Signera Knowledgebase

This article will walk you through connecting your Google Calendar with your Signera Event Scheduler module with the intention of showing your Google Calendar events on your Signera sign without the need of manually syncing or importing or adding of events. Once you go through this article and get it setup correctly, the import/sync function will happen automatically between Google Calendar and Signera. You should not need to repeat these steps unless you make changes to your Google Calendar (changing Calendars, removing Public Access, changing Private Access iCal link, etc).

Step 1) Open Google Calendar and login to Google if needed.

Step 2) Click 3 dots next to Calendar name and select "Settings and Sharing"



Step 3) Scroll down to the section called "Integrate calendar" and look for the box labeled "Secret address in iCal Format" and copy this link



Note: If you don't have "Secret address in iCal Format" and ONLY have "Public address in iCal Format" that is fine, however you need to make sure the calendar has public access before linking to Signera (they usually do NOT by default). The administrator of the calendar can confirm this. You can confirm the link works yourself by pasting the link in your web browser. It should automatically download the link to your "Downloads" folder. You should be able to open the link and see lines that look like events from your calendar.

If your calendar ONLY has the option for Public iCal format and your "Access Permissions" only allow you to set "See only free/busy (hide details)" (See below) then you'll need to create a new calendar. This option needs to be able to be changed to "See all event details"




Step 4) Paste the link into Signera's Event Scheduler module box labeled "External ICS Source Location:"



Step 5) Make sure to check the box labeled "Import ICS File Daily From External Source:"



Step 6) Hit "Save" Calendar will start pulling automatically in 4 or so hours. You can force the update immediately using the newly available "FORCE UPDATE NOW" (Note: This button will only display once you added the URL and checked the box from steps 4 and 5 above)



After hitting "Force Update Now" you should see at the top of the Event Scheduler module information on how many events were successfully imported and how many had errors (events in past, invalid formatting, etc).

If you've linked the calendar and no data has copied over (after hitting "Force Update Now") please make sure of the following:

1) You linked a calendar with current AND future events in it. A calendar with only past events will NOT show

2) Make sure the link you copied from Google Calendar was an iCal link and not a Web Link! Note the link should end in ".ics"

3) If you have multiple calendars within your account, make sure you are linking the right one. The color of the calendar should correspond with the color of events in your calendar. To make it easier you may wish to click on all calendars you aren't linking to toggle them off temporarily.

4) Lastly, take the link from step 3 and paste it into your Web Browser. It should download the calendar automatically to your "Downloads" folder. Opening this file with any Text Editor you should see your events listed in the file. If you only see information like the following, then your calendar link works, but the calendar's permissions are either restrictive or the calendar contains no events.
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:user@company.com
X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York
END:VCALENDAR

Below is screenshots of the calendar used to create this example. First you'll see the calendar on Google Calendar:



Next you'll see the events imported into a Event Scheduler module on Signera:



Note: The system will not import old events (only current... Right Now Today to ~2 months into the future). The system may not import recurring events without a end date or end number of occurrences specified.

The system will not import any events outside of the specific calendar you are linking (Note: Google Calendar may show different events for many calendars in different colors. To import all of these calendars and events, you'll need to link each calendar individually with its own Event Scheduler module, creating a new Event Scheduler module for each link/calendar. To link them all together into one Calendar on Signera, you'll need to use a "Composite Calendar" module which merges multiple Event Scheduler modules into one calendar that'll show on your sign).

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Watch this video to see how to create a link in Google Calendar to put on your Signera Calendar.
(Note: The Design of "Google Calendar" has changed since this video was created, although the process is close to the same)

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You may also be interested in adding your Google Calendar to an Adaptive Module (Custom Slideshow Module). An article on that process is here: How to show a Google Calendar on a Signera Adaptive Module (Custom Slideshow Module) using Web Snapshot?


If you need further help, please reach out to Signera Support at 301-714-0110 x1 or support@signera.net