[CAL-2979] ICS feed support for checking against double bookings

[sihma]

Is your proposal related to a problem?

I teach a language on italki. When people book lessons, the lessons event get dynamically updated in an .ics file calendar that's hosted through http. I use software (Thunderbird on my computer and ICSx5 on my Android smartphone) to see this calendar along my usual calendar (in CalDAV).

Cal.com has the ability to check my CalDAV for events that are present when someone want to book a meeting. Sadly, if someone booked a lesson on italki, the lesson will only show in the read-only ICS calendar. Therefore, someone could book a meeting on my Cal.com page even though I'm already booked on italki.

I have no abilities to automatically import the ICS feed in my CalDAV calendar for Cal.com to see when I'm busy.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would click on addons, click on ICS calendar, enter the link and press okay. Cal.com would check this one and my CalDAV calendar and prevent double bookings.

It would be awesome if Cal.com had an app to read the ICS calendar (the same way it reads my CalDAV calendar) when someone is trying to book a meeting. ICS calendars are very easy to set up (just a link) and I believe there wouldn't be much to be changed from the CalDAV Cal.com support app code.

Integrated support for ICS feeds is common in most calendar solution, so it would only make sense Cal.com also does. (IOS, Google and Thunderbird all support it. Sadly, not automatic import, because it doesn't really make sense except for my use case).

Describe alternatives you've considered

I've added the calendar as a subscription to my CalDAV calendar (hosted at Infomaniak), but cal.com is totally incoherent when it comes to seeing them or not (sometimes it does and I can't book times where I'm unavailable and sometimes it doesn't). As such, I think it would work better if this was part of Cal.com features.

Additional context

Thanks for your answer and work on Cal.com

_{From SyncLinear.com | CAL-2979}

[milospuac]

Hi there. Thanks for reaching out. Our team will look into this.

[PeerRich]

after looking into this, it seems like a fairly sized feature to build with not a lot of people requesting it.

maybe someone from the community wants to pick this up and release it as an app in the app store?

[christianpetty]

This feature would enable support for Proton Calendar and other encrypted platforms that offer availability via ICS links.

[aspiers]

Yes, there are many platforms which export availability via ICS URLs. My guess for the reported low number of people requesting it is that it's the kind of feature which won't occur to most people as useful until they actually see it implemented. IMHO the ubiquity of ICS as a well-adopted standard makes this a very desirable feature for growing the platform.

I guess it would be fine as an app. I don't know the code base yet, but I'm a bit surprised to hear that it would be a fairly sized feature to build, since isn't it pretty much the simplest app you could build? It just has to fetch data from a single URL and integrate it. Probably I'm missing a bunch of complexity. Or is it just that even building a simple app is quite a lot of work?

[TobiTenno]

Is there a place we can express our desire for this? I don't want to cause noise on a ticket, but as Christian mentioned, this would be highly impactful

[PeerRich]

maybe @alishaz-polymath can look into this as he is working closely with caldav

[aspiers]

Related issues

#2054 is very similar to this, but see #2054 (comment) for the difference.

#3810 is a request for the "opposite" feature, i.e. cal.com being able to export an aggregated ICS feed (which could be a collection of either VFREEBUSY or VEVENT) to other systems, in contrast to this and #2054 which are both about cal.com importing an ICS feed. I see great value in both features, even though they are pretty much exact opposites of each other.

[alishaz-polymath]

I just want to mention here that this feature is up next for us in CalDAV as soon as we have stabilized the integration enough to consider it robust. This could still take some time, but it is surely now in our sight 🙏

[christianpetty]

@alishaz-polymath that’s awesome!

[penyuan]

I just want to mention here that this feature is up next for us in CalDAV as soon as we have stabilized the integration enough to consider it robust. This could still take some time, but it is surely now in our sight pray

Can't wait! Cal.com being able to subscribe to published ICS feeds would be a killer feature for me. Without it I literally can't use Cal.com right now...

[criadoperez]

@alishaz-polymath that's great! Looking forward for this.
I also think that allowing Proton Calendar (among several others that use ICS) will increase the users that can use cal.

[sepehr]

This would be much appreciated! I'd rather publish & connect a redacted ICS instead of full caldav credentials.

[penyuan]

Is this on the roadmap for a future version? Like 2.x?

[NightmindOfficial]

This is also a great feature for people who cannot import their calendars due to organization administrator restrictions.

As an example, I am currently a student and my university does not allow me to import my Outlook calendar into cal.com as this requires elevated privileges. However, I do have an .ics feed that I already imported to other apps such as Google calendar etc. showing me all internal events in read-only mode.

With the feature mentioned above, cal.com could prevent double-bookings colliding with read-only calendars, which is kind of a hygiene factor.

[PeerRich]

we'll look into it. its not on the roadmap yet, maybe Q1

if someone from the community wants to make an ics feed app, we'll happily approve!

[Faknit]

This is a tad bit embarrassing, but I can't figure out how to "give" a bounty..

[mogery]

This is a tad bit embarrassing, but I can't figure out how to "give" a bounty..

I'm not sure either :D gonna ask around on their Discord oh ok they replied here already

[algora-pbc]

Hi @Faknit, you can complete the payment from your org dashboard on Algora 🙌

[Faknit]

Thank you! So, that takes me to this page:

But those links just take me to the pull request. So do I go somewhere on this page to make the payment?

[algora-pbc]

Ah it looks like you're logged out! You'll see a reward button once you login:

[Faknit]

I was about to ban myself from the internet if I forgot to login. But, the plot thickens:

[mogery]

I was about to ban myself from the internet if I forgot to login. But, the plot thickens:

Also, my /claim command only claimed the calcom bounty on my side of the interface, not the other two bounties set by non-org people. Weird!

[algora-pbc]

Just sent you an email (from zafer@algora.io) to get this sorted out, apologies for the inconvenience here. My best guess is that you're logged in as another user who doesn't have access to the org

[algora-pbc]

🎉🎈 @mogery has been awarded $100 by @Faknit! 🎈🎊

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[mogery]

Thank you!

[ezhil56x]

@mogery Good job! 🚀

[algora-pbc]

🎉🎈 @mogery has been awarded $100 by @mschneiderwng! 🎈🎊

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[mogery]

And thank you as well! ❤️

[thekumbhaj]

congratulations @mogery

[penyuan]

Thanks @mogery where can I find this feature in cal.com??? I can't find it under apps.... Please advise, thanks!

[wivaku]

Release notes for 3.8.4 refer to ICS feed icon, in this ticket it refers to 3.8 and 3.9 milestone. Does this mean ICS feed is available in 3.8.4? Same for me: could not find it under calendar apps.

[wivaku]

ICS feed is available in v3.9. Have not been able to add an ICS calendar yet though.
E.g. iCloud public holidays: https://calendars.icloud.com/holidays/us_en-us.ics
or Outlook: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/<...>/<...>/calendar.ics

Both give error: No handlers found for ics-feed

[penyuan]

Same here, I'm getting the same error as @wivaku. I shared Outlook 365 calendar under my control with full view permissions, with URL in the form of https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/<...>/<...>/calendar.ics, and copied it into the "ICS Feed" app. And I got an error saying:

No handlers found for ics-feed

@mogery and other developers: Can you please advise? Thank you!!

[mogery]

Hey there! Sorry that it's not working for you, maybe something was brought in between the merge and now that broke things. I don't have a whole lot of time on my hands immediately, but I will look into it as soon as possible.

[penyuan]

Hey there! Sorry that it's not working for you, maybe something was brought in between the merge and now that broke things. I don't have a whole lot of time on my hands immediately, but I will look into it as soon as possible.

Oh hey thanks for the quick response @mogery!! ❤️ Really appreciate you investigating this issue as soon as possible.

[Rubenkl]

Thanks for all the commits! I really was impatient to this feature, so I found a workaround for it. Just sharing here in case someone is interested.

I use the following script to automatically "copy" an ICS calendar to a separate google calendar (runs by itself every 15 minutes). Then, I can just import that calendar in cal.com like a regular calendar:
https://github.com/derekantrican/GAS-ICS-Sync

[warengonzaga]

This feature would enable support for Proton Calendar and other encrypted platforms that offer availability via ICS links.

How about writing to Proton Calendar?

[colans]

For those interested in Proton Calendar integration, give a 👍 to #14300. That's where the Proton stuff is happening now that #5756 is closed.

[warengonzaga]

For those interested in Proton Calendar integration, give a 👍 to #14300. That's where the Proton stuff is happening now that #5756 is closed.

Followed! Looking forward to the feature!