External calendars: connect your diary via ICS

What is possible and what is not

There are three things, all based on ICS: importing busy times from an external calendar, importing a one-off ICS file as confirmed bookings, and exporting each provider's diary. 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 are not changed. Anyone who uses Google Calendar or Outlook therefore keeps managing personal commitments in that app and uses 4appointments for the booking diary.

• Importing busy times from another calendar through an ICS link
• Importing a one-off ICS file as confirmed bookings
• Exporting each provider's diary as an ICS link
• No sync with Google Calendar or Outlook, and no sign-in with a Google or Microsoft account

Importing busy times and one-off ICS files

In the “External calendar” section, a team member can subscribe to the calendar they already use, and 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. If you keep a diary 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 a one-off with limits: 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. Because the import is one-off, events created later in the old calendar do not come across, so check the result before giving up the old diary.

Taking the bookings onto your phone

Bookings then appear alongside your personal commitments, and you can check the diary on a computer without opening the panel. How often the calendar refreshes is decided by your calendar app, not by 4appointments. Each team member's own link shows only their bookings. Treat this link as confidential: anyone who has the address can subscribe to it.

• Each provider has their own ICS export link, which you can subscribe to from your phone's calendar
• The free note the client wrote when booking may appear in the event description
• How often your phone refreshes the subscription depends on the calendar app you use
• Anyone who has the address can read the diary, so keep it confidential

Common questions