ICal Export

Synchronising Beds24.com with your Google or any iCal calendar

1 Capabilities

Beds24.com can export bookings and unavailable dates as an iCal feed.

Google calendar and many other systems can read the iCal feed.

Many holiday rental sites support Ical more Information

For details please click here

2 Limitations

Only active bookings are exported, cancelled bookings will not appear.

Your Calendar program is responsible for routinely updating the calendar, we have no control over how often systems like Google calendar actually perform an update.

3 What you will need

The Beds24 Calendar URL as displayed in the channel manager menu for each room.

4 Beds24.com

Select whether to export bookings only, blocked dates or both bookings and blocked dates.

5 Calendar content

Because the iCal feed is public, by default only non personal data will be included.

If the secret token in the URL is used the iCal SUMMARY and DESCRIPTION fields of each iCal event can contain more information about the booking.

The Summary of each event can be customised using the iCal Summary field, this field can contain text and Template Variables.

The Description of each event can be customised using the iCal Property Description and iCal Room Description fields, these fields can contain text and Template Variables.

Secret tokens are generated to show different combinations of the description fields, this makes it possible to generate different iCal feeds for different purposes.

The Token Seed is optional and can be used to change the token values. If anyone accesses the calendar with the wrong token only the default non-personal iCal feed will be shown.

6 In your Calendar

The iCal export will work with any calendar capable of importing iCal format data. Google and Mac chosen here as examples because they are often used.

Google.com

• Log into your Google calendar.
• In the left column select "Other calendars".
• Select "Add by URL".
• Enter the Beds24 Calendar URL (see above).
• Click Add Calendar and the bookings for that room should import.
• Repeat for any other rooms.

Mac

• In Calendar, choose File > New Calendar Subscription.
• Enter the calendar’s web address, and then click Subscribe.
• Enter a name for the calendar in the Name field and choose a color from the adjacent pop-up menu.
• Repeat for any other rooms.

7 Data Options

Additional parameters can be added to the calendar URL to further specify the export data.

These options can be used to setup two way syncing to a google or other calendar without re-exporting imports and creating duplicate bookings. See also the options for iCal import to ignore duplicates.

&icalimport1=hide - add this to not include bookings imported from channel Ical Import 1.
&icalimport2=hide - add this to not include bookings imported from channel Ical Import 2.
&icalimport3=hide - add this to not include bookings imported from channel Ical Import 3.

This option will export the end date of the booking as the date of the last night, i.e. one day before the checkout date.

&end=lastnight - add this to export end date as last night.

This option will only show check-in days, not the rest of the booking.

&dates=checkin - add this to export only the check-in day to the calendar.

This option will only show check-out days, not the rest of the booking.

&dates=checkout - add this to export only the check-out day to the calendar.

This option should only be used if your software requires dates including time information.

&showtime=true - add this to add time to the calendar dates. Default checkin is added at 2PM and checkout at 10AM

Specify a different event start time when using &showtime=true.

&starttime=hh:mm - add this to specify the event start time, for example 07:30

Specify a different event end time when using &showtime=true.

&endtime=hh:mm - add this to specify the event end time, for example 11:00

Specify a time zone when using &showtime=true.

&timezone=Europe/London - add this to specify the timezone if your calendar needs it, the timezone must be a valid ical timezone value.
Valid timezone values can be found in the TZ* column at this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones

Hide request status bookings

&hiderequest=true - add this to prevent request status bookings appearing in the ical

8 Disconnect

• To disconnect set "Export" = Disable
• Remove the link from your calendar

9 Notes

If you want to use a custom URL you can use a URL shorten-er service which lets you customise the link.