How to share Google Calendar: A complete guide
- Why share your Google Calendar?
- Zoho Bookings and Google Calendar
- Share your calendar with individuals or a group
- Embed your calendar on your webpage
- Share public URL to view your calendar
- Share your calendar with your organization
- Share your public iCal URL with others
- Create and share your Google Calendar event
- Best practices for sharing your Google Calendar
- Limitations of sharing Google Calendar
When used effectively, Google Calendar can replace your scattered apps, post-its, and notebooks. It saves you plenty of time when scheduling meetings, especially with the ability to share your calendar with others.
What happens when you share your Google Calendar?
When you share your Google Calendar with others, they will be able to view, edit, or manage your calendar events based on the permissions you’ve set. Your calendar will be listed under the "Other calendars" section in their own Google Calendar.
To ensure privacy, create separate calendars for work, branches, projects, or teams. This allows you to share specific calendars without exposing all your schedules or appointments.
Start by creating a new calendar. If you use multiple Google accounts, make sure you're signed in to the correct one before following the steps below.
To create a new calendar:
- Access your calendar from calendar.google.com.
- Under the Other calendars section on the left bottom side, click the + button.
Click on Create new calendar.
Why should you share your Google Calendar?
By sharing your Google Calendar, you can reduce back-and-forth conversations when scheduling a meeting, initiating team discussions, conducting classes, and more. This makes finding the best time to meet much easier.
Sharing your Google Calendar also helps:
- Improve team collaboration and transparency.
- Avoid double bookings or scheduling conflicts.
- Complete tasks, host meetings, and meet deadlines without delays.
- Improve team, resource, and project management.
- Communicate work-life balance through time off, breaks, and other benefits.
Here are examples from a few industries on how sharing your Google Calendar can be helpful.
| Industry | Examples | Best way to share your Google Calendar | Ideal access/permission |
|---|---|---|---|
| IT | Coordinating projects with other teams | Share with groups | See all event details |
| Sharing training or event schedules with employees | Share with groups or Share with the organization | See all event details | |
| Education | Sharing class or exam schedules with students | Share public URL or Embed on the website | See all event details |
| Viewing availability to schedule student/parent meetings | Share public URL or Create an event | See only free or busy | |
| Healthcare | Tracking and managing medical equipment bookings | Share with groups or Share with the organization | See all event details |
| Scheduling appointments for patients | Share with individuals or | Make changes to events or Manage | |
| Real estate | Sharing home viewing availability with property owners | Share with individuals | See all event details |
| Maintaining an organization-wide open house calendar for agents | Share with organization | Make changes to events | |
| Hospitality | Viewing and managing venue bookings | Share with individuals or Share with the organization | See all event details or Make changes to events |
| Tracking and sharing employee shift details across the organization | Share with organization | See all event details | |
| Legal | Tracking case deadlines and upcoming court sessions | Share with individuals | See all event details |
| Tracking and managing all client sessions and depositions | Share with groups or Share with individuals | See all event details or Make changes to events | |
| Retail | Updating promotional offers to run across various stores | Share with organization | See all event details |
| Tracking employee schedules for a single store | Share with groups or Share with individuals | See all event details |
Share appointment booking pages connected with your Google Calendar
Sign up for freeEnhance scheduling automation with Zoho Bookings and Google Calendar
Zoho Bookings is appointment scheduling software that simplifies the booking process, automates scheduling tasks, and saves valuable time for your business.
With Bookings, there's no uncertainty. Customers can self-schedule from your available time slots right from your appointment booking page.
- Create four different meeting types to schedule appointments.
- Sync your schedules with external calendars.
- Connect your preferred video conferencing tools for virtual meetings.
- Manage team scheduling and granular permissions for seamless coordination.
- Set up scheduling rules to manage how you get booked.
- Send multiple notifications and reminders for your appointments.
- Configure custom workflows to automate tasks before, during, and after appointments.
- Collect payments for your appointments with payment gateways.
- Customize your appointment booking page, booking URL, and email templates.
- Offer preferred time slots via email from the Zoho Bookings browser extension.
- And more!
Pairing Zoho Bookings and Google Calendar levels up the scheduling experience for your customers. The best part? Zoho Bookings integrates with the Google apps that you already use, so you can easily get started.
Google apps that Zoho Bookings integrates with:
Google Calendar
Connect your Google Calendar o sync new appointments automatically. The booking slots displayed on your booking page will be up to date with your calendar so that you don’t get double booked.
Google Meet
No need to manually create your own meeting links! Integrate your Zoho Bookings account with Google Meet to auto-generate meeting links. These are then shared with customers via email and calendar invites.
Chrome browser extension
With the Zoho Bookings browser extension, you can share your time slots or booking pages with customers from any webpage without having to shuffle between tabs.
Gmail extension
Facilitate a faster booking experience by directly sharing preferred time slots or booking links in your email from your Gmail compose tab without any back-and-forth.
How to share your Google Calendar
Here are six different ways to share your Google Calendar:
- Share with individuals or a group
- Embed your calendar on your webpage
- Share a public URL to view your calendar
- Share your calendar with your organization
- Share your public iCal URL with others
- Create and share your Google Calendar event
2. Embed Google Calendar on your webpage
By embedding your calendar on your website, people can view your schedules and upcoming events to make plans accordingly. From the embedded calendar, others can either add a particular event to their calendar or add your entire calendar schedule.
To embed your calendar:
- Access your calendar from calendar.google.com.
- Under the My Calendar section on the bottom-left side, pick a calendar.
- Hover over it to click the Options button with three dots.
- Click on Settings and Sharing.
- Click on Integrate calendar in the left navigation menu.
- Copy the iframe code under the Embed code section.
- Add the code to your website editor to publish your calendar.
4. Share your calendar with your organization
If your business uses Google Workspace, you can share your calendar across teams to schedule meetings and collaborate faster. This way, other team members view your availability and suggest times to meet that don't clash with your schedule.
To share your calendar with your organization:
- Access your calendar from calendar.google.com.
- Under the My Calendar section on the bottom-left side, pick a calendar.
- Hover over it to click the Options button with three dots.
- Click on Settings and Sharing.
- Click on Access permission for events in the left navigation menu.
- Select the checkbox next to Make available to (your business name).
- Set the permission in the dropdown menu to See only free/busy (hide details) or See all event details.
- Click on the Get shareable link button to copy and share your calendar URL with others.
5. Share your public iCal URL with others
For non-Google apps that cannot directly access your calendar, sharing your iCal URL comes in handy. It allows other apps to view your calendar events.
To share your iCal URL with others:
- Access your calendar from calendar.google.com.
- Under the My Calendar section on the bottom-left side, pick a calendar.
- Hover over it to click the Options button with three dots.
- Click on Settings and Sharing.
- Click on Integrate calendar in the left navigation menu.
- Copy the URL under Public address in iCal format and share with others (for calendars that are available to the public), or copy the URL under Secret address in iCal format and share with others (for calendars that are not available to public and require view-only access).
Best practices for sharing your Google Calendar with others
- Share publicly or privately after ensuring no personal or sensitive data exists in the calendar.
- Provide the right permission access for others based on their role or the project.
- Mark events as "private" in a shared calendar if you don’t want others to see the event details. Note that people who have the "Make changes to events" permission will be able to see private events as well.
- Audit your shared Google Calendar every month or quarter to revoke access from those who no longer require it.
- Set the context by writing a calendar description so that users who get access understand the purpose of the shared calendar.
- Use the "Find a time" option when creating an event with other guests to avoid scheduling meetings when they're unavailable or busy.
Simplify appointment scheduling for your business today
Sign up for freeLimitations of sharing Google Calendar for scheduling appointments
Although Google Calendar is widely used for scheduling meetings, it comes with a lot of hurdles. The effort it takes to coordinate, find a time, and then send a calendar invite to your invitees is time-consuming. Here are a few other limitations:
- The "Find a time" option works only when the invitee is also part of the Google ecosystem.
- Google Calendar, by default, sends only one reminder for the event.
- There is an increased chance of getting double-booked when scheduling meetings.
- Virtual meeting options are limited to Google Meet.
- There are limited team management and resource allocation options.
- You cannot create custom workflows to automate other scheduling tasks based on the appointments.
- The native appointment schedule feature offers basic scheduling functionalities that don't scale with your business or help with team management.
- There are no customization options to edit your email template or the booking page (when using the appointment schedule feature).
- Google Calendar doesn’t offer native integrations with other business apps.
- It lacks a reporting dashboard to provide actionable insights into your appointments.
Share booking pages that are connected to your Google Calendar
While Google Calendar remains your core scheduling tool, Zoho Bookings works alongside it to enhance appointment management within the Google ecosystem.
Set up a booking page that's connected with your Google apps, including your Google Calendar, to schedule and manage your appointments seamlessly.