Your bookings in every calendar, outside bookings in yours

Bookings out: a calendar link for everyone

Every member has a secret calendar link to their own bookings at your studio. They add it to Google Calendar with one click, or to Apple or Outlook Calendar with the link, and new and cancelled bookings show up there by themselves. Calendar apps refresh such links on their own schedule, usually about once an hour.

Admins have two more: the studio calendar with every booking and the booker's name, and a calendar per room with just that room's bookings, for example for the room's own Google calendar. Each event links back to Ruumio and carries the address of the room.

• Member feed: their own bookings
• Studio feed: every booking, for admins
• Room feed: one room's bookings, for admins
• Staff feed: their jobs and their own bookings

Staff see their jobs in their own calendar

A staff member's calendar link also carries the bookings they are assigned to, as jobs: who booked and how to reach them, the extras, the answers to your booking questions and the booking's note. When a job changes or is cancelled, their calendar follows by itself.

Links that stay private

Every link is a long secret address. Anyone with it can see those bookings, so if one is shared by mistake, make a new one: the old link stops working at once. Each link belongs to one studio, and a member's link stops working when they are no longer an active member.

Confirmation e-mails carry a calendar file too, and a recurring series comes with one file for all its dates, so members who don't subscribe still get their bookings into their calendar.

Bookings in: outside calendars block a room

Is the room also booked somewhere else, say in a shared Google calendar or on another platform that publishes one? Add that calendar's iCal address to the room (in Google it is the secret address in iCal format). Ruumio reads it every 15 minutes, and the times busy there can't be booked by members or guests.

In your admin calendar those times show as blocked from an outside calendar. Admins can still book over them when they know the time is free after all, just as they can book over closures. If a calendar can't be read, Ruumio keeps the busy times from the last read, shows the reason in the room's settings and tries again 15 minutes later.

Recurring, moved and cancelled events

Outside calendars are rarely simple. Ruumio expands recurring events, follows occurrences that were moved, skips occurrences that were cancelled and events marked as free, treats all-day events as the whole day and reads each time in its own time zone.

Events that came from Ruumio's own feeds are skipped. A room's Google calendar can therefore subscribe to the room feed and be read back in without blocking its own bookings.

Staff members' own calendars

A staff member can add their personal calendar's iCal address. While they are busy there, they aren't assigned to bookings: an extra that assigns staff picks the next free person, and an admin assigning by hand is told they are busy.

Only the times, nothing more

From an outside calendar Ruumio keeps only when each busy time starts and ends: no titles, descriptions or guests. Calendar addresses must be https or webcal addresses on the public internet; addresses pointing into a private network are refused.

Questions