Help › Plugins

Calendar sync

Stop your receptionist booking people in when you're busy, and see every booking in your Google, Outlook or Apple calendar.

Calendar sync works in both directions, without signing in to anything:

• Your calendar to your receptionist: it reads your calendar, and times you're busy there are never offered to callers.
• Your bookings to your calendar: it gives you a private link to a calendar of every booking your receptionist takes, which you add to your calendar app.

What you need

Your calendar's private iCal address (it usually ends in .ics).

• Google: Settings, then your calendar, then "Secret address in iCal format".
• Outlook: Settings, then Calendar, then Shared calendars, then Publish.
• Apple: share the calendar publicly and copy the link.

Copy the iCal address, not the ordinary web link. An address starting webcal:// is fine.

Setting it up

1. Open Plugins, choose Calendar sync and click Switch on.
2. Paste the address into Your calendar's private iCal address.
3. If you keep a second calendar, add it under A second calendar (optional).
4. Choose Leave a gap around busy times: No gap, 10, 15 or 30 minutes either side.
5. Click Save and test. You'll see how many busy times it found in the next two weeks.

To get your bookings into your calendar:

1. Click Show my bookings calendar link and copy it.
2. Add it to your calendar app as a subscription. Google: Other calendars, then From URL. Outlook: Add calendar, then Subscribe from web. Apple: File, then New Calendar Subscription.

Calendar apps check the link on their own schedule. Apple and Outlook usually do it within the hour; Google can take several hours.

How it behaves

• Your calendar is read about every ten minutes, looking at the next two weeks.
• Events marked as free (not busy) and cancelled events are ignored. Repeating events are understood.
• Each booking in the bookings calendar shows the person's name, the reference, their phone number if given, and its length. Cancelled bookings show as cancelled.

Cost

Free.

Privacy

• CallsCovered only reads busy times from your calendar. Event names and details aren't used for anything else.
• The bookings link contains the names and phone numbers of people who booked. Anyone with the link can see them, so keep it private and don't share it outside your team.
• Your own iCal address also lets anyone who has it see your calendar. Treat it like a password.

Limits

• It can't write into your calendar directly. Bookings appear through the subscription link, as quickly as your calendar app checks it.
• Busy times are only read for the next two weeks.
• An event longer than 14 days is ignored, so a long holiday saved as one event won't block bookings. Use Closures and holidays for that.
• If the calendar can't be read, the plugin shows Needs attention and keeps using the last busy times it read.

Still stuck? Write to hello@callscovered.ai with your business name and what you were trying to do, and a person will reply.