The important Source URL you’ll need is: https://fparc.uk/fparcevents.ical
Maybe don’t click that just yet, until you know why…
Contents
What is iCal
FPARC Events (red) in Google Calendar
iCal, often known as iCalendar or “shared calendars,” allows two or more separate calendar services to freely communicate information about events. You can read more about iCal on Wikipedia or in your calendar app’s documentation.
Example: Marriages
You and your partner might like to share events between your two separate diaries. You get to know where she is; she gets to know when you’re out at an FPARC Field Event!
Your diaries do not have to be on the same system as one another (yours could be on Google Calendar, your partner’s on Apple iCloud). You simply exchange your calendars’ iCal URLs and the calendar services do the rest.
Example: Bank Holidays
Bank holidays can be incorporated into your online calendar for free (the UK Government makes this data freely available: https://www.gov.uk/help/reuse-govuk-content). When the government updates the bank holiday information, your calendar automatically updates through iCal.
How is iCal useful for FPARC?
An Event post from our Website
iCal lets us know when FPARC Club Events have been scheduled, without us having to search the website or the Groups.IO BBS.
⚠️ An event organiser puts a new event on the website (or updates an existing one), and shortly afterwards, all our calendar apps receive the new information (along with sounding any notifications that we’ve configured in our app).
Both club members and non-club members can have the Club Events loaded into our diaries.
How does this happen?
To make this magic happen, we tell our iCal-compatible diary about the Source URL of the events (that’s the URL you can see at the top of this page).
Some calendars call this an ICS URL or an iCal Calendar; Google calls it Adding an “Other” Calendar from a URL. Others still call it “Following” a calendar.
Once the Source iCal URL is given to your online calendar, your calendar service takes care of all the technical conversations behind the scenes. It’ll download FPARC’s Club Events, displaying them separately from our personal events (e.g. in a different colour). When an event organiser updates or cancels an event, the information is sent to your calendar automatically (raising a notification if your calendar service offers this service).
NB: none of our private calendar information is sent to the FPARC iCalendar Service. This is a one-way data exchange: FPARC-to-your-diary, only
A Real-Life Example: Google Calendar
Here’s how I had my Google Calendar embed FPARC Club Events:
- I opened my Google Calendar via my web browser.
- On the left-hand side, I selected the “+” symbol next to Other Calendars, then selected From URL from the popup menu.
- When the Settings Page opened, I put into the “From URL” field: https://fparc.uk/fparcevents.ical and pressed the [Add Calendar] button.
That’s all there was to it.
Google thought for a few seconds, then advised me that the new calendar events were being loaded in the background. I returned to my main calendar view, where I set the calendar’s colour and notifications so that I’m alerted a week before and a day before each event.
Within 60 seconds, everything was sync’d, and I could see the events on my computer.
Smartphones too
I then turned to my Android smartphone and, using the Google Calendar App, switched on Sync for the new FPARC Events calendar that had become available.
Now my phone is showing FPARC club events.
Calendar Options
Depending on what your online calendar service offers,, you might set further options, such as:
- Changing the colour of the FPARC Events,
- Sending you notifications when an event is scheduled or due,
- Letting you know when an event is updated with new information, rescheduled or cancelled, etc.
Setting up your Calendar Service?
If the device you’re using right now has already been setup with an iCal-compatible calendar service or app, you might find that clicking on this URL begins the setup process: https://fparc.uk/fparcevents.ical
(If your device hasn’t been setup with an iCal service, then clicking the URL will just download a file. That’s not very helpful to you, but it won’t do any harm).
If you’re unfamiliar with iCal and your calendar service or app, it’s time to dig out your manual, ask Google, or ask ChatGPT to create a guide for you.
Setting up and configuring individual calendar services to use iCal is beyond the scope of this page, but ask a Club Member using the BBS. Some have set this up already.
Data Caching
- Calendar services may not ask for new event data regularly. Google Calendar, for instance, is known to query external calendars no more regularly than once a day.
- Calendar data (both iCal and our online events calendar) is cached on the server for up to an hour. This prevents excessive stress on our server due to repeated requests. Event updates made by event organisers may not reach your calendar until the cache expires.
If your Calendar Doesn’t Accept the .ical URL?
Contact Dean at the Webmaster Team to discuss.