Calendar Subscriptions (External iCal Feeds)

Audience: This article is for church administrators.

Calendar Subscriptions let you pull events from an external calendar (Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple iCloud, or any iCal feed URL) into TimelyChurch so they appear alongside your church events. This is one-way: external events are mirrored into TimelyChurch, but events created in TimelyChurch are not pushed back out.

Accessing Calendar Subscriptions

Calendar is now part of the Events module — there is no longer a separate "Calendar" item in the sidebar (you open the calendar with the Calendar button on the Events page). Open Settings → Calendar Subscriptions to manage your external feeds.

What You Can Do

From the Calendar Subscriptions page you can:

• View your list of subscriptions
• Add a subscription
• Edit a subscription
• Sync now (pull the latest events)
• Delete a subscription
• Validate a feed URL before saving

Adding a Subscription

1. Click Add Subscription (top-right of the page).
2. In the Add Calendar Subscription dialog, fill in:
   • Calendar URL (required) — The public .ics URL of the calendar. See "Where to find the iCal URL" below. As you type, TimelyChurch automatically checks the URL and shows "Valid iCalendar feed" (with the number of events found) or an error — there is no separate "Validate" button to click.
   • Display Name (required) — A label for the source calendar (e.g. "Senior Pastor Calendar," "Youth Ministry Google Cal").
   • Description (optional) — A short note about the calendar.
   • Category and Color — How events from this calendar are grouped and how they appear on your TimelyChurch calendar.
   • Sync Frequency — How often TimelyChurch should re-pull events (defaults to every 6 hours).
   • Default Event Type — The event type applied to imported events (Event, Worship, Class, or Meeting).
   • Auto-publish imported events (on by default) — Whether imported events go live immediately.
   • Convert to church timezone (on by default) — Whether event times are converted into your church's timezone.
3. Click Add Subscription to save.
4. Run a manual Sync Now to pull events immediately, or wait for the next scheduled sync.

Where to Find the iCal URL

Google Calendar

1. Open Google Calendar settings (gear icon > Settings).
2. Pick the calendar in the left sidebar.
3. Scroll to Integrate calendar.
4. Copy the Secret address in iCal format (or the public address if the calendar is public).

The "secret" iCal URL exposes everyone who has the link. Treat it as a password.

Outlook / Microsoft 365

1. Open the calendar in Outlook on the web.
2. Right-click the calendar > Sharing and permissions > Publish a calendar.
3. Choose access level (e.g. "Can view all details") and copy the ICS link.

Apple iCloud Calendar

1. In iCloud calendar, click the broadcast icon next to the calendar.
2. Enable Public Calendar and copy the URL.
3. Change webcal:// to https:// if needed.

Any other source

Anything that publishes a .ics feed will work — many event-management tools (Eventbrite, Mailchimp, Acuity) support iCal.

Syncing

• Automatic sync runs on the schedule configured for each subscription.
• Manual sync ("Sync Now") triggers an immediate pull. Use this after adding or editing a subscription.

Synced events appear on the church calendar and are tagged with the subscription's name and color so they're easy to spot.

Editing or Removing a Subscription

• Edit — Change the name, URL, color, or sync frequency.
• Delete — Removes the subscription and the synced events it produced. Events you created directly in TimelyChurch are not affected.

Troubleshooting

See Also

• Events & Calendar