next, click which service you'd like to Subscribe with - assuming the service you select is the default application on your device, the application will launch and you'll be asked to confirm the subscription to the feed in some way.
For Apple Calendar, Calendar will launch. You will be asked to confirm that you want to create the feed subscription. Click Subscribe.
Supply a suitable Name for the subscription and set how often you want the Apple Calendar to Auto-refresh and pick up changes made in ChurchSuite. ChurchSuite regenerates updated iCal files every hour on the half hour. Once you're happy with your selected settings, click OK.
That's it! Your calendar will auto-refresh at the rate you selected as you add, change or delete events in ChurchSuite.
For Google Calendar, ChurchSuite will launch Google Calendar in a new browser tab (you may be asked to log in to Google). A confirmation message gives you the option now to Add your ChurchSuite calendar to your Google calendar. Note that Google only updates calendar subscriptions every 24 hours.
Are you experiencing Google Calendar sync issues?
As you'll see from the many online forums, Google users sometimes experience issues with feed synchronisation, resulting in changes to feed files not being picked up by Google's servers and, therefore, not reflected in a person's Google calendar. While ChurchSuite regenerates new Google feed files and iCal files every hour, Google's systems, which only check for updates once every 24 hours, may periodically experience issues.
If you experience issues with changes made in ChurchSuite not showing in your Google Calendar, try subscribing to the ChurchSuite iCal feed in an alternative calendar application (like Outlook - see above) to see if the ChurchSuite changes are showing as you would expect. If they are, this will confirm that there is a sync issue with Google, which needs to be resolved by them. You/we have no control over Google's servers seeing changes in the hourly update ChurchSuite feed files.
For Outlook, ChurchSuite will launch the Outlook Calendar in a new browser tab (you may be asked to log in to Outlook). You will be asked to confirm that you want to import the feed. Click Import.
Subscribing to a feed of bookings
Apple Calendar
For Apple Calendar users, head into the Bookings section of the Bookings module, click More, then Subscribe with iCal.
Assuming Apple Calendar is the default calendar application on your device, Calendar will launch. You will be asked to confirm that you want to create the feed subscription. Click Subscribe.
Supply a suitable Name for the subscription and set how often you want the Mac Calendar to Auto-refresh and pick up changes made in ChurchSuite. ChurchSuite regenerates updated iCal files every hour on the half hour. Once you're happy with your selected settings, click OK.
That's it! Your calendar application will now auto-refresh at the rate you selected as you add, change or delete bookings in ChurchSuite.
Google Calendar
For Google Calendar users, begin by going to the Bookings section of the Bookings module. Click More, then Subscribe with Google Calendar.
Assuming Google Calendar is the default calendar application on your device, ChurchSuite will launch Google Calendar in a new browser tab (you may be asked to log into Google Calendar). A confirmation message gives you the option now to add your ChurchSuite bookings feed to your Google calendar. Note that Google only updates calendar subscriptions every 24 hours.
Microsoft Outlook
You will first need to log into Outlook on your web browser - it's not currently possible to subscribe to a Bookings iCal feed in the desktop Outlook application.
In ChurchSuite, head into the Bookings and then Bookings module. Click More, then right click on Subscribe to feed (iCal). Select Copy Link Address (or similar for your web browser) to copy the link.
In the Outlook calendar on your web browser, click Add calendar, then choose Subscribe from web.
Paste the copied link address, choose your options (such as naming the calendar, colour and icon) and click Import - your feed will then be imported.
Subscribing to a feed of bookings for a booking type
Following the same principles outlined above for iCal feeds and Google Calendar subscriptions, head into the Types section of the Bookings module. Select a type from the list to view and locate the Subscribe option on the More button at the top of the page.
Subscribing to a feed of bookings for a resource
Following the same principles outlined above for iCal feeds and Google Calendar subscriptions, head into the Resources section of the Bookings module. Select a resource from the list to view and locate the Subscribe option on the More button at the top of the page. While booking feeds and Type feeds contain the booking times, Resource feeds contain the booked resource times, which may be different to the booking times if setup and setdown times have been added.
Top Tip! Heating and Air Conditioning controllers
Many modern central heating and air conditioning controllers can be programmed to operate using iCal feeds. By adding a "Central Heating" or "Air Conditioning" Resource and assigning these resources to your bookings, perhaps with additional setup time added before the start of the booking time, you can use the relevant Resource iCal feeds to automatically pre-heat or pre-cool a room at the beginning of the booked resource time and then turn it off at the end of the booked resource time.