You don't have to open TripWorks to know what's on the books. A calendar feed is a link you subscribe to from Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. Once you add it, your trips show up next to the rest of your day, on your phone and your watch too. You choose what goes in each event: the pickup location, add-ons, products, the guide, even the notes your team left on the booking.

How calendar feeds work

• A feed is a link. Every option you choose is saved inside the link itself. TripWorks doesn't keep a list of your feeds, so there is nothing to save and nothing to delete.
• Changing a feed means making a new link. Pick the new options, copy the new link, subscribe to it, then remove the old calendar from your calendar app.
• Each link is personal to the person who made it. A feed never shows more than that person can see in TripWorks. If they can't see guest phone numbers, the feed can't either.
• It's one-way and read-only. Editing or deleting an event in your calendar app doesn't change anything in TripWorks.

Create a feed

1. Go to Setup Integrations and open Google Calendar/iCal. The page is called Calendar feeds.
2. Optional: start from a preset (Operations, Guide or Office / front desk). It sets several options at once, and you can change any of them.
3. Work down the numbered sections. Each one shows a short summary of what you picked, so you can collapse it and move on.
4. Check the preview on the right. It shows real events from your account as your calendar will display them.
5. Copy the link, or use one of the buttons to add it straight to Google, Apple or Outlook. See Add the feed to your calendar.

Choose what goes in the feed

Your account may use its own words for some of these, such as boat for resource or captain for guide. The page uses whatever words your account uses.

1. Which bookings

• Everything puts all bookings in one calendar.
• One resource, one guide, one activity, a resource group or one pickup location narrows the feed to just that one. This is how you make a calendar for a single boat, a single captain or a shuttle driver.
• Me shows only the trips you're assigned to.
• Booking status controls which bookings appear: Confirmed, Pending review (a booking waiting on your confirmation), Cancelled and Checked in / completed. Confirmed and Pending review are on by default. Cancelled trips show the word "Cancelled" at the start of the event title so nobody turns up for them.

2. How far back and forward

• Past events: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 1 year (the default), all time, or a number of days you type in (up to 3,650).
• Future events: 30 days, 90 days, 180 days (the default), 1 year or all.
• A very long window makes the feed bigger, and some calendar apps sync a big feed slowly. A feed holds up to 2,000 events. If you ask for more, the upcoming ones are always kept and the oldest past ones are dropped first.

3. One event per…

• Reservation makes one event for each reservation.
• Departure (the default) puts everyone on the same trip and resource into one event, with their bookings listed in the event notes. If three parties book the same boat at 4 PM, you see one event, not three.
• Guest makes one event per guest. These stack up fast and can push everything else off your day view, so TripWorks warns you how many events you'd get.

4. Event title

Build the title from pieces and drag them into the order you want. You can use start time, activity, resource, guest name, guest count, pickup location, confirmation code, guide and an add-on flag (a star that shows when anything was added to the booking). Presets give you a quick start: Operations, Guide and Minimal. The example under the pieces shows how the title will read.

5. Event details

These are the lines in the event's notes, in the order you set. Tick the ones you want and drag to reorder.

• Guest name, guest count by ticket type, pickup location (with the address and a map link), products, add-ons with quantities, answers to your custom booking questions, manifest and internal notes, assigned guide, confirmation code and a link that opens the booking in TripWorks.
• Guest phone, guest email and balance due are marked private. Hide guest contact and money details switches all three off in one tap. Turn it on for any feed you share with captains or crew. If you don't have permission to see guest contact or payment details, this switch is on and locked for you.

6. Location field

• Pickup location (the default) puts the booking's pickup spot in the event's location, so your phone can navigate to it. If a booking has no pickup, it falls back to the departure location.
• Departure location only always uses the place the trip leaves from.
• Leave empty adds no location.

7. Times

• Resource time (the default) uses the window the boat, vehicle or guide is actually committed, including travel and prep. If you collect a boat from another dock, this is the time that matters. If there's no resource time, it uses the booking time.
• Guest booking time uses the start and end time the guest booked.

8. Alerts

Optionally add a reminder to every event: 1 day, 2 hours, 1 hour or 30 minutes before. Some calendar apps, including Google Calendar, ignore reminders on subscribed calendars. If yours does, set a default notification for the whole calendar in the app.

Presets

• Operations is the owner's view: departures with pickup up front, guest phone, products, add-ons, notes, guide and balance, with a reminder an hour before.
• Guide is for one guide's calendar: the last 30 days and the next 90, with no guest contact or money, and a reminder 2 hours before.
• Office / front desk shows every reservation with every status, contact details and balance, using the time the guest booked.
• Driver / shuttle appears when you open the drawer from a pickup location. It puts pickup time and guest count first, hides contact and money, and covers the last 7 and next 30 days.

Add the feed to your calendar

Use the buttons under Add it in one click, or paste the link yourself.

• Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Outlook each open straight to the add-calendar step. Google lets you add a calendar from the website only, so use a computer; it then shows up in the phone app after it syncs.
• Or paste the link by hand. The tabs under the buttons walk through it for Apple, Google and Outlook:
• Google (on a computer): next to Other calendars, click +, choose From URL, paste the link, and click Add calendar.
• Apple: on a Mac, choose File then New Calendar Subscription; on an iPhone, go to Settings, Calendar, Accounts, Add Account, Other, Add Subscribed Calendar. Paste the link and save. Choose the most frequent refresh option.
• Outlook (on the web): open Calendar, choose Add calendar, then Subscribe from web, paste the link and click Import.

Make a feed from anywhere in TripWorks

Every one of these opens the same Subscribe drawer, already narrowed to the page you're on. The drawer has the presets, the link, the one-click buttons and a Customize this feed section with every option above.

• Calendar. Click Subscribe in the top bar. If you've filtered the calendar to one resource, one guide or one activity, the feed starts with that filter, and Use all bookings instead switches it back to everything.
• Calendar, Guides view. Open a guide's menu in the sidebar and choose Share iCal link.
• A guide's profile, a resource, a pickup location and an activity's Dates & Times tab each have a Calendar feed row with a Subscribe button. The feed covers just that guide, resource, pickup location or activity.
• Your user menu. If you're set up as a guide, My schedule feed gives you a calendar of your own assignments.

Send a guide their link

When the drawer is for one guide, and for My schedule feed, it also offers Email link to and Text link to buttons, filled in with the guide's email and phone number from their profile. Tap one and your email or messages app opens with the link ready to send. If the guide has no email or phone, add one to their profile to send it from here. The Include booking details checkbox controls whether each event shows the guest name and headcount. Leave it off if the guide uses a shared family calendar.

Try this

• Find every pickup for tomorrow's shuttle. Open the pickup location, choose Subscribe, and use the Driver / shuttle preset. The driver sees pickup time and guest count first.
• Give each captain their own calendar. From the Guides view, choose Share iCal link for each guide. They see only their trips, with no guest contact or money.
• See catering orders on your phone. Use the Operations preset and keep Add-ons ticked in event details. Add the add-on flag to the title so any trip with extras stands out.
• Give the front desk everything. Use Office / front desk, which includes cancelled bookings and balances, and keep that link to your office staff.
• Keep a year of history. In How far back and forward, choose 1 year or All time for past events.
• Stop trips from stacking. Choose Departure in One event per… so a full boat is one event, not six.

If it isn't showing what you expect

• One event says "This calendar link has expired." The link stopped working because the person who made it changed their password or lost access to TripWorks. Make a new link and subscribe again. The expired event contains no booking information.
• You changed an option and nothing changed. The options live in the link, so a changed option is a new link. Subscribe to the new link and remove the old calendar.
• A booking is missing. Check that its status is ticked and that its date falls inside your past and future window. The preview on the Calendar feeds page shows what the link will contain.
• A booking shows up late. Your calendar app decides how often to refresh, not TripWorks. Google can take 6 to 12 hours. Apple lets you set it as often as every 15 minutes.

What to expect

• Refresh timing belongs to your calendar app. A brand-new booking can take hours to appear in Google, which is a Google limit and not something TripWorks can speed up.
• Links you copied before this update keep working. They still show the older, fixed content (the activity and guest count, with booking details in the notes). Make a new link to get the options on this page.
• There's no button to turn off a single link. A link stops working when the person who made it changes their password or loses access. A feed made from your own login never shows more than you can see.
• Events are read-only in your calendar app. To change a booking, change it in TripWorks and your calendar picks up the update on its next refresh.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• How guides see their schedule
• View and print guide schedules
• The calendar view