Justin Ruffell-Ward - Insight Support
posted this on December 09, 2010 20:11
Events in your web site calendar can be imported into any calendar program that supports the iCalendar(.ics) file format e.g.Google Calendar, Outlook 2007, iPhone. This means you can view your web site events alongside your personal, or office, calendar.
Importing your web site calendar from the iCal url means changes to your web site events will automatically update your calender client so it'is always up-to-date.
When you are logged into the web site you can obtain your personal iCal feed. This will display the events that are relevant to you. Members of the public can access the public feed to keep in touch with your organisation's event diary.
Why not create an article on your web site to make your members aware of your iCal feed, and create a link to this article for instructions on how to obtain it?
Click on the video above to see how to import your web site's iCal feed into Google Calendar or follow the written instructions below.
Google calendar and Outlook 2007 are common calendar applications that an iCal url can be added to so we've added intructions on how to add the url to these applications below. If you use a different calendar application refer to its help system for instructions on how to import an iCal feed url.







Comments
Hi, I find this very useful. I have added events to both Ipad and Outlook calendars. However. I think I found a small problem. When downloading family reminders, if there are 2 people from the same family at the same event it only seems to send info of one of them. This is true both on the Ipad, and Outlook calendars.
thanks, Nick
I see what you mean Nick, it does only list one of the user's tasks on the "family reminder" ical feed. I'll raise a case for this.
Can I ask how long it takes for new events to added to the website to appear on the google calendar. Does it only refresh overnight?
Thanks
James
Our ical feed is updated immediately but I'm not sure how long Google Calendar takes to update the feed. It'll be more frequent than overnight I suspect.
I have successfully imported our website calendar into Google calendar, and this is a great help. However, it only seems to update overnight. I see that this has been raised previously, are there any other updates/comments/experiences about this?
Just discovered this really great ......................BUT I get the whole Church Calender, (all seven+ Sunday events, I might be a member of two) I cannot find a way of filtering the Church calender to my interests, ie the services I go to, the groups I belong to ie PCC yes S&F no, Mother Union no, Mens Group yes etc. I have discovered how to get a filter to show one set of group events but not how to create my events profile.
Please could you expand the instructions to cover this.................. Thanks
Is there any way of exporting the contents of a rota to Google Calendars?
I have added the ical of my web site to my iphone, it adds all the events in the calendar to my iphone but if I change anything on the website it doesn't up load it to my iphone, i would like to roll this out to the church but want it to be working correctly before I do. could you please help
Richard M-W, it appears that the iCal link is customised according to the group you are looking at when you click on the 'ical' button. You get a particular link when you have the whole, unfiltered calendar displayed, and the same link with a suffix (e.g. "&group=187215") if you are looking at the events in the monthly calendar view filtered down to a particular group (via Advanced Options and 'Filter by group'). This is how, I believe, you import the events only from particular groups into your calendar programme, thereby avoiding event overload! Jonathan.