Calendar feeds
Each person can subscribe to their Ramphearth meetings, shifts and events in Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, through a private, read-only link of their own.
Before you start
- Calendar links are on every plan. The My shifts and Events calendars appear only in workspaces that use Shifts or publish events (Shifts is on the Ministry and Business plans), or that show a Planning Center calendar.
- Each person makes their own links. There is nothing for an admin to turn on, and nobody can make a link for someone else.
- There is no calendar sign-in: Ramphearth never connects to your Google or Microsoft account. Your calendar app fetches the link, and that's all.
Turn on a calendar
- Open Settings → Calendar & connections → Calendar subscriptions (on a phone: You → Calendar subscriptions). The Meetings page and the Shifts page also have a Subscribe button that opens the same list for their calendars.
- Pick the calendar and choose Turn on.
- Add it to your calendar app with one of the buttons:
| Button | Opens |
|---|---|
| Subscribe | Apple Calendar or Outlook on this device (a webcal:// link) |
| Google Calendar | Google Calendar's "Add calendar" prompt with the link filled in (on a computer; choose Add) |
| Outlook.com | Outlook on the web, for personal accounts |
| Microsoft 365 | Outlook on the web, for work or school accounts |
| Copy link | The https:// link, to paste by hand |
The link is shown only once, right after you turn it on. Ramphearth keeps only a hash of it. To add the calendar somewhere else later, make a New link.
To add it by hand:
- Google Calendar: on a computer, open calendar.google.com → Other calendars → + → From URL, paste the
https://link and choose Add calendar. It appears under Other calendars, and in the Google Calendar phone app too. (The phone app can't add a calendar by link itself.) - Outlook: Add calendar → Subscribe from web (on Windows desktop: Add calendar → From internet), and paste the link.
- Apple Calendar: File → New Calendar Subscription on a Mac, or Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Add Subscribed Calendar on an iPhone, and paste the link.
The calendars
| Calendar | Named in your app | Shows |
|---|---|---|
| Everything | "Ramphearth · workspace" | Your meetings, shifts and event activities together |
| My meetings | "My meetings · workspace" | Meetings you organise or are invited to, unless you declined or were removed. Cancelled ones stay for two weeks, marked "Cancelled:", then disappear. |
| My shifts | "My shifts · workspace" | Your published shifts (including event positions), and the activities of published events that your departments attend |
| Events | "Events · workspace" | The published events you can see in the workspace (an event shown only to some groups reaches only them), and the Planning Center calendar if the workspace shows one. These are marked free, not busy. |
Each link covers one workspace. A feed holds the last 30 days and the next 365.
What a feed shows is worked out every time your calendar fetches it, with the same rules as the app. A meeting you're removed from, a shift that's unassigned or a draft that's never published doesn't appear; a meeting you're added to does. The link can never show more than you could see in Ramphearth at that moment.
Meetings keep the same identity as the invitation email, so a meeting you already accepted from the email isn't shown twice.
Change or turn off a link
- New link makes a fresh link and the old one stops working at once. Calendars using the old link stop updating until you add the new one. Do this if a link was shared by mistake.
- Turn off removes the link. Calendars subscribed to it stop updating and keep only what they already had.
- Each calendar shows which calendar apps fetched it and when ("Fetched by Google Calendar 3 hours ago · Apple Calendar within the hour", "Not fetched yet").
Test a calendar
Test on each calendar that's on checks it the way a calendar app would and says what, if anything, is wrong:
- the calendar as it would be served now is valid, and how many items it holds (an empty calendar is valid, but Google then shows nothing);
- the link's address is
https://and reachable from the internet (Google Calendar and Outlook on the web fetch from their own servers); - right after New link, while the link is still on screen, Ramphearth also fetches the link from outside, as Google does, and reports the answer (a redirect, a sign-in page from a proxy, an error code, a timeout);
- whether Google Calendar has fetched the link yet, and when.
The test fetches only your own calendar link, and its fetch doesn't count as a calendar app fetching it.
A link also stops working for good when you leave the workspace, even if you rejoin later, and while your account or the workspace is suspended. A link that no longer works answers "not found", the same as a link that never existed.
Fan hub schedules
A workspace with a published fan hub offers its schedule as a public calendar too. The hub page shows Add the schedule to your calendar with Apple / Outlook and Google links. This calendar needs no secret, because the hub is already public. Fan hubs are on the Creator and Business plans.
How often it updates
Feeds ask calendar apps to check every hour, but each app decides: Apple Calendar and Outlook usually follow it. Google fetches a new subscription within minutes, then refreshes subscribed calendars every few hours on its own schedule, so a change can take up to a day to show there. Nothing on our side can make Google refresh sooner.
Google Calendar and Outlook on the web fetch from their own servers. On your own server, the link works with them only if the API is reachable from the internet; the page warns you when the address is private. A calendar app on the same network works either way.
What data moves
Your calendar app (and, for Google Calendar and Outlook on the web, Google's or Microsoft's servers) receives, for each item:
- the title, start and end, and the location (an event's place, or a meeting's join link);
- a short description: a meeting's agenda, its join link and the organiser's name; a shift's schedule name, break and notes; an event's notes;
- whether a meeting was cancelled.
A feed never contains direct messages, channel content, anything from another workspace, drafts, meeting passcodes or manage links, the list of who else is invited, or anyone's email address.
Ramphearth stores a hash of each link (and its last four characters), when it was made, when it was last fetched, and which kind of calendar app fetched it (Google, Apple, Outlook or other — the name and a time, not the app's details or address). Turning a link on, making a new one and turning it off are recorded in the workspace's audit log.
Treat the link like a password: anyone who has it can read that calendar until you make a new link or turn it off.
Limits
- Up to 1,500 items of each kind (meetings, shifts, activities, events) per feed.
- Each address can fetch feeds up to 120 times a minute.
- Test can run 10 times a minute.
Troubleshooting
- "Nothing to subscribe to here yet": the workspace has no calendars of that kind (for example no Shifts).
- The calendar stopped updating: someone made a New link or turned it off, or you left the workspace. Turn it on again and add the new link.
- Google shows old times: Google refreshes on its own schedule, which can take several hours.
- The Google Calendar button did nothing, or Google said it couldn't add the calendar: make a New link and try again (links made before Oct 29 used a form of the button Google doesn't accept), or paste the link with From URL. Then use Test.
- Google added the calendar but it's empty: use Test. "Valid but empty" means there's nothing to show yet (for example Everything holds your own meetings and shifts, not every workspace event — that's Events). If Google hasn't fetched the link yet, give it a few minutes.
- The link was lost: links are shown once. Make a New link and add that one.