Connect your calendar apps

Your bookings can sit beside the rest of your week in two ways, and they work differently. The private feed sends your bookings out to any calendar app, one way. Calendar sync connects your own Google Calendar, or Microsoft 365 / Outlook where it's offered, both ways: busy times there block your booking page, and each booking lands there as an event.

The private feed

Open Calendar → Settings and find "Calendar apps" under "Connect other apps", for the whole calendar; on a team, each person's page has a feed with only their bookings. "Add to Apple Calendar or Outlook" hands the link to your device's calendar app. For Google Calendar, use a computer: press "Add to Google Calendar" (it opens Google's "From URL"), paste the link from "Copy link" and press Add calendar. Google's phone apps can't add it.

Every booking from the last 7 days to the next 60 then appears there by itself, read-only, with clients by first name and initial; phone numbers, emails and notes never go into it, and neither does time off. The apps refresh it on their own schedule, and Google can take several hours, so check eKard for what was booked in the last hour.

Anyone with the link can see what's booked and when, clients' first names and initials, the address of each visit at a client's home, and video-call links, so keep it private. If it gets out, or someone leaves, "New link" stops the old one at once; calendars subscribed to it stop updating until they subscribe again with the new link.

Calendar sync

Sync connects the calendar you already live in. Press "Connect Google Calendar" (or "Connect Outlook", when your panel offers it), sign in and allow access. From then on:

• Busy times block bookings. A time that's busy in any calendar ticked under "Check these calendars for busy times" can't be booked online. You can tick up to 10 calendars you own, and eKard sees only busy or free, never what's in your events.
• Bookings land in your calendar. Each booking becomes an event in the calendar chosen under "Add new bookings to": what it is, when and where (a home visit's address included), and the client's first name and initial. Moves and cancellations follow, and a request appears once you approve it.
• Video links. For a video meeting without a link of its own, "Add a Google Meet link to video meetings" puts a Meet link in the confirmation email and on the client's booking page. Outlook adds a Microsoft Teams link instead, on work and school accounts.
• Guests are off until you switch them on. With "Add clients to the event as guests" (your calendar's word for clients, such as invitees), Google or Microsoft also email the client an invitation of their own, so the meeting may show twice in their calendar.

While Google reviews eKard, it may say "Google hasn't verified this app": choose Advanced, then continue. Connect one service at a time; to move from Google Calendar to Outlook, disconnect the first. If Google or Microsoft stops answering for a while, your booking page stays open with its own free times. If access stops altogether, after a password change say, the panel and your Calendar home say it needs reconnecting, with a Reconnect button; busy times aren't checked until you do, and you get one email asking you to reconnect. "Disconnect" stops the busy times; events already added stay in your calendar.

Who connects what

A connection belongs to the person who signs in, not to the business, and it counts wherever that person takes bookings. On a calendar of your own, connect it from Settings or Availability. In an organization, each team member with a login connects their own from Your hours; an admin can't connect it for them, and sees one line per person under "Calendar sync" on their page. An admin who isn't booked themselves can skip the "Connect Google Calendar" button in Settings, since their calendar would block nothing, and a team member without a login has no calendar to connect: block their other commitments as time off instead.

Open your calendar →