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 sign-in with a Google or Microsoft 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, so keep personal commitments in that app and use 4appointments for the booking schedule.

• Subscribe to an ICS link to import busy times
• Import a one-off ICS file as confirmed bookings
• Export each provider’s calendar as an ICS link
• No two-way sync, no native Google or Outlook connection, and no CalDAV or iCloud connection

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. It is a one-off import with limits: only events starting within the next 60 days come 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 those by hand. Because the import is one-off, no live link remains: events created later in the old calendar do not come across. Check the result before you give up the old calendar.

Busy times from an external calendar, and your phone

Each team member can subscribe to the calendar they already use from the “External calendar” section, and its events block those times in availability, so nobody is booked over them. Each provider also has an ICS export link for their bookings. Subscribe to it from your phone’s calendar app and the bookings appear alongside your personal commitments. How often that calendar refreshes is decided by your calendar app.

• Use https links, and each member can subscribe to up to 3 calendars
• External calendars are read again about every 15 minutes, so updates are not instant
• Events marked as free are ignored; only busy ones block the slot
• Treat each export link as confidential: anyone with the address can subscribe to it

Common questions