Calendar feeds

What type of calendar feed does Light Blue offer?

How is subscribing to a calendar feed different to syncing with calendar software?

How can I set up iCal to subscribe to my calendar feed?

How can I set up my iOS device to subscribe to my calendar feed?

How can I set up Outlook to subscribe to my calendar feed?

How can I set up Google Calendar to subscribe to my calendar feed?

I'm a hosting customer and have subscribed to the iCalendar feed of my events in Mac OS X Leopard. Why don't my events update properly?

What is a calendar feed?
A calendar feed allows calendar software (such as iCal or Outlook, or the Calendar app on iPhones and iPads) to receive information about events from a server. Users of our hosting service can set their calendar software up to subscribe to a feed from their live data file - this means that they no longer have to set up their copy of Light Blue to publish their events to a calendar and that any changes made to the events in their copy of Light Blue are instantly available in their calendar feed.

What type of calendar feed does Light Blue offer?
We offer an iCalendar feed. Despite the similarity in the name, iCalendar has nothing to do with Apple's iCal - it's an entirely separate standard. However, iCal happens to offer a particularly elegant way of subscribing to an iCalendar feed.

The iCalendar feeds that we provide are protected with a username and password to prevent unauthorised access to your data.

How is subscribing to a calendar feed different to syncing with calendar software?
When you subscribe to a calendar feed, you're setting up your calendar software (e.g. iCal) to regularly download your events from our servers. Any changes you make in Light Blue are instantly available to the calendar feed, although your calendar software might be set up to only download the feed at certain intervals (eg every 15 minutes). You can't use your calendar software to make changes to your events and upload them to our servers - it's a one-way feed.

Calendar feeds are only available to users of our hosting service.

Light Blue also offers the ability to publish your events to either iCal or Light Blue. In the case of iCal publishing, this can be set up to happen automatically as soon as you make a change in Light Blue. While Light Blue offers manual two-way synchronisation with iCal, publishing your events to Google Calendar is a one-way process.

How can I set up iCal to subscribe to my calendar feed?
iCal makes it easy to subscribe to a password-protected iCalendar feed.

In iCal, go to the ‘Calendar’ menu, then click ‘Subscribe’.
In the resulting box, enter the details of your calendar feed from the ‘Calendars’ panel of the ‘General’ tab of the ‘Settings’ screen in Light Blue. You'll be asked for your username and password - enter those and continue.
In the next dialog, choose the relevant options. It's important that you change the 'Auto-refresh' option at the bottom from its default setting of "no". We recommend telling iCal to refresh your calendar feed every 15 or 5 minutes.

How can I set up my iOS device to subscribe to my calendar feed?
If you're using our hosting service, the URL for your calendar feed can be found on the 'Calendars' panel of the Settings screen. Your username and password are the same ones that were emailed to you when you signed up for our hosting service.

Launch the Settings app and go into the 'Mail, Contacts, Calendars' section.
At the bottom of the list of your existing accounts, tap the 'Add account...' option, then tap the 'Other' option at the bottom of the next screen.
Tap on 'Add Subscribed Calendar', then enter your calendar feed's URL.
When you hit the 'Next' button, you'll be taken to a screen where you can enter your username and password.

How can I set up Outlook to subscribe to my calendar feed?
First note that Outlook cannot directly subscribe to password-protected feeds. This is a failing on Outlook’s part. There is a workaround, which uses Yahoo Pipes, a free service from Yahoo. Warning: Feeds accessible from Yahoo Pipes are open to everyone who knows the address. The address is a long string of letters and digits, so it shouldn’t be guessable, but theoretically other people could access it if they knew that long string. You have been warned – caveat Light Blue user.

Visit the Yahoo Pipes homepage at http://pipes.yahoo.com. You will need to create an account with Yahoo, or log in to your existing account if you’ve already got one.
Click the ‘Create a pipe’ button, in the top bar.
From the left-hand menu, drag the blue lozenge which contains the words ‘Fetch feed’, under the ‘Sources’ menu, to the right-hand area which says ‘Drag modules here’.
In the URL field, type the URL of your calendar feed, including your username, password and database name. This will be:
http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@www.lightblueserver1.com/iCalendar/DATABASENAME/
So, if your username is testuser, your password is 123456 and your database name is LB_Test_User, the string would be
http://testuser:123456@www.lightblueserver1.com/iCalendar/LB_Test_User/ . Don’t forget the slash at the end - it needs to be there.
Your username and password are the ones which you were emailed when you set up your hosting. If you’ve changed your password for logging in to your hosted copy of Light Blue, you’ll need to use the original password, and not whatever you’ve changed it to.
Your database name can be found in the URL of the calendar feed which you can find on the ‘Calendars’ panel of the ‘General’ tab of the ‘Settings’ screen.
At the bottom of the lozenge containing the box where you typed your URL, there’s a little circle. Click on it, and drag the mouse to the little circle on the top of the lozenge called ‘Pipe output’, at the bottom of the screen. That connects the feed to the pipe output.
Click on the ‘Pipe Output’ lozenge at the bottom of the screen. You should see your calendar feed being displayed in the preview pane at the bottom of the screen. If you don’t, check your username, password and database name, then hit ‘Refresh’ in the bottom panel.
In the top bar, click ‘Save’. Enter a pipe name (‘Light Blue iCalendar feed’ is a good name.) The pipe will be saved.
Again in the top bar, click ‘Run pipe’. This will open a new window with your pipe.
To copy the URL in a format that Outlook will understand, click the ‘More options’ arrow, which will open a flyout menu. Right-click on the ‘Get as iCal’ link, and copy that link to the clipboard.
In Outlook, go to the ‘Tools’ menu, then click ‘Account settings’.
Click the ‘Internet Calendars’ tab.
Click ‘New’.
Paste in the URL you copied.
Watch as your events are loaded into Outlook.

How can I set up Google Calendar to subscribe to my calendar feed?
First note that Google Calendar cannot directly subscribe to password-protected feeds. This is a failing on Google's part. There is a workaround, which uses Yahoo Pipes, a free service from Yahoo. Warning: Feeds accessible from Yahoo Pipes are open to everyone who knows the address. The address is a long string of letters and digits, so it shouldn’t be guessable, but theoretically other people could access it if they knew that long string. You have been warned – caveat Light Blue user.

Visit the Yahoo Pipes homepage at http://pipes.yahoo.com. You will need to create an account with Yahoo, or log in to your existing account if you’ve already got one.
Click the ‘Create a pipe’ button, in the top bar.
From the left-hand menu, drag the blue lozenge which contains the words ‘Fetch feed’, under the ‘Sources’ menu, to the right-hand area which says ‘Drag modules here’.
In the URL field, type the URL of your calendar feed, including your username, password and database name. This will be:
http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@www.lightblueserver1.com/iCalendar/DATABASENAME/
So, if your username is testuser, your password is 123456 and your database name is LB_Test_User, the string would be
http://testuser:123456@www.lightblueserver1.com/iCalendar/LB_Test_User/ . Don’t forget the slash at the end - it needs to be there.
Your username and password are the ones which you were emailed when you set up your hosting. If you’ve changed your password for logging in to your hosted copy of Light Blue, you’ll need to use the original password, and not whatever you’ve changed it to.
Your database name can be found in the URL of the calendar feed which you can find on the ‘Calendars’ panel of the ‘General’ tab of the ‘Settings’ screen.
At the bottom of the lozenge containing the box where you typed your URL, there’s a little circle. Click on it, and drag the mouse to the little circle on the top of the lozenge called ‘Pipe output’, at the bottom of the screen. That connects the feed to the pipe output.
Click on the ‘Pipe Output’ lozenge at the bottom of the screen. You should see your calendar feed being displayed in the preview pane at the bottom of the screen. If you don’t, check your username, password and database name, then hit ‘Refresh’ in the bottom panel.
In the top bar, click ‘Save’. Enter a pipe name (‘Light Blue iCalendar feed’ is a good name.) The pipe will be saved.
Again in the top bar, click ‘Run pipe’. This will open a new window with your pipe.
To copy the URL in a format that Outlook will understand, click the ‘More options’ arrow, which will open a flyout menu. Right-click on the ‘Get as iCal’ link, and copy that link to the clipboard.
In Google Calendar, in the left hand panel, you’ll see ‘My Calendars’; below that is ‘Other calendars’. Click the ‘Add’ link under ‘Other calendars’, then click ‘Add by URL’.
In the resulting box, paste in the URL you copied.
Watch as your events are loaded into Google Calendar.

I'm a hosting customer and have subscribed to the iCalendar feed of my events in Mac OS X Leopard. Why don't my events update properly?
Surprisingly, this is a bug in iCal in Mac OS X Leopard. In this situation, iCal only displays new events and doesn't update existing ones. This was fixed with the release of Snow Leopard. Sadly, there's nothing that the people at Light Blue Software can do about it, because it's an Apple bug. There is, however, a workaround which can be set up using Automator.

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Calendar feeds