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Let members subscribe to your calendar

Your events publish an iCal feed, so members can have your calendar appear inside their own, and stay current without doing anything.

In this article

Your church publishes a live calendar feed. A member subscribes once, your events appear in the calendar app they already use, and it stays current on its own.

This is not the same as "add to calendar", which copies one event across and then knows nothing about it afterwards. A subscription keeps up: change a time and their calendar changes too.

Your feed lives at your church's own address, with /events.ics on the end. The Add to Calendar button on your public Events section downloads a one-time copy instead; to subscribe, use the link:

yourchurch.org/events.ics

If you have not connected a custom domain yet it is your yourchurch.easychurchapp.com address instead. Either works.

What to tell members

iPhone: Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar, then paste the link.

Google Calendar: on a computer, next to "Other calendars" click + → From URL, then paste the link. It will not work from the phone app. Google only offers this on desktop, which is the single most common reason somebody says it did not work.

Outlook: Add calendar → Subscribe from web.

Somewhere permanent, not in an announcement that scrolls away. A line on your events page ("Add our calendar to your phone") does more good over a year than any number of reminders.

What appears in it

Published one-off events, from about a year ago onward (up to 500). Drafts, scheduled-but-not-yet-published events and events marked Members Only are not in the feed, because the feed is public.

One thing to know before you promise anyone anything: recurring schedules (your weekly service) are not in the feed today, only one-off events.

If a member says an event is missing from their calendar, check whether it is actually published before looking for anything more complicated.

How fast it updates

Calendar apps decide that for themselves, and most check every few hours rather than instantly. It is the right tool for the shape of your month and the wrong one for telling people a service is cancelled this morning. That is a notification.

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