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Calendars and feeds
Web and mobile2 min readUpdated
Mint an iCal feed for the whole company or for one person and subscribe to it from Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar; connecting a calendar the other way lets what is already in someone’s day block bookings.
Calendars point in two directions here, and they are separate features: feeds out put your BlastoClean schedule into the calendar app somebody already lives in, and connected calendars in stop the office booking over what is already in their day.
Feeds out
Mint a feed and subscribe to it from Google Calendar, Outlook or Office 365, or Apple iCloud. Two kinds exist:
- A whole-company feed, for the office.
- A personal feed per team member — just their own visits, for their own phone.
Two things about the URL are worth knowing before you mint one:
- It is shown once. Copy it when it appears. If you lose it, revoke it and mint another — which is a feature, not an inconvenience, because the URL is the credential.
- It can be revoked at any time, from the same place, which immediately stops the calendar that was using it.
Feeds can be minted, listed and revoked from the phone too.
Connected calendars in
Connect a Google, Outlook or iCloud calendar and two things follow.
It decides when you are free. What is already in the day blocks bookings, so the free/busy week the booking form draws is the real one — see Crews and availability.
It can stay private while doing that. A personal calendar blocks bookings without showing anyone what is on it: the office sees "busy 2–3pm" and never the title. That is the default, and it is set per calendar.
You also choose which calendar assigned work lands in. Move a visit or hand it to somebody else and the calendars follow — including removing it from the calendar of whoever is no longer going.
Signing in and connecting are not the same thing
This is the detail that saves the most confusion. Signing in with Google asks only to know who you are. Connect Gmail asks to send email as you — and only then, when you switch it on. You are never shown a wall of permissions for a feature you have not asked for.
That also means the three roles can be three different accounts: sign in with the Google account work gave you, send from the iCloud address customers have always used, and take availability from an Outlook calendar. See Your own mailbox and calendar.
When a provider is down
It never blocks the work. If a calendar provider stops answering, the office is warned rather than stopped.