Calendars

The calendar keeps everyone's time in one place: company events, your own meetings, a team's on-call rota, who books which meeting room, and who is in the office. Each calendar has a type that says what it's for, and the type decides who owns the calendar, which kinds of events it holds, and whether events may overlap.

Menu	Calendars > Calendar, Calendars > Manage Calendars
Permission	Use calendars (to create calendars of your own: Create calendars)
Feature	Calendars, plus the calendar features below for more types

Can't find it?

What you see depends on your role. If the menu, a button or a setting on this page is missing, ask your administrator to give you the permission listed above or to turn on the feature. Only administrators can turn features on and change site settings.

Kinds of calendars

Which types you can choose depends on the features your administrator turned on.

Type	Feature	Use it for	Kinds of events
General	Calendars	A shared calendar that belongs to nobody in particular, such as a company or project calendar.	Event, Meeting, Holiday, Reminder
Personal	Calendars	Your own calendar. Everyone gets one the first time they open the calendar. Others see when you're busy, not what's on it, unless you share it.	Event, Meeting, Focus time, Out of office
Team	Team Calendars	A team's calendar. The team is a role: everyone in the role can see it and add to it.	Meeting, On call, Out of office, Milestone
Room	Resource Calendars	A meeting room or another space that one group uses at a time. Invite the room to an event to book it.	Booking, Maintenance
Equipment	Resource Calendars	Something that can be reserved, such as a projector or a vehicle.	Reservation, Maintenance
Office	Office Calendars	Who is in an office and which desks are booked, up to the number of desks.	In office, Desk booking, Visitor, Office closed

Two more types are kept by other features and can't be added by hand: Appointments, one per staff member, room or piece of equipment that takes appointments (see Scheduling), and Bookings, which holds the store's bookings (see Bookings). Other modules you add can bring types of their own, such as a calendar of employees' shifts and time off: with Workforce Shift Planning on, each team's Workforce calendar holds its published shifts, and Calendars > Shift Schedules plans them (see Shift Planning).

Some kinds of events have their own behavior:

• Holiday, Reminder, Milestone and Office closed leave the time free: they show on the calendar but don't make anyone busy.
• On call, Out of office (on a team calendar), In office and Desk booking must name at least one person.
• A kind of event that needs approval, such as time off on a calendar another module adds, is created as Tentative and waits until someone who manages the calendar confirms it.

Use the calendar

Open Calendars > Calendar. The list on the side shows every calendar you can see; tick the ones to show. Your choice is remembered on that browser.

Times on the calendar are in your time zone (the one on your user profile, or the site's), not your computer's, so they match the times on forms and lists across the site even when you're away.

• Day, Week, Month and Agenda change the view, the arrows move back and forward, and Today comes back to today.
• Click an event to see its calendar, kind, place, status, attendees and description, and Edit to open it. On a calendar you can only see as busy time, the event shows as busy, without its details.
• To add an event, choose New event, or drag across the times you want. When more than one calendar you can add to is showing, you're asked to choose the calendar and the kind of event first.
• Drag an event to move it, or drag its end to make it longer or shorter. For a repeating event you're asked whether to move This occurrence, This and following or All occurrences. If the move isn't allowed, such as when a room is already booked then, the event goes back and you're told why.

Events another feature keeps, such as appointments and bookings, can't be moved or changed here: their details show who manages them.

Create a calendar

1. Open Calendars > Manage Calendars.
2. Choose Add calendar and pick the type.
3. Fill in the sections below and choose Save.

When you create a calendar, you manage it. Manage Calendars lists the calendars you can see, with a search box and a Type filter. Open shows a calendar in the calendar view, and on a calendar you manage, Edit opens its settings and the menu next to it has Delete calendar, which deletes the calendar and every event on it.

General

Field	What it does
Name, Description	How the calendar is listed.
Color	The color its events are drawn in, unless their kind has its own.
Time zone	The time zone new events on this calendar use. Leave it on The site's time zone to follow the site.
Visibility	Who can see the calendar besides its owner and the people it is shared with: Private: only the owner and the people it is shared with, Shared: everyone sees when it is busy, not the details, or Public: everyone sees its events.
Enabled	A disabled calendar keeps its events but takes no new ones.
Location, Seats, Equipped with	Room and equipment calendars: where it is, how many people the room seats (0 for equipment), and what it has.
Address, Contact	Office calendars: where the office is, and who to ask about it, such as the office manager.

Owner

Personal calendars belong to a user, and team calendars belong to a role. In the Owner section, choose the user or the Team (role). Everyone in the role can see a team calendar and add events to it. Only calendar administrators can give a personal calendar to someone else.

Sharing

Share a calendar with Users or Roles, each with one of these levels. Each level includes the ones above it:

Level	Lets them
See free/busy time	See when the calendar is busy, without the details.
See events	See the events and their details.
Add and change events	Add, change and cancel events.
Manage	Change the calendar and who it is shared with.

The calendar's owner and calendar administrators always manage it.

Overlaps

Tick Limit overlapping events for a calendar that can only hold so much at once, and set Events that may overlap: 1 for a room, the number of desks for an office. A busy event is then refused when the calendar is already full at that time. Room and equipment calendars start with a limit of 1, and office calendars with 20.

Free events, and kinds of events that don't count (such as a team's Out of office), never fill the calendar.

Add and change events

You can do everything from the calendar without leaving it. The editor opens in a window over the calendar, and the calendar refreshes when you save:

• Add: choose New event, or drag across the times (or click a day) where the event goes, then pick the calendar and the kind of event.
• Change, cancel or delete: click an event and choose Edit. The editor's Open full page link opens the same editor on its own page.
• Move or resize: drag the event, or drag its bottom edge.

Only the events of calendars you can change can be edited this way. The calendar loads the events of the days you're looking at as you move between them, so a busy calendar still opens quickly.

The event editor has three sections: General, Repeat and Attendees.

General

Field	What it does
Title	The event's name.
Kind of event	The kinds the calendar's type offers. The kind sets its color and its defaults, such as how long it lasts.
Category	One of your categories (see Color-code with categories). Its color wins over the kind's.
All day	Lasts whole days. Ends is then the last day it lasts.
Starts, Ends	When it starts and ends.
Time zone	A repeating event keeps its time of day in this time zone, across daylight saving changes.
Location, Description	Where and what.
Status	Confirmed, Tentative or Cancelled.
Show as	Busy, or Free for an event that is shown but leaves the time free for other plans.
Visibility	Same as the calendar, Public, or Private: others see only that the time is busy.
Color	Tick Use its own color to pick a color for this event only.

Repeat

Choose how the event Repeats: Does not repeat, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly, and every how many days, weeks, months or years. A weekly event repeats On the days you tick, so "every day from the 3rd to the 30th except Mondays" is Weekly, every 1 week, with every day but Monday ticked, and Ends On the 30th. A monthly event repeats on The same day of the month or The same weekday of the same week, such as the second Tuesday. Under Ends, choose Never, On a date, or After a number of occurrences. For a pattern the choices don't cover, a Custom rule (an iCalendar repeat rule) is used instead.

Attendees

Field	What it does
People	Users of the site. Choose Invite users and search.
Guests	People outside the site, one per line, as an email address or a name followed by the address in angle brackets.
Rooms and equipment	Book a room or a piece of equipment for the event. This fails when it is already booked at that time.
Answers	Who has accepted, said maybe or declined.

When you're invited to an event, its page shows You are invited. Your answer: with Accept, Maybe and Decline.

Change a repeating event

Opening one occurrence of a repeating event shows Apply the changes, or the cancellation, to: This occurrence, This and following, or All occurrences. Changing only this occurrence leaves the others as they are; changing this and following ends the series there and starts a new one with your changes. To change how the event repeats, edit the whole series from its first occurrence.

Cancel event (Cancel on an occurrence) cancels it, or the occurrences you chose: cancelling This occurrence removes just that day from the series, and All occurrences cancels the whole event. A cancelled event is kept, with its status set to Cancelled, but the calendar no longer shows it. With Calendar Invitations on, the people invited are told. Delete removes it for good, with every occurrence if it repeats.

Approve events

A kind of event that needs approval, such as time off on a calendar of employees' shifts, is created as Tentative. Someone who manages the calendar opens it and chooses Confirm.

Book rooms and equipment

With Resource Calendars on, add a Room or Equipment calendar for each room or item. To book one, invite it under Rooms and equipment on any event, or add a Booking directly on the room's calendar. A room takes one booking at a time, so a second booking for the same time is refused, and the editor stays open with a message that names the room and the time that is taken, such as "Boardroom is already booked at 11/10/2026 10:30 AM." A booking that the room has declined doesn't count.

Office calendars work the same way with their desk count: once that many people are in the office or have booked a desk at the same time, the next one is refused.

An In office event lasts the whole day, a Desk booking lasts four hours by default, and both must name a person. A Visitor needs no person. In office, Desk booking and Visitor each take one desk; Office closed leaves the time free and never takes a desk. A new event uses the office's own time zone.

Color-code with categories

Categories are yours to make: "Sales calls", "Admin", "Personal", whatever helps you read your week at a glance. Open Calendars > Categories, choose Add category, give it a Name and a Color, and Save. Then pick it as an event's Category in the event editor.

• An event is drawn in the first color that applies: the event's own color (Use its own color), then its category's color, then the color of its kind of event, and last its calendar's color.
• The calendar view lists your categories under Categories, with No category at the end. Untick a category to hide its events; your choice is remembered in this browser.
• Your categories are only yours. People who can manage all calendars can also tick Everyone can use it, to make a category everyone sees and uses (such as "Company holiday").
• Deleting a category (Actions > Delete) keeps its events; they show again in the color of their kind of event or their calendar, unless they have a color of their own.

See someone else's schedule

To see what people have scheduled, such as a manager checking a team's workload, use Whose schedule under the calendar list on Calendars > Calendar. Choose Choose people and pick one or more users in the box that appears, or choose Everyone, then Show. The calendar shows the events on those people's own calendars and the events they attend on any calendar. Events you aren't allowed to open show as Busy, with their time but no title. Back to my calendars returns to your own calendars. The address of the page keeps the choice, so you can bookmark it.

Whose schedule only appears for people allowed to see others' schedules. Two pairs of permissions decide this, under Access Control > Roles:

Permission	What it allows
List anyone's calendar events	See anyone's schedule, or everyone's.
List own calendar events	See your own schedule. Everyone who can use calendars has it.
View anyone's calendar events	Open any event, instead of seeing it as busy.
View own calendar events	Open events you created, attend, or that are on your own calendar. Everyone who can use calendars has it.

Being able to read a calendar, because it's shared with you or visible to everyone, also lets you open its events (private events need the right to change the calendar). View all calendars includes both "anyone's" permissions.

See when your team is free

With Team Calendars on, open Calendars > Team Availability. Choose the Team (its calendar), the Day and the Meeting length (minutes), then Show. Each member of the team's role gets a row, with a cell for each half hour, showing when they are Busy, Tentative or Free, from all of their calendars. When everyone is free lists the gaps long enough for the meeting that everyone shares.

Invitations

With Calendar Invitations on, attendees with an email address are emailed:

• an invitation, with a calendar file they can add to Outlook, Google Calendar or their phone, when they are invited;
• an update, to the people already invited, when the event's title, time, place or repeat pattern changes;
• a cancellation when the event is cancelled or deleted.

The organizer and anyone who declined are not emailed. The invitation has Accept, Maybe and Decline links. Guests answer from those links without signing in, and their answer shows under Answers.

Invitations need two things besides the feature:

• Email that works. Open Settings > Communication > Email and set up a provider. To try it without sending anything, choose the Specified pickup directory delivery method on the SMTP tab: each message is written to a folder instead.
• The site's Base url, under Settings > General. The Accept, Maybe and Decline links point to it, so without it the email has no links (its calendar file still works).

If email isn't set up or a message fails, the event is still saved; the failure is only written to the site's log.

Reminders

With Calendar Reminders on, an event's Remind setting (in its General section) shows a reminder before it starts: when it starts, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, 1 or 2 hours, or a day before. Events that take time remind 10 minutes before unless you change it; all-day events don't remind.

The reminder shows at the top right of every admin page of the calendar's owner (for a personal calendar) and of each invited user who hasn't declined. It stays until you click Dismiss or close it, and dismissing it on one page or tab removes it from the others. Open calendar opens the calendar on that day. Pages check for reminders every minute while they're open.

Calendar Reminders also runs every minute to notice when events are about to start and when they have ended, once for each occurrence, so workflows can act at those moments, such as emailing attendees 15 minutes before a meeting (see Workflows).

Subscribe from Outlook, Google Calendar or a phone

With Calendar Feeds on, a calendar's menu on Manage Calendars has:

• Subscription address: choose Make an address, then Copy it. Add it to Google Calendar (Other calendars > From URL), Outlook (Add calendar > Subscribe from web) or a phone, and they show the calendar's events and keep them up to date. Anyone with the address can see the events, so share it only with people you trust; private events show as busy time. Make a new address stops the old one working, and Remove the address turns it off.
• Export .ics downloads the calendar as a file.
• Import .ics adds the events of an iCalendar file, such as one exported from Google Calendar or Outlook. Events already in the calendar with the same identifier are updated instead of added again, so importing the same file twice is safe. A message says how many events were added, changed and left unchanged. An event counts as unchanged only when the file gives it the same sequence number and a modified time that isn't newer, as calendar apps' exports do; a file without those is counted as changed every time.

Show an external calendar here

With External Calendars on, the calendar editor has a Subscription section. Tick Keep this calendar in step with an external calendar, keep the Provider on the iCalendar address, and paste the external calendar's secret iCalendar Address, such as the one Google Calendar or Outlook shows under the calendar's settings. It must start with https://, http:// or webcal://. Every (minutes) sets how often it is read (at least 5).

The external calendar's events are copied here and kept up to date, and events removed there are removed here. They can't be changed here. Last synchronized shows when it last worked, or why it didn't; when the address keeps failing, the site waits longer between tries (up to 32 times the interval), and the events already in the calendar stay. The address must be reachable from the internet: addresses on a private or local network are refused, and Last synchronized says so.

Google Calendar and Microsoft 365

Signing in to Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 to keep calendars in step both ways is not available yet. Use the subscription address and the iCalendar address described above.

Workflows

With the Workflows feature on, the Calendar category of the workflow editor has:

• Events that start a workflow: Calendar Event Created, Calendar Event Updated, Calendar Event Cancelled, Calendar Event Deleted, Calendar Attendee Invited and Calendar Attendee Response Received, and with Calendar Reminders, Calendar Event Starting Soon (set Minutes before the start) and Calendar Event Completed. Each can be limited to some Calendars, Calendar types or Kinds of events. Ignore changes made by workflows is ticked by default, so a workflow that changes events doesn't start itself again.
• Tasks that act on the calendar: Create Calendar Event, Update Calendar Event, Cancel Calendar Event, Get Calendar Event, Find Calendar Events, Add Calendar Attendee, Remove Calendar Attendee and Find Free Time.

For example: when an Out of office event is created on a team calendar, email the team lead; or when a meeting is starting soon, send its attendees the room and the agenda. The values each event hands to the next steps are listed in the Technical Manual.

Ask an AI assistant

With the AI features on, an AI profile can use calendar tools. Edit the profile (Artificial Intelligence > Profiles), open its Capabilities tab and tick the tools in the Calendar group: List calendars, Find calendar events, Find free time, Create calendar event, Move calendar event and Cancel calendar event. The assistant can then answer what's on your calendar, find a time when you and others are free, and book, move or cancel events. The tools act for the person who is signed in, with that person's access to each calendar, and refuse anyone who isn't signed in.

Copy calendars to another site

Calendars, their events and the categories travel between sites with a deployment plan (Tools > Deployments > Plans, with the Deployment feature on):

1. Open or create a deployment plan and choose Add Step.
2. Under Calendar, add Calendars. Tick Include events to take every calendar's events (up to 10,000 per calendar) and Include categories (on by default) to take everyone's categories, so the events keep their colors.
3. Execute the plan to download it, then import the file on the other site (Tools > Deployments > Package Import), or send it with a remote deployment.

The import creates what's missing and updates what's already there, matched by each record's id, so importing the same file twice doesn't duplicate anything. A calendar needs its kind's feature to be on in the other site (for example Resource Calendars for rooms). Imported events don't send invitations and aren't checked for overlaps. A recipe with the Calendars step behaves the same way; to get its exact shape, export a plan first and start from that file.

Which feature to turn on

Features are turned on under Tools > Features (search for Calendars); each one lists what it depends on.

You want to...	Ask your administrator to turn on
Use the calendar, with shared and personal calendars	Calendars
Give teams their own calendar and see when a team is free	Team Calendars
Book meeting rooms and equipment	Resource Calendars
Track who is in the office and book desks	Office Calendars
Email invitations that attendees answer from the email	Calendar Invitations
Be reminded before events start, on screen	Calendar Reminders
Act a set time before events start, or once they end	Calendar Reminders (with Workflows)
Subscribe to a calendar from Outlook, Google Calendar or a phone, or import and export files	Calendar Feeds
Show an external calendar's events here	External Calendars
Let other systems read and change events	Calendars API
Let an AI assistant read your calendar, find free time and add events	Calendars and AI Services
Book appointments with staff, rooms and equipment	Scheduling (see Scheduling)

Troubleshooting

• I can't see a calendar. It's private and not shared with you. Ask its owner to share it, or to make it shared or public.
• I can see the time but not the event. You can only see the calendar's free/busy time, or the event is private.
• My event was refused with "already booked" or "already full". A room, a piece of equipment or the office has no room left at that time. Pick another time, or check what's booked on that calendar.
• I can't drag or edit an event. It's kept by another feature, such as an appointment or a booking, or you can only see the calendar. Change appointments under Calendars > Appointments and bookings under Commerce > Bookings.