Google Calendar Sync

[Brandon Wagman]

Hello. I am aware of the addon that lets us import cal items into the events calendar. However, I am trying to find out how to ADD my website’s calendar into my Google Apps for Business. In the same way that I can add a co-workers calendar. I do not intent to edit or update the calendar items. Just be able to view it with the rest of my calendar. I also have other staff that would be interested in how to achieve this. Any ideas? Or is this not possible? Same question for Office 365 users as we have a hybrid environment.

[George]

Hey Brandon,

Thanks for reaching out.

You say, “I am trying to find out how to ADD my website’s calendar into my Google Apps for Business” — just to be clear, do you envision this working so that your Google Calendar basically “listens” to updates on your WordPress site’s calendar?

And so if a new event is made on Google Calendar, The Events Calendar imports it; and if a new event is made on The Events Calendar, Google Calendar imports it?

Just want to be absolutely clear about your goals here! 😀

— George

[Brandon Wagman]

That’s sounds great. However not my full intention.

*And so if a new event is made on Google Calendar, The Events Calendar imports it; and if a new event is made on The Events Calendar, Google Calendar imports it?*

I just want to listen and have the website events show up in our Google calendar. Just like you would subscribe to the Chicago Cubs season schedule or any online calendar.

But a two way sync would be awesome especially for my coworkers. However I don’t think I trust them enough to not accidently delete or change something that is public. So I guess I am looking for a WordPress to Google Calendar one way sync. So then the website will have all public calendar events and then I can compare with my daily schedule withe my meetings and administrative tasks and not book myself while we have public things running.

I guess, if this feature existed then /anybody/ essentially can “subscrube” to our website calendar.

Did I make this better or worse?

[George]

Hey Brandon,

Thanks for elaborating a bit here. I do think you’ve helped to clarify your aims and appreciate it!

So I guess I am looking for a WordPress to Google Calendar one way sync.

☝️ This is unfortunately a bit imperfect at this time, but should generally work.

The main thing to do is to set up your Google Calendar to “subscribe” to an iCal feed. When prompted for the feed URL, you would just add ?ical=1 to your site’s event URL.

So for example, our official demo site is http://wpshindig.com, its main events page at http://wpshindig.com/events. So to listen to its event postings via Google Calendar or another ICS-format-friendly app, you would specify this URL as the iCal events feed of that calendar:

• http://wpshindig.com/events/?ical=1

☝️ See what I mean? The calendar URL is /events/, while its iCal feed is /events/?ical=1

Now, the “tricky parts” arise in a few ways. First of all, if you edit an event on your WordPress site after it has already been imported onto the Google Calendar, it might not update as one would hope. Furthermore, the iCal feed is not all events on your site — it usually will only be a one-month or several-week span of events from the current date.

If at all possible, I would recommend trying out “subscribing” to the wpshindig.com events from within your Google Calendar — just for testing purposes! The feed URL again is http://wpshindig.com/events/?ical=1

I hope this information helps! Please let me know if there are any other issues or questions I can try to help with.

[Brandon Wagman]

Thanks George. It worked but there was one issue. It’s like they are all in a different timezone because they are all in the wrong times. Is there a way to adjust it? Maybe by adding something to the link like we did?

[George]

Hi Brandon,

Thanks for your follow-up.

Timezones can be tricky, but there are few things I would recommend doing:

1. First, make sure the timezone of your WordPress site and your Google Calendar are the same. To adjust your site’s timezone, head to Settings → General in your site’s wp-admin. You should be able to specify a timezone there.

2. If simply adjusting the timezone doesn’t help anything, I would recommend trying different options for how events, specifically, handle their timezones. To do this, head to Events → Settings in your wp-admin, and then try changing the setting from “Use sitewide timezone” to “Use event timezones”, or vice versa. Do some test imports with either options — do you get any different results based on what option is set here?

If that doesn’t help, or more assistance is needed, then unfortunately a closer support look may be required than what these free “Pre-Sales Questions” forums can accommodate.

Let me know if the above two suggestions help at all.

Sincerely,
George

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

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