Connecting calendars

Calemander uses your calendar twice: it reads it to find out when you are busy, and it writes the booking to it so the meeting shows up for you and lands in your invitee's inbox. You can connect Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and a CalDAV calendar such as iCloud or Fastmail.

Connecting

Everything on this page lives under Calendars in the dashboard sidebar, on the page headed Calendar Settings.

Google Calendar — in the Calendars & Conferencing card, click Connect next to Google Calendar and approve the request from Google.
Outlook Calendar — click Connect next to Outlook Calendar and sign in with your Microsoft account. Many Microsoft 365 work accounts let only an IT administrator approve apps that use your calendar; if Microsoft asks for admin approval, use Get a link for your IT admin under the Outlook card and send that link to your administrator, then connect again once they have approved.
Apple iCloud / CalDAV — its own card lower down. Choose Apple iCloud, Fastmail or Other server, enter your username and an app-specific password, and click Connect. For Other server you also supply the server URL, which must start with https://. Use an app-specific password, not your account password. If your account has more than one calendar, you pick which one to use straight after connecting.

You can connect one account per provider. Connecting a second Google or Outlook account replaces the first. If a provider shows Not configured, that integration has not been set up on your Calemander deployment and there is nothing you can do from this page.

What Calemander reads

Connected calendars are always checked for conflicts — there is no switch that turns conflict checking off. What you can choose is which calendars are consulted.

Check availability from picks between your connected providers: Google Calendar only, Outlook Calendar only, or Both calendars when you have both. An event type can override this under its Location section, with Override global calendar settings for this event type.
Google calendars to check lists every Google calendar you can see free/busy for, with a checkbox each. All of them are checked until you narrow the list.
Outlook calendars to check lists the calendars in your Microsoft account. Until you change it, only your default calendar is checked; tick any others whose events should block your time. Reconnecting or disconnecting Outlook clears the list back to the default calendar.
A connected CalDAV calendar is always checked, whatever Check availability from is set to. By default that is the one calendar bookings are mirrored into; Choose calendars to check for conflicts on the CalDAV card lets you add others on the same account. All-day events count as busy for the whole day. Events marked transparent (“free”) or cancelled do not.

Google and Outlook are asked only for when you are busy, never for what the meetings are. A CalDAV server has no equivalent query, so it returns whole events and Calemander reads nothing from them but the start, end and whether they count as busy. On Outlook, events marked busy or tentative block a slot; events marked free, out of office or working elsewhere do not.

If a calendar provider cannot be reached, your booking page shows an error instead of offering times. That is deliberate: showing every slot as free because we could not check would double-book you.

What Calemander writes

Calendar invite via chooses which calendar the booking is created on: Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar or No calendar event. That invite is what emails the meeting to your invitee. An event type can override this too, under Location.

On Google, the event is created on your primary calendar. If you have a CalDAV calendar connected, a copy of the booking is mirrored into it as well, regardless of which provider sends the invite — that copy has no attendees and carries the join link in its description.

In-person bookings carry the address

If the service happens somewhere — a location you set up under Scheduling → Places — the calendar event carries that address in its own location field, which is what turns it into a Directions button on a phone. Anything you wrote under "Getting in" goes in the event description, under the meeting details, so "ring the bell marked Reception" travels with the invite.

A video booking keeps the meeting link in that field instead: Google's "Join with Zoom" button comes from finding the link there, and an address would quietly remove it. The address is used only when there is no link at all.

If the service also needs a room, the room is named on the confirmation and on your own notification. Your invitee never picks one and is never told which rooms exist — the only thing they see is that a time when every room is taken is not offered.

Bookings that are held

Some event types hold a time rather than confirming it — a booking waits on something first, such as an approved licence or a signed form (see Requirements). A held booking goes on your calendar as a placeholder titled HELD · followed by the event and the invitee's name. It is deliberately marked free (on Google, tentative and transparent; on Outlook, free; on CalDAV, tentative and transparent), so it does not block the time on your calendar and no other tool reads it as busy. Calemander still keeps the slot off your booking page — that is done by the booking itself, not by this event. Nobody is invited to a placeholder and it carries no join link; its description names what is still outstanding and, when the event type sets a deadline, when the hold is released.

When the last requirement clears, that same event becomes the real booking in place: the title loses the HELD prefix, it changes to busy, your invitee and guests are invited, and the join link appears. You never get two events. If the hold is released, cancelled or rejected, the placeholder is removed. If you delete the placeholder yourself, nothing breaks — the booking is still held, and confirming it creates a fresh event.

If no calendar is connected, there is no placeholder; the dashboard and the notification email are the record.

When a booking changes, so does the calendar:

Rescheduled — a Google event is moved to the new time and your invitee gets the update. The exception is Google Meet: because the Meet link belongs to the event, the old event is cancelled and a new one created, so the join link changes. An Outlook event is always cancelled and recreated at the new time.
Cancelled — the calendar event is cancelled and the CalDAV copy removed.

If a calendar write fails, the booking itself still stands. Calemander would rather have a confirmed booking missing from a calendar than lose the booking.

Disconnecting

Each connected provider has a Disconnect button and a confirmation step. After disconnecting, that calendar's events no longer block your availability and new bookings are not added to it. Events already on the calendar stay exactly where they are.

Google has a Reconnect button for the case where the connection has quietly gone stale — the row still says connected but the booking page reports that the calendar is unavailable. Reconnecting refreshes the authorisation without changing any of your settings. For Outlook and CalDAV, disconnect and connect again to achieve the same thing.

Conferencing — where the meeting itself happens.
Availability — the hours your calendar is checked within.

Last checked 2026-09-25.