You can integrate your calendar with Slate, either directly with Microsoft 365 or Google calendars, or via an iCal feed.

These integrations let you add institutional calendars, staff calendars, and availability information directly into the Slate Events and Scheduler tools.

Adding a web calendar adds it to both the Events and Scheduler calendars. Note that these cannot be separated.

🌟 Best Practice

We recommend direct integrations (described in the following section) over iCal feeds: they’re easier to set up and offer faster updates in both directions.

Two-way integration with Microsoft 365 or Google calendar

You can synchronize Scheduler availability with Microsoft 365 or Google calendars.

With a two-way sync, Scheduler appointments created through the Scheduler portal widget appear in your external calendar. Scheduler availability also respects your external calendar’s availability.

Note that, unless you have their password, there’s no way to administratively create a two-way calendar integration for someone else. Because users sign in to their own calendar providers, they must add these integrations themselves.

To create a live, two-way synchronization with your Microsoft 365 Calendar:

1. From the main navigation, select Events.

2. Select Calendars.

3. Select New Calendar.

4. From the Service list, select your preferred calendar service:

   • Google Calendar

   • Microsoft 365 Calendar

5. Select Continue. You are directed to your calendar service’s authorization interface.

6. Follow prompts from your calendar service. Slate never accesses your username or password. You are directed back to Slate.

7. Configure the following settings:

   • Name: Edit the name. Defaults to the calendar service type.

   • Folder: Keep calendars organized by placing yours in a folder. Select Other to create a new folder.

   • Calendar: Defaults to the main calendar. Optionally select a specific from the list.

   • Free/Busy: Select Use to determine availability and for two-way integration.

   • Color: Optionally select a color for organizational purposes.
     

8. Select Save.

Viewing your calendars in Slate

In Events or Scheduler, find the Calendars section located near the end of the right navigation. Select an external calendar to display or hide its events from the calendar view.

Pull external calendar into Slate with iCal feed

iCal feeds create a one-way integration accessed by an iCal URL you provide. The US Holiday iCal is automatically available in Slate.

📝 Note

If you do not see the option to Publish a calendar in Outlook, your institution's IT department may need to enable external calendar sharing before you can sync your iCal feeds into Slate Events and Scheduler. You can read more about Outlook calendar sharing on support.microsoft.com.

To add a calendar from an iCal feed:

1. From the main navigation, select Events.

2. Select Calendars.

3. Select New Calendar.

4. From the Service list, select iCal Feed.

5. Select Continue.

6. Configure the following settings:

   • Name: Enter a name for your calendar.

   • Folder: Keep calendars organized by placing them in a folder. To create a new folder, select Other.

   • User: Select a user to be associated with the calendar.

   • URL: Paste the ICS link from your calendar service of choice here.

     • Locating your ICS link: Outlook for the web

     • Locating your ICS link: Google Calendar

   • Free/Busy: Select Use to determine availability

   • Color: Select a color for event cards in the Events and Scheduler calendar views.

7. Select Save.

Locating your ICS link: Outlook for the web

To retrieve the iCal feed URL in Outlook for the web:

1. Log into the individual Outlook 365 calendar using the web browser version.

2. Select Settings.

3. Select View all Outlook settings.

4. Select Shared calendars.

5. Under Publish a calendar, choose the calendar to be published and configure any other settings as necessary.

6. Select Publish and copy the ICS link.
   
   

Locating your ICS link: Google Calendar

To retrieve the iCal feed URL in Google Calendar:

1. Go to the individual Google Calendar.

2. Select Options > Settings and Sharing

3. Within the Integrate calendar section you can choose to copy one of these two different links

   • Public address in iCal format - Copy this link if your Google calendar is publicly visible

   • Secret address in iCal format - Copy this link if your Google calendar is NOT publicly visible

4. Right click on one of these links and select Copy.
   
   

✨ Tip

Set the time zone for an event in the Details tab to ensure the correct time is presented in iCal.

Pull Slate events into a Google calendar with iCal feed

1. Click Events or Scheduler in the top navigation bar.

2. Navigate to the iCal subscribe section on the lower right-hand side.

3. Right-click either All Events or Your Events ('Your Events' refers to events associated with a specific user).

4. Select Copy link address.
   
   

5. Log in to your Google Calendar application.

6. On the left-side menu choose Add a calendar and select From URL.

7. Paste the URL you copied in step four into the pop-up window.

8. Click Add Calendar.
   
   

9. Your Slate calendar will now be available on the left-side menu.
   

Slate caches the iCal feed locally once per hour with Events and roughly three minutes for Scheduler, all of the latest updates in preparation for the external service (for example, Google) to come and pick up the iCal feed.

In other words, Slate does not push the update to Google – Google has to pull the update from Slate.

Pull Slate events into an Outlook calendar with iCal feed

Adds Events in Slate as a new calendar in Outlook.

After following these steps, the Slate iCal file will automatically sync and be available to view on an individual's Outlook calendar.

1. Click Events or Scheduler in the top navigation bar.

2. In the iCal subscribe section on the lower right-hand side, select All Events or Your Events ('Your Events' refers to events associated with a specific user).
   
   

3. In the pop-up box that appears, click Open Pick an app or Open Outlook.

4. If the pop-up box opens, Pick an app and select Outlook.
   
   

5. When Outlook opens, it will display a pop-up window. Click Yes in the pop-up window to add the events to your calendar.
   

✨ Tip for Mac users

Outlook can import events and to-do items from iCal.

Next up: Configuring availability in a portal

With calendars added to Slate, you can configure a portal to dynamically display available time slots to the end user. We’ll show you how to do that in the following article.

➡️ Create schedules using Availability