Calendar feeds

A calendar feed puts the hall’s diary into the calendar you already use — Google Calendar, Outlook, or the calendar on an iPhone — and keeps it up to date by itself. Add it once; new bookings, changes and cancellations follow on their own.

There is one for the whole hall and one for each room. They show the hirer and the room, and enquiries appear as Enquiry: until they are confirmed. They never include phone numbers, email addresses or booking notes.

The addresses are secret, because calendar apps cannot sign in. Give them to the committee, not to hirers. If one gets out, press Make a new address and the old one stops working at once.

There is also a public availability calendar, off until you switch it on, that says when each room is booked but never who by. Calendar feeds are on the Standard plan.

For example: The booking secretary adds the whole-hall calendar to her phone. When the treasurer confirms the Art Club’s enquiry on Monday evening, it turns from “Enquiry: Ashcombe Art Club” into a firm booking in her calendar by the time she looks on Tuesday morning.

Questions people ask

A booking I just made is not in Google Calendar yet.
Google decides for itself how often to check a subscribed calendar, usually every few hours, and there is no way to make it hurry. Apple and Outlook are normally quicker. The screen shows when a calendar last read the feed.

Bookings show an hour late in my calendar.
The website’s time zone is almost certainly set to UTC+0 rather than London. Set it under Settings, General, Timezone and every calendar corrects itself on its next refresh.

Can I add a booking from my calendar?
No. These calendars show the diary; bookings are still made in HallPro, so the clash check and your opening hours always apply.

Somebody has left the committee.
Make a new address for each calendar they had, and give the new ones to everybody else. The old addresses stop working straight away.