Dashboard > Help > Calendars

Calendars

App Calendar Overview

The Calendar screen of the app is a powerful feature that is personalized for the signed in app user, whether student, parent, or staff. This unified calendar view shows school-wide events combined with:

You can make changes to calendars at any time and users will see the changes the next time they use the app. Please allow up to 2 hours for Synced Calendar updates to appear in the Dashboard.

Learn more:

As with notifications, calendars and schedules can be entered into the App Dashboard directly, or the system can synchronize with external Synced Calendars.

Calendar Setup (school-wide, class or group)

If your calendar is already published online, see Synced Calendars.

Please note that if your calendar has been typed up in Microsoft Word or Publisher, or is in PDF format, there is no way to extract the date, time, event name, and description so that we can import it into the calendar database.

To enter your events into the App Dashboard:

  1. Sign in to your App Dashboard: https://sunnycrest.appazur.com/dashboard/
  2. Choose Calendars
  3. Choose the existing calendar to edit, or choose + Add Calendar
  4. Give the calendar a descriptive name just for admin use (e.g. School Calendar 2016-17)
  5. Under For scroll down and choose your school name. Or, choose the name of the class or group that the calendar will be for. Or, if you are creating a staff calendar, choose Staff.
  6. Enter each event. To get another blank line, click Add another event.
  7. When finished, click Save (bottom left of page).

Another option, if you have a lot of data to copy and paste, is to use a Google Sheet calendar.

Synced (External) Calendars

Do you already have online calendars for your school? Your App can sync with:

From the Dashboard's Calendars page, click Add Calendar. You'll see options for entering a Google Calendar ID, a spreadsheet tab name, or an WebCal/iCal/.ics web link. If you need assistance, contact Support.

Please allow up to 2 hours for external calendar updates to appear in the Dashboard. From the Calendars page, look at the Synced Status column to see when we last synced with the external calendar.

WebCal / iCalendar / ICS / vCalendar feed

You'll need the URL (web link) to the .ics calendar export, not the web page that displays your calendar.

This link may start with https:// or webcal://.

Google Calendar

First, you will need to open the Google Calendar in your web browser. From your gmail account or https://calendar.google.com/, in the panel on the left, under “My Calendars” or “Other Calendars”, hover over the calendar you'd like to link, then click on the vertical ellipsis to open the menu. Click on “Settings” or “Settings and Sharing.” Scroll down to the “Integrate Calendar” section of the page.

Next, choose from two methods of linking a Google Calendar to the app:

  1. You may make use of the Public address in iCal format or Secret address is iCal format, and proceed with the iCalendar instructions above. The secret address is useful if you wish to integrate a private calendar, such as a staff calendar.

  2. Alternatively, you may use the Google Calendar ID. Under “Calendar ID” copy the Calendar ID to paste it in the App Dashboard.

Calendar ID Procedure:

To learn how to use Google Calendar for your website (which we highly recommend if you are creating a website), check out this Google Calendar Tutorial.

Google Sheets

Because your school calendar is similar each year, you may find it easier to maintain your school, staff, or class/group calendar in a Google Sheet. That way, each year you can easily edit the sheet, adjusting the dates to the new year.

Rather than creating your own Google Sheet, use the Google Sheet that is already available for the optional Block Schedule and Personalized Class Schedules features.

To create a calendar, go to Block/Bell Schedule, choose Edit in New Window, and add a tab called "CALENDAR". Then, from the Calendars page, choose Add Calendar, App Spreadsheet, and enter "CALENDAR" as the name of a new Spreadsheet Tab. Your spreadsheet must have two columns, DATE and EVENT, and dates must be entered in 24-hour time format.

Your Calendar changes will NOT sync automatically. Either click the Sync button on the Block/Bell Schedule page, or open the calendar from the Calendars screen and simply click Save.

Microsoft Outlook

The easiest way to connect an Outlook calendar to the app is to first publish the calendar. That will create a link to a calendar feed (.ics) that can then be specified when you choose Add Calendar in the Dashboard.

Read more: https://www.howtogeek.com/436647/how-to-publish-your-outlook-calendar-from-outlook.com/

Microsoft Exchange

The easiest way to connect an Exchange calendar to the app is to first publish the calendar. That will create a link to a calendar feed (.ics) that can then be specified when you choose Add Calendar in the Dashboard.

Read more: https://www.howtogeek.com/436647/how-to-publish-your-outlook-calendar-from-outlook.com/

Calendar publishing creates URLs that users can give to people outside their organization. One URL lets recipients subscribe to calendars, and the other lets the recipient view a calendar in a Web browser.

Contact Support for assistance.

Sharepoint

Contact Support and provide the web link to your Sharepoint Calendar so we can check if it is set up for us to access (via SOAP API). If not, you can set things up with this workaround:

First, open your Sharepoint calendar using your desktop Outlook for Windows:

Then follow the instructions here for Outlook.

Staff Calendar

Staff calendars are only visible to staff that sign in with an authorized account. Add a calendar, associating it with the All Staff group, or any staff group that you create.

Staff will see their events on the Calendar screen of the app, along with the items that parents and students see. So the staff calendar should only include staff-specific events; if you include "Spring Break" in the staff calendar, it will appear twice in the app!

Multiple Calendars

Normally, you would just have one calendar for the school, and one for a class or group. As new events are planned they can be added to the existing calendar.

You can however have more than one calendar for the school, or for a class or group. For example, you could sync up with a Google Calendar, and have an additional calendar that you edit in the App Dashboard to add additional events.

Updating your Existing Calendar

  1. Sign in to your App Dashboard
  2. Click Calendars, then click the name of your calendar
  3. Now that you see your existing calendar, here's what you can do:
    • Update existing event dates
    • Add New Events
      • Use the blank rows at the end fo the list (they don't have to be entered in date order)
    • Remove an Event
      • Click the X button on the right side of the item (you may have to scroll further right to see it)
  4. Click Save in the bottom right
  5. To verify that everything is correct, open the app on your device. (If the app is already open, force close it first.)

Sharing Calendar Between Classes/Groups

You can create one calendar and share it with multiple classes. Here are the steps:

  1. From the App Dashboard Home page, click Calendars.
  2. Check the checkbox to the left of the calendar you would like to share.
  3. Click on the Action Menu.
  4. Select Share calendar with another class/group.
  5. Click Go.
  6. On the subsequent page, in the For menu, select the Class with which you'd like to share the Calendar, then click Save.
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