Publishing on External Calendars

It is possible to get Google, Outlook, Apple's and other calendars to sync to your Beebop calendar.

Keep in mind that, while the first sync happens very quickly, these calendars check for changes on Beebop only once a day, and sometimes it may take up to 48 hours for the calendars to sync.

To subscribe a calendar to your personal Beebop calendar you need to generate a unique web address.

Go to My Account > Calendar on Beebop.

Click on 'Generate Feed' and use the 'Copy' button to copy the long web address for your Beebop calendar.

For Calendar on Apple Computers

• In the Calendar app on your Mac, choose File > New Calendar Subscription.
• Paste the calenda's web address, then click Subscribe.
• Click the Auto-refresh pop-up menu, then choose how often to update the calendar.

For iPhones and iPads

• Go to Settings  > Passwords & Accounts > Add Account > Other.
• Tap Add Subscribed Calendar.
• Paste the calendar's web address to subscribe to and any other required server information.

For Google Calendar (on Web)

• On your computer, open Google Calendar.
• On the left, next to Other calendars, click Add From URL.
• Paste the calendar's web address in the field provided.
• Click Add calendar.

For the Google Calendar App on phones and tablets

• First, you need to add Beebop's calendar feed using Google Calendar in a browser (see above).
• Then, on your phone, open the Google Calendar.
• Open the menu, and then go to Settings.
• Scroll to the calendar email where you added the new Calendar feed.
• Tap on Show more.
• Tap on your new calendar's name.
• Switch the Sync option on.
• You may also change your notifications for this calendar on this screen.

For Outlook Calendar

• Sign in to Outlook.com
• At the bottom of the page, select the calendar icon.
• In the navigation pane, select Import calendar.
• Under Import calendar, select From the web.
• Under Link to the calendar, paste the calendar's web address.
• Select Import.

Fixing issues with calendar sync

If you notice that new events on your Beebop calendar are not being displayed on external calendars, this may be for one of two possible reasons:

1. the external calendar has not synced with Beebop yet (it can take up to 48 hours);
2. the external calendar is using an expired calendar feed.

1. External Calendar hasn't synced yet

If the events you don't see were created only recently (one or two days) it's just a matter of waiting a few hours for the external calendar to sync itself. This, unfortunately, is something we can't control. The ICS protocol used for this feature does not give Beebop the ability to write events onto an external calendar; instead, it's the external calendar that has to check for updates at regular intervals to see if anything has changed.

At the time of writing, the only application that lets you see and change this interval is Apple's Calendar (desktop version only). Google, Microsoft, and Apple's iCloud calendar do not explicitly say what interval they use, but in our testing we have found that they all tend to check roughly once a day, at random times, with the worst one being Google which sometimes takes up to 48 hours to update.

If you really need to see your events update immediately, there is one thing you can do: go on your external calendar (Google, Microsoft, etc), delete Beebop's calendar, then go to Beebop, delete your calendar feed, generate a new one, copy the URL, and finally go back to your external calendar to add Beebop again using the new calendar feed URL. This, being the first import of a new calendar, will sync immediately and include all your latest changes.

We do not recommend using this system other than for testing purposes though, because if you were syncing to Beebop from multiple devices you will now have to go and delete the old calendar and import the new feed on each device; failing to do so, will lead to the second case described below.

2. External Calendar is using an expired feed

If for whatever reason you go and delete the Calendar Feed URL from your Beebop's personal settings, any external calendar still configured to use that feed will continue to show all the events that existed up to that moment, but it will stop updating itself, since the URL it is looking at doesn't exist any more.

This is because Beebop is not authorised to make changes or write directly onto external calendars, so when you delete the feed on Beebop, the old calendar is not automatically removed from your Google, Outlook, etc. It's up to you to go and remove the old imported calendar, and import a new calendar feed when you create a new one in Beebop.