Syncing mySchedule with Google Calendar

You can push your mySchedule events into Google Calendar automatically. Once it's set up, every event you add or change in mySchedule appears on the Google calendar you chose — so members, families and staff can subscribe to your schedule in the calendar app they already use.

The sync goes one way

Events travel from mySchedule to Google Calendar. Changes you make directly in Google Calendar are not pulled back into myblueboard, and they will be overwritten the next time that event is saved in mySchedule.

Treat mySchedule as the place you edit, and Google Calendar as the place people read.

Before you start

You'll need:

• Attendance Access in myblueboard. Full Directors have it automatically. Staff Directors do not — a Staff Director needs it granted by hand before the Google Calendar Sync page is visible to them. See Granting access.
• A Google account that owns the calendars you want to fill. This can be a personal school account or a shared department account.
• At least one calendar you can edit on that account. A calendar someone shared with you read-only, or a subscribed feed like a holiday calendar, won't work — see Which calendars can I choose?

Use a shared account, not a personal one

The connection is tied to the individual Google account that signs in. If that person leaves your organization and their account is closed, the sync stops until someone reconnects.

A shared account owned by the department — one several people can access — will outlast any one director.

Connect your Google account

1. In myblueboard, go to mySchedule.
2. Select Google Calendar Sync.
3. Under 1. Google account, select Sign in with Google.
4. Sign in with the Google account that owns your calendars.
5. Review what myblueboard is asking for, and grant access to your calendars.
6. Google returns you to the Google Calendar Sync page, which now reads Connected as your email address.

If you cancel on Google's screen, or the page sits open too long before you finish, you'll come back with a message explaining what happened. Just start again from step 3.

Choose your calendars

Set a default calendar

Under 2. Calendars, pick a Default calendar. Every event type that doesn't name a calendar of its own will go here.

Select Test next to the dropdown to confirm myblueboard can write to it. You'll get either a confirmation naming the calendar, or an explanation of what's wrong.

Leaving the default unset

If Default calendar is left as Not set, event types without their own calendar will not sync at all. Nothing breaks — those events simply never appear in Google.

Route individual event types

Under 3. Event types, you'll see every event type you've set up in mySchedule. Each one can:

• Use default calendar — the normal choice. The event lands on the default calendar.
• Point at its own calendar — pick a different calendar to route that type somewhere else.
• Not synced — shown when there's no default calendar set and this type doesn't name one.

This is how you keep, say, performances on a public calendar that families subscribe to while rehearsals go on an internal one.

Each row has its own Test button.

Which calendars can I choose?

The dropdowns only list calendars the connected Google account can make changes to — ones it owns, or that were shared with it with "Make changes to events" permission.

Calendars you can only read are deliberately left out. They look fine until myblueboard tries to add an event, and then every event silently fails.

If the page says no writable calendars were found, create a calendar in Google Calendar with that account (or have someone share one with edit permission), then reload the page.

Turn the sync on

1. Under 4. Turn it on, tick Enable Google Calendar sync.
2. Select Save Settings.
3. Select Re-sync Upcoming Events.

The re-sync pushes every upcoming event to Google. Past events are left alone. Run it after first-time setup, and again any time you change which calendar an event type points at.

Events appear in Google Calendar within a minute or two, not instantly — myblueboard queues the work in the background so that saving a schedule in myblueboard never waits on Google.

Sync can't be switched on without a connection

If you tick the box before connecting a Google account, your other settings save but the sync stays off, and the page tells you so.

What appears in Google Calendar

For each mySchedule event, myblueboard creates a Google event with:

In Google Calendar	Comes from
Event title	The event's title — or its event type if you left the title blank
Location	The event's place
Description	The event type, noted as synced from myblueboard mySchedule
Date and time	The event's date, start time and end time

Events with no start or end time become all-day events rather than being skipped, so an untimed rehearsal still shows up on people's calendars.

An event that ends earlier than it starts is treated as running past midnight into the next day.

Ongoing changes

Once sync is on, you don't need to revisit this page:

• Edit an event in mySchedule and the Google event updates.
• Delete an event in mySchedule and it's removed from Google.
• Change an event's type and the event moves to that type's calendar, leaving the old one.
• Set an event type back to Not synced and its events are removed from Google rather than stranded on a calendar you're no longer using.

If someone deletes one of these events directly in Google Calendar, myblueboard re-creates it the next time that event is saved in mySchedule.

Managing the connection

The top of the Google Calendar Sync page always shows the current state.

Connected

Shows which Google account is connected and since when. Events are created in Google as that user.

• Switch Google Account — connect a different account. Your calendar choices stay, but they refer to calendars on the old account, so check them afterward.
• Disconnect — removes myblueboard's access and clears the stored connection. Sync turns off. Events already in Google Calendar are left in place.

Sync has stopped

This means myblueboard can no longer reach the connected account. The usual causes are that someone removed myblueboard from that Google account's third-party access list, or the account's password changed.

Select Reconnect Google Account and sign in again. Nothing else is lost — your calendar and event-type choices are still there.

Troubleshooting

"This sign-in link is invalid or has expired." The connection page was left open too long before you finished on Google's side, or you re-opened an old link from your browser history. Start again from the Google Calendar Sync page.

"Google did not return a long-lived token." Google only hands over a lasting connection the first time you grant access. Remove myblueboard from your Google account's third-party access list, then connect again.

A calendar test says it needs "Make changes to events." The calendar is shared with the connected account, but read-only. Ask whoever owns that calendar to change your permission to Make changes to events, then test again.

Events aren't appearing. Work down this list:

1. Is Enable Google Calendar sync ticked and saved?
2. Does the event's type point at a calendar — either its own, or a default?
3. Is the connection healthy, rather than showing Sync has stopped?
4. Have you run Re-sync Upcoming Events since your last change?

Remember that only upcoming events are pushed by a re-sync. Past events never sync retroactively.