External calendars: connect your calendar via ICS

What is possible and what is not

There are three things: importing busy times from an external calendar, importing a one-off ICS file as confirmed bookings, and exporting each provider's calendar. There is no sync with Google Calendar or Outlook, and no connection by signing in with an account. "External calendar" is simply the name the panel gives to a connection through an ICS link. If you edit or delete an event in the external calendar, the bookings in 4appointments do not change. Anyone who uses Google Calendar or Outlook therefore keeps personal commitments in that app and uses 4appointments for the bookings.

• Importing busy times from another calendar, through its ICS link.
• Importing a one-off ICS file as confirmed bookings.
• Exporting each provider's calendar as an ICS link that can be subscribed to.
• No two-way sync, no native Google Calendar or Outlook connection, and no Apple or CalDAV connection.

Importing busy times through an ICS link

In the "External calendar" section, a team member can subscribe to the calendar they already use. Its events then block those times in availability, so nobody books over them. Get the ICS address from your calendar app, check the name of the option in the interface you use, and make sure the link starts with https. Each member can subscribe to up to 3 calendars. The calendar is read again roughly every 15 minutes, so updates are not instant, and events marked as free are ignored; only busy ones block the slot.

Importing an ICS file as bookings

If you keep a calendar elsewhere and want to move it across in one go, the same section lets you import an ICS file as confirmed bookings. The import is one-off and has limits, so check the result before you give up the old calendar.

• Only events starting within the next 60 days are brought in.
• The file cannot exceed 2 MB, and past or overlapping events are ignored.
• The event title becomes the client name, and no email addresses or phone numbers are imported, so add them by hand if you need them.
• No live link remains: events created later in the old calendar do not come across.

Common questions