How to add The Reef's calendar to your own calendar app

alberto · June 23, 2022, 10:39am

This is a wiki, with full revision history functionalities. Edit at will.

Overview

As of Jult 2024, The Reef has several calendars. This is to let each Reefling choose the visibility and notifications settings that they want to have for each set of calendar events (plenaries, full member meetings, social events etc.).

There are three ways to access the calendars:

From the Nextcloud Calendar application
From a web browser
From any other calendar application, such as Google or Proton calendar.

How to learn the addresses of different calendars.

Important. Only the owner of a Nextcloud calendar has access to its URL.

To access the URL, the owner should navigate to the calendar page of Nextcloud, then click on the pencil icon next to the calendar’s name, as below.

Copy the Share Link to get the address of the web page. Click on the three dots icon to access the subscription link, as below.

Calendars directory

These are the available calendars at the time of writing.

Calendar	Web page	Subscription URL
Team / small group meetings	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/calendar/p/cFkYr7rfMwoK5F9x`	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/cFkYr7rfMwoK5F9x?export`
Plenary meetings / Team Reef	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/calendar/p/ftgyCtr7cLgqB5c5`	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/ftgyCtr7cLgqB5c5?export`
Social events	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/calendar/p/TjSKNCziZwafLpmf`	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/TjSKNCziZwafLpmf?export`
Full Members meetings	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/calendar/p/pMnoofDqjiGScjj6`	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/pMnoofDqjiGScjj6?export`
Deadlines	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/calendar/p/Hwbbb8Tx4raaS7Cm`	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/Hwbbb8Tx4raaS7Cm?export`
Team building	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/calendar/p/nz8CCbanaWopzcYn`	`https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/nz8CCbanaWopzcYn?export`

How to access calendars

1. From the Calendar app in Nextcloud.

Click on the Calendar icon in the blue bar on the top of Nextcloud’s interface. Calendars are shared with the group called Reeflings, with edit privileges. This means that all Reeflings can add, delete of change events. Do this with care!

2. With a web browser

You can access any calendar by navigating to its web page, no login to Nextcloud needed. Simply paste the address you want in your browser’s address bar. This mode of access is view-only: you will be unable to add, change or delete events.

3. With a calendar application

You are welcome to use Nextcloud as your own calendar app. However, many of us already use other calendar apps, like Google Calendar. If you are in this situation, we recommend adding to your calendar app the Reef calendars relevant to you. This will make it easier for you to be aware of your commitments with The Reef when you make your own scheduling decisions.

The documentation to NextCloud’s calendar app is here.

To add The Reef meetings calendar to your own Google Calendar application, do this:

Go to https://calendar.google.com/ and log in.
In the sidebar under “Other calendars”, click “+” and then “From URL”.
In field “URL of calendar”, enter the subscription URL of the calendars that you would like to add. Web addresses will not work for this, you need to use subscription URLs.
Click “Add calendar”.
Make sure that the option “Sync calendar” in your app is checked. They look a bit different depending on the app. On the Google Calendar Android app normally the imported calendars do not sync by default, so you have open the calendar settings and enable syncing. Settings => list of calendars, then click on “Show more” => locate the “The Reef meetings” calendar, click on it, then click on “Sync”.

Now the events of that calendar appear in your Google Calendar. (Easiest way to check: open three-dots menu for calendar “The Reef meetings”, then choose “Display this only”.)

Calendar apps other than Google will work in much the same way. As always, ask @manuelpueyo or myself if you need help.

Thanks to @matthias for writing the step-by-step guide and testing it.

alberto · July 15, 2024, 11:06am

Update July 2024: subscription links have stopped working (again). I have opened a ticket.

alberto · July 16, 2024, 7:00am

Further update: this function now works for me. There was no need to re-import the calendar into Google/Proton: the import had been made correctly as per this guide, and when the calendar feed was repaired from the Tab.Digital side the calendar events showed up. Ping specifically @ChrisM and @Sarah, whom I know to use this feature.

ChrisM · July 16, 2024, 6:46pm

I’ve imported all the new calendars into my Google calendar using the URLs that you posted above. But none of the events associated with them show up, only the ones from the original calendar that we’ve been using (meetings/Alberto). They are all supposed to sync automatically. Not sure what to do next…

alberto · July 22, 2024, 10:10pm

I’m sorry, Chris, I cannot reproduce your error. I just removed a calendar (plenaries, showed correctly), then re-added using the link in the third column, it shows correctly again.

ChrisM · July 25, 2024, 10:28am

Starting to look like I’m the problem

alberto · July 25, 2024, 10:46am

Not at all. This might happen because you are using the G Calendar mobile app, whereas I am using the web app. The latter works. But on mobile, at least on Android, you cannot add calendars. So you rely on your G account to do the job of relaying your calendar subscriptions (added on the web app) to the mobile app. But with that part we had problems in the past.

ChrisM · September 23, 2024, 9:52am

Hi @alberto !
Everything is good now with synching my Google calendar with the Nexcloud one
One small request: can you add the ‘Birthday’ calendar that Lie has set up to the ‘Calendars directory’ at the top of this page, so that we have a subscription URL to sync that one as well.
Also, with regards to the directory above, it looks like there is no longer a ‘Team/small group meetings’ calendar on Nextcloud, and we have gone back to using ‘The Reef meetings’ for those…
Thanks!

alberto · September 23, 2024, 7:21pm

Try now…

ChrisM · November 12, 2024, 11:26am

Sorry @alberto, I think I didn’t make myself very clear. At the top of this page is a ‘Calendars directory’, with all the subscription URLs that we need to synch the various calendars. But they don’t line up with what is currently available on the Nextcloud calendar. There are three changes to make:

The first entry on the calendar directory above is ‘Team/small group meetings’, but on Nextcloud we are using ‘The Reef meetings’ (Alberto).
Add the subscription URL to the directory above for ‘Birthdays’ (Lie).
Add the subscription URL to the directory above for ‘Team Building’ (Joannes).

Thanks!

ChrisM · December 17, 2024, 10:08pm

For the record, the subscription URL for the ‘Birthdays (Lie)’ calendar is: https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/remote.php/dav/calendars/manuel/birthday_shared_by_Lie/