Calendars and busy times

When the assistant offers appointment times, it uses your opening hours and booking rules, the appointments already in Ringhum, and the busy times from any calendar you connect. Connecting the calendar you already use stops the assistant from booking over a dentist visit, a meeting or a booking taken elsewhere. Some calendars are only read. Google Calendar can also receive the bookings the assistant makes.

Which calendars you can connect

Google Calendar connects by signing in to your Google account. Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity Scheduling and Square Appointments connect with an API key or access token from that service. The connect dialog tells you where to find it. See Connecting an app.

How busy times work

• Busy times block the whole workspace. A busy block in a connected calendar removes that time for every staff member and service.
• Ringhum reads your calendar when the assistant, or a customer on your booking page, looks for free times. It does not copy your events into Ringhum.
• Busy times are kept for about two minutes. An event you add to your calendar can take up to two minutes to block the assistant.
• For Google Calendar, Ringhum reads the main calendar of the Google account you signed in with.
• For Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity Scheduling and Square Appointments, the bookings in that service count as busy. Cancelled bookings do not.

Your own booking rules still apply on top: opening hours, holidays, buffers, lead time and how far ahead customers can book. See Availability rules.

Google Calendar two-way sync

When you connect Google Calendar, two things happen:

1. Busy times in your Google calendar block the assistant's availability.
2. Every appointment booked in Ringhum, by the assistant, your team, the booking page or the API, is added to your Google calendar. The event shows the service, customer name, and phone number and email when they were given. A rescheduled appointment moves the event. A cancelled appointment removes it.

The Google Calendar card shows the account you connected and whether "bookings are written to it" or it is "read-only".

Stop writing bookings to Google Calendar

If you only want Google Calendar to block times, and not receive bookings:

1. Open Integrations and find the Google Calendar card.
2. Click Stop writing bookings.

The card now says read-only. Your busy times still block the assistant. To start writing again, click Write bookings. Bookings made while writing was off are not added later.

Note: Pausing Google Calendar stops both directions. While it is paused, its busy times do not block the assistant either.

The calendar feed (ICS)

The Calendar feed (ICS) card gives you a private link to your Ringhum appointments. Subscribe to it from Apple Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar or any calendar app that accepts a calendar URL. You then see your bookings next to your other events.

1. On the Calendar feed (ICS) card, click Copy link.
2. In your calendar app, add a calendar by URL (often called "subscribe" or "from URL") and paste the link.

The feed includes appointments from the last 60 days and all future ones. Your calendar app decides how often it refreshes, so changes can take a while to appear there. The feed is one-way: events in your calendar do not block the assistant.

Important: Anyone with the link can see your appointments. If it has been shared by mistake, click Regenerate. The old link stops working, and every calendar using it has to be subscribed again with the new link.

Hotels: Booking.com, Airbnb and Vrbo

Room calendars are not connected here. They are set up for each room under Rooms & rates, using calendar links in both directions. Imported calendars are read about once an hour, and you can click Sync now on a room to read them straight away. See Rooms, reservations and calendar sync.

Troubleshooting

The assistant offered a time that is busy in my calendar. Check that the calendar card shows Connected and not Error or Paused. If you added the event in the last couple of minutes, wait and try again. For Google Calendar, make sure the event is in the main calendar of the connected account and is not marked as free.

I got an email saying Google Calendar is disconnected. The connection to Google has expired or been removed. Until you reconnect, its busy times are not read, and bookings could overlap with your Google events. Click Reconnect on the Google Calendar card and sign in again. This email is sent to the workspace owner at most once a day.

Bookings are not appearing in Google Calendar. Check that the card says bookings are written to it, not read-only. If the card shows Error, click Reconnect.

I cannot connect Google Calendar or Calendly. Both are part of the Team and Scale plans. On other plans, use the calendar feed, Cal.com, Acuity Scheduling or Square Appointments. See Changing plans.