Create a direct iCal URL link that makes sharing the calendar with email clients such as Outlook more streamlined?
This is becoming more and more of an issue as we try and push all the content to our online app through Knack.
Jeff,
By asking the user to "right click" on the "download events" link in the App calendar view they will get the URL to the ics calendar file. This URL can then be used in Outlook to create a "live" calendar that updates with the knack calendar... only issue here is as described earlier in the thread...it does not handle time zone correction properly, unless you use the "formula workaround" and zapier as described earlier as well.
//Jens
I forgot to add the other bonus to this is that there are not 2 calendars in outlook then (no ics feed) as it uses the main calendar from 365 (or any I specify)
Hi Heather,
Sure attached is a screengrab of the formula. basically I have two date fields in my table.
the date field the user selects for their calendar (they click calendar and add an "action" in our case)
and an equation based on the date field named above less the time difference to the UK (GMT - 7)
I've been in touch with Knack regarding it and they have been working on it I believe, but ran in to a problem 2 weeks ago so not quite resolved yet.
In Zapier (which is an excellent compliment to Knack) I create my office 365 account (we are exchange) and connect to the Knack following zapier info (really easy).
In Zapier
I select my email account that I use in zapier to update (and then select that calendar)
It will then allow me to select the table and fields to use out of knack (and also specify conditions if needed)
it will ask me what field to use for the start / end date.... I select the equation formula date on the screengrab I created...
Hey presto, a great sync to outlook sending calendar and reminders too. I can also do it from outlook back into knack too from zapier too.
We also use text alerts based on above criteria, but send to mobile for our sales guys (i.e hot prospect due in the next 5 days = text) as emails are becoming too easy to ignore and it keeps the sales guys on their toes.
Hope it helps, a bit of a frig until its resolved, but may be a good way to move forward until its fixed :)
Kind Regards
Charlie
Hi there,
not sure if anyone has a resolution to this, but we've found a workaround. we've created an equation and taking the time difference off from where the server is to us = correct time in outlook
for example, we are in the UK (GMT) and so when they log on our system, they see the correct time on knack (GMT) however on the data pass through (Zapier) to office 365, we send an equation of the date time field that they use in our knack app.
Basically the equation takes 6 hours off and hey presto it sends the correct time to outlook.
I know its a "frig" as we say here, but it has solved our issue we have had
Heather,
As far as i see this, it is a defect in Knack with how time is handled... see my support correspondence below around this problem.
*****************
Hi there,
Understand! :-)
I think have found the problem though...
When adding an event from the front-end in the knack calendar at 12:00 on my computer (set to time zone GMT+1 and with the TZ setting in my App set to GMT+1) the entry in the ICS created by knack is stored as 12:00 (UTC). So when displaying this ICS event in the Google calendar it is using my TZ setting in Google (GMT+1) and converting the UTC time 12:00 in your ICS file to 13:00 in the Google calendar!!
Here is the entry from the ICS file created in Knack. The DTSTART entry is set to 12:00Z which is wrong, it should be 11:00Z since the TZ setting in Knack is set to GMT+1.
VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:54bcfe9f69c154497cf967f7
DTSTART:20150124T120000Z
DTEND:20150124T160000Z
DTSTAMP:20150124T120000Z
SUMMARY:Öppet hus
CREATED:20150119T125455Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150121T210514Z
END
I assume you use the TZ setting in the knack app to decide how to convert the event into the correct UTC time... but this does not seem to be working. Even after changing the TZ setting in knack to GMT-11, the event start time you enter in the fron-end is stored in the ics file as UTC in the back-end.
I hope this helps,
Jens
Hi again,
Sorry to pester you about this one...but i found another interesting thing with this one while trying to get this to work for me.
When looking in the ICS file created by Knack, the CREATED and LAST-MODIFIED entries are set correctly. See below example, when this was set the time here was 22:25:32, and the entry in the ICS file was set to 21:25:32Z (UTC). The DTSTART and DTEND times are incorrect as per previous email.
BEGIN:VEVENTUID:54c40dcc27d61d5d109d01d5DTSTART:20150130T130000ZDTEND:20150130T190000ZDTSTAMP:20150130T130000ZSUMMARY:Jens TestCREATED:20150124T212532ZLAST-MODIFIED:20150124T212615ZEND:VEVENT
However, changing the TZ setting in the builder does not seem to affect the time set in the ICS file at all....which is strange! I tried to change it to GMT+12 but the time set as CREATED still ended up correct for sweden...
//Jens
Thanks Jens. That worked nicely. Has anyone been able to map any other knack fields to the GCAL events? So far I can only get the display field to show up.
When I originally posted this item the link wasn't working at all. It has since been fixed and is working by simply pasting the link in as an Internet Calendar in Outlook. The only issue now is getting All Day events to show up correctly in Outlook as opposed to a 12:00am event.
Justin,
Easiest, and only i think, way is just to “right click” on the download link for the ics file in the calendar view, then copy the url to the ics file and paste that as an external calendar i gcal or as an internet calendar in outlook.
Cheers,
Jens
Hi Jens, could you please elaborate on the process of dynamically linking ICS to google calendar? I can manually download the ICS file but I can't seem to find a URL for it to link to in Gcal. Thanks in advance,
Justin
Todd,
When configuring your calendar in the Builder you can select to enable this for the users in the interface. The user can then either statically download the ICS file, or dynamically link to the ICS file in Google calender or Outlook for example.
Cheers,
jens
Is this ical an option in the interface?
Jeff,
Isn't what can be seen in the attached image doing what you are asking for? I have my users using the URL produced to get the events into Outlook for example.
Cheers,
Jens