Google Calendar and ICS
An event on the dashboard is not on anyone's calendar yet. There are three ways to get it there, and only the last one asks for a Google account.
| Way | What it gives | Needs an account |
|---|---|---|
| Add to calendar on one event | That event, in your calendar app, once | No |
| Subscribing to a feed | A calendar that updates itself | No |
| Connecting Google | Your RSVPs, or every event of a server, written into your Google Calendar, and your busy time shared with your teams | Yes |
Adding one event
Open any event on the dashboard and press Add to calendar. The menu offers a Google Calendar link, an Outlook link, and a Download .ics file that any calendar app opens: Apple Calendar, Thunderbird, the phone's built-in one. The links open the calendar's own "new event" form pre-filled with the title, time, place and description; nothing is sent through FlaviBot.
Members reading the panel in Discord get a similar hook: after pressing Going, the confirmation carries an Add to Google Calendar button for those who have not connected an account yet.
Subscribing to a feed
A feed is a link your calendar app checks on its own, so new events, changes and cancellations show up without anyone doing anything. Two of them are private, and the link is what keeps them private:
- Your feed: every event you said Going to, across all your servers. It is on your profile page, under Calendar > My calendar feed.
- The server feed: every upcoming event of one server, including the series as repeating entries with their skipped dates. It is on the Events page, Settings > Calendar subscription, and needs Manage Server to read.
Both feeds cover the last 30 days and the next year, and leave cancelled events out.
A server that publishes a public calendar has a third one, offered on that page itself: the same kind of subscription, for the events marked public, and with no secret in the link since the page is open to everyone anyway.
To subscribe: in Google Calendar, Other calendars > + > From URL; in Apple Calendar, File > New Calendar Subscription; in Outlook, Add calendar > Subscribe from web. Paste the link and you are done. How often the app refreshes is up to the app: Apple lets you choose, Outlook checks every few hours, and Google Calendar can take up to a day to pick up a change.
The link is the only thing protecting the feed, so treat it like a password. If it leaks, press Rotate: the old link stops working immediately and you paste the new one into your calendar app.
Connecting a Google account
The Google Calendar card on your profile page offers two levels. Each asks Google for exactly the access it needs, and the second includes the first, so upgrading is one more consent screen, not a new connection.
Share my availability
Lets your teams see when you are busy, so that Find a time can work around your real calendar. FlaviBot asks Google for three read-only things:
- your free/busy information, which tells it that you are busy between two times and nothing else;
- the list of your calendars, so you can tick which ones count;
- your timezone setting, offered as a source for your FlaviBot timezone.
Once connected, the card lists your calendars with a checkbox each; by default only your primary calendar counts. Nothing is read until a team member opens an availability view that includes you, and even then FlaviBot receives busy intervals only: it never sees the titles, guests or details of your Google events, and it never stores the intervals beyond a few minutes of caching. Switch Share my availability off in your preferences and the connection stays but nothing is looked up.
Add my RSVPs to Google Calendar
Lets FlaviBot write into your calendar. Press Going on any event and an entry appears in your primary Google calendar, with the title, the time in the event's timezone, the place, the description, and a "Via FlaviBot" line. Your calendar's own reminder settings apply to it.
- Withdraw, press Can't make it, or have the event cancelled, and the entry is removed.
- Edit the event on the server side, and the entry is updated.
- Get promoted off the waitlist, and the entry is created at that moment.
- Be signed up as Going by a server manager from the dashboard, and the entry is created too; be removed by one, and it goes.
- A member who was Maybe gets no entry: a maybe is not a plan.
FlaviBot only ever touches entries it created itself. It does not read your calendar at this level either; the access it holds is limited to creating, editing and deleting events.
Add every event of a server to your calendar
RSVPs cover the events you chose; a server you follow closely may deserve all of them. On that server's Events page, in the sidebar next to the calendar (behind the toolbar's Filters button on a phone), switch on Add this server's events to my Google Calendar: every upcoming event of the server (the next 90 days) is written into your calendar at once, and each new event follows as it is created. The switch is per server, so a member of ten servers picks the ones they care about.
It is on by default for the server you linked Google from: connect from a server's dashboard and that server's events start arriving without a second step. Any other server stays off until you switch it on there.
The entries behave like RSVP entries: an edit updates them, a cancellation removes them, and pressing Can't make it removes that one entry, since a declined event does not belong on your calendar even with the sync on. Withdrawing a Going answer only removes an entry your RSVP created; one the server sync placed stays, because you asked for the whole server, and so does a Maybe. Switching the sync off removes every entry it created and leaves the ones from your own RSVPs in place.
The switch only appears once your Google link holds this level; with availability sharing alone, the same line offers to grant it.
Reconnecting and disconnecting
If you remove FlaviBot from your Google account's connected apps, or the access expires unused, the card shows Reconnect needed and the sync pauses until you reconnect; nothing else breaks.
Disconnect revokes the access at Google and deletes the tokens FlaviBot held. Entries already written into your calendar are left in place: they are yours, and a disconnect should not empty your agenda.
What is stored, and where to read more
For a connected account FlaviBot keeps your Google email address (to show "connected as"), the access tokens, encrypted, the ids and names of the calendars you ticked, your Google timezone, and the list of servers where you switched on the server-wide sync. It never stores the content of your Google calendar. The privacy policy has the full statement, including our adherence to Google's API Services User Data Policy.
