Confused about Google Calendar and Sandy

Yeraze gives some good information on Sandy's calendar feeds. Here's some more useful information about integrating Sandy with Google Calendar.

There are multiple types of "feeds" available from Sandy. There are iCalendar feeds (private or password protected), an RSS feed and even a "Daily Digest" feed (also known as a Google Calendar gadget, still in Beta). See http://iwantsandy.com/help/feeds for a lot more information on feeds.

1) The private calendar feed.

Example: http://iwantsandy.com/Hj2rtsdfresadgx...

This "private" feed is convenient, but not really correct. It only exists because some calendar services (like Google Calendar) don't support password protected iCalendar feeds. The "private" calendar feed is actually public, but it contains a hard to guess string of weird characters in it to make it more "private".
See http://iwantsandy.com/settings#calend... to turn it on.

Most iCalendar feeds end in a file of type *.ics.(Sandy uses "list.ics") Some calendar services require that the iCalendar feed start with "webcal://" instead of "http://". (30boxes.com requires this) You can just cut and paste Sandy's iCalendar feed and then change the http part if it's necessary.

2) The iCalendar feed is subscribed to, and read-only.

The Sandy feeds are "subscribed" to. The calendar service that you use (e.g. Google Calendar, Outlook, Microsoft Calendar, Mac iCal, etc) is responsible for updating it's version of the feed every so often. Some calendar services update more often than others. Some provide an "update now" option. Google Calendar updates about every 3 hours. It does not provide an "update now" option.

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

It would be incredibly convenient to be able to edit Sandy events inside of your calendar service (e.g. Google Calendar) or to be able to "sync" any changes in Google Calendar back to Sandy, but this currently isn't available. Many, many people have requested this. See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

3) Alternate calendar feeds.

This is an advanced topic, So don't do it unless you're advanced. It is possible to request a calendar feed that only contains a subset of all your Sandy events.
See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

4) "Daily Digest" feed.

There is a special feed that integrates with Google Calendar, It's called the Google Calendar Gadget. This is not a regular iCalendar subscription. Instead it integrates Sandy's "Daily Digest" feature into Google Calendar. It adds a "Sandy icon" to every day in the calendar. You click on the icon to see a pop up of the Daily Digest for that day. The gadget exists at http://iwantsandy.com/static/gcal_gad...

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... to read all about it.

5) Using other applications to access your Sandy calendar.

You can use email, Twitter and the Sandy website. You can also use any calendar application that understands iCalendar or RSS feeds.

You can embed a calendar into a web page, (more details below) There are other options too, such as embedding a Sandy "widget" on one of those sites that support it. Such as iGoogle or netvibes.com or Yahoo. (A test version exists.) A lot of people have suggested a Firefox extension that allows you to edit your Sandy calendar and todo list. That doesn't exists right now.

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...

6) Using Google Calendar to embed your Sandy calendar on a webpage.

First, you'd need to subscribe Google Calendar to your Sandy calendar feed. Then go to the settings page in Google Calendar for that calendar. Here, it gets more complicated.

There are several sections on the settings page, including "Embed this calendar" and "Calendar Address". Depending on the type of calendar, there might be more sections listed. One thing to understand is the difference between your calendars that Google Calendar hosts, and those that it is subscribed to. Subscribed calendars do not get a "Private Address" section. A subscribed calendar may also have a "URL" section describing where the subscription is pointed to. Note that if the subscribed calendar is also hosted by Google Calendar, then the "URL" section isn't visible.

You can use both the "Embed this calendar" option and/or the "Calendar Address" blue "HTML" option to embed the calendar on your webpage. (Actually, the code in the "Embed this calendar" option uses the address provided by the "HTML" button, so these are really kinda the same option.) If you want this, cut and paste the code there into your web page.

Both these options work nicely. You don't have the problem with "access" described below.

7) Using Google Calendar to convert your Sandy calendar

Right now, Sandy provides a calendar feed in RSS and iCalendar formats, but nothing else. Yet, not all applications accept an iCalendar or RSS feed. Some applications require a different version of the calendar feed, such as an Atom feed. In order to these applications, the feed that Sandy provides (either the iCalendar feed or the RSS feed) might need to be converted to a different format.

In particular, Sandy does not provide an Atom feed. It really should, as it's the newer standard. (RSS and Atom are two different XML event publication formats. Atom is the newer one.)

Google Calendar provides its calendars in several different formats. It provides calendars in iCalendar, embedded HTML and Atom formats. It also provides an "Embed this calendar" option. Google Calendar also provides an Atom feed (It's the orange "XML" button.)

The idea is to have Google Calendar subscribe to the Sandy feed, and then subscribe some other application to Google Calendar's Atom version of that feed.

Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. The embedded HTML option works, but the iCal and Atom (XML) buttons don't seem to work. (See point #7 above, The HTML option works for both the "Embed this calendar" and blue "HTML" button) Google Calendar requires that you "share" the calendar or make it public. However, because the calendar is a subscription, this doesn't seem to be possible. At least, I don't see any option for making it public.

See http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and