I just purchased Amelia scheduler as it advertises outlook calendar integration on the website. Apparently that is misleading. It is not Outlook Friendly , it is M365 friendly. I was hoping to integrate with my desktop Outlook using an ICS file. Is this possible, or do I need a refund in my first hour of setup?
Thanks for reaching out to us. Allow me to explain a bit more about how this works. The Outlook Calendar integration is made to give you the option to connect your employees to their Outlook Calendar. For the ease of use and more flexibility, they will have the option to see all the appointments coming from Amelia on their calendar. That being said, they will have the option to connect outlook.com, office365.com, or hotmail.com accounts. Once a customer books an appointment, they will get the notification, but there is an option in Notifciations settings to enable the .ics file for both Approved and Pending bookings.
This will render an .ics file in the notification email, and on one click the customer can add the appointment to their calendar.
I hope it helps. Please, let me know if this is what you are looking for or if you need assistance with anything else.
Thanks for your response. I don't think I explained the need well enough. It is not the notification of the appointment that is the problem. My issue is that I do not want people booking appointments when I am otherwise engaged. I maintain my calendar using Outlook on my desktop, not in the cloud. Microsoft and Google know enough about and I don't plan to share my meetings, contacts, etc with them to sell to others.
I want the ICS file to go the other way. Not from the website to me, but from me to the website. I would like to let the Amelia scheduler know when I am busy. I had hoped to create an ICS file from outlook of my appointments over the next month and load that into Amelia. I have code that runs now that puts such an ICS file into the UPLOADS section of WordPress site whenever my Outlook syncs with my ISP. Ideally, I would point Amelia to that ICS file and it would then know when I was busy and not offer those time slots to others.
Does this functionality exists? If not, then you need to be more explicit about "outlook integration" because without the two-way passing of appointments, Amelia's claim is misleading. If the function to load my ICS file or "busy" times (other than manually) does not exist, then if you were to tell me where in the database to load such appointments to mark slots as "busy", I can certainly write my own plugin to read the ICS file and maintain such entries in the database. Otherwise, I need a refund and will get a product that really does integrate with Outlook.
Thanks for the additional information. The reading of busy timeslots doesn't come from the .ics file but you would need to manually mark the timeslots as "busy" and when there is an integration with Amelia, those timeslots won't be available for booking in Amelia. In the other way, all appointments booked for an employee who has an Outlook Calendar connected will be visible on the Google Calendar. The upload option of the .ics file containing the busy slots wasn't planned to be integrated within Amelia, but I've found an article where is says that it's certainly possible to upload the .ics file. Regarding the database and where this should be stored, I would have to consult the developers, but perhaps connecting the appointment database (storing all the information regarding the busy appointments here) would do the trick. To summarize, currently, there is no option to import the .ics file with the schedule. (at least not in Amelia)
I just purchased Amelia scheduler as it advertises outlook calendar integration on the website. Apparently that is misleading. It is not Outlook Friendly , it is M365 friendly. I was hoping to integrate with my desktop Outlook using an ICS file. Is this possible, or do I need a refund in my first hour of setup?
Hi Peter,
Thanks for reaching out to us. Allow me to explain a bit more about how this works. The Outlook Calendar integration is made to give you the option to connect your employees to their Outlook Calendar. For the ease of use and more flexibility, they will have the option to see all the appointments coming from Amelia on their calendar. That being said, they will have the option to connect outlook.com, office365.com, or hotmail.com accounts. Once a customer books an appointment, they will get the notification, but there is an option in Notifciations settings to enable the .ics file for both Approved and Pending bookings.
This will render an .ics file in the notification email, and on one click the customer can add the appointment to their calendar.
I hope it helps. Please, let me know if this is what you are looking for or if you need assistance with anything else.
Kind Regards,
Stefan Petrov
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Stefan,
Thanks for your response. I don't think I explained the need well enough. It is not the notification of the appointment that is the problem. My issue is that I do not want people booking appointments when I am otherwise engaged. I maintain my calendar using Outlook on my desktop, not in the cloud. Microsoft and Google know enough about and I don't plan to share my meetings, contacts, etc with them to sell to others.
I want the ICS file to go the other way. Not from the website to me, but from me to the website. I would like to let the Amelia scheduler know when I am busy. I had hoped to create an ICS file from outlook of my appointments over the next month and load that into Amelia. I have code that runs now that puts such an ICS file into the UPLOADS section of WordPress site whenever my Outlook syncs with my ISP. Ideally, I would point Amelia to that ICS file and it would then know when I was busy and not offer those time slots to others.
Does this functionality exists? If not, then you need to be more explicit about "outlook integration" because without the two-way passing of appointments, Amelia's claim is misleading. If the function to load my ICS file or "busy" times (other than manually) does not exist, then if you were to tell me where in the database to load such appointments to mark slots as "busy", I can certainly write my own plugin to read the ICS file and maintain such entries in the database. Otherwise, I need a refund and will get a product that really does integrate with Outlook.
Thanks,
Peter
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the additional information. The reading of busy timeslots doesn't come from the .ics file but you would need to manually mark the timeslots as "busy" and when there is an integration with Amelia, those timeslots won't be available for booking in Amelia. In the other way, all appointments booked for an employee who has an Outlook Calendar connected will be visible on the Google Calendar. The upload option of the .ics file containing the busy slots wasn't planned to be integrated within Amelia, but I've found an article where is says that it's certainly possible to upload the .ics file. Regarding the database and where this should be stored, I would have to consult the developers, but perhaps connecting the appointment database (storing all the information regarding the busy appointments here) would do the trick. To summarize, currently, there is no option to import the .ics file with the schedule. (at least not in Amelia)
Kind Regards,
Stefan Petrov
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables