Share Your Shovel Calendar With External Calendars (Google, Apple, Outlook)

This guide explains how you can share your Shovel calendar with external calendars using an .ics link. You’ll learn:

• How to find your .ics link in Shovel for individual courses and activities
• How to find your .ics link in Shovel for all courses and activities
• How to add your Shovel calendar to Google Calendar
• How to add your Shovel calendar to Apple Calendar

Finding your .ics link for individual courses and activities in Shovel

If you want to be able to adjust the colors in your external calendar for each individual course and activity, you’ll need to export each course and activity individually.

1. Open Shovel web-app on your computer or tablet
2. Navigate to the calendar tab
3. In the left sidebar, hover over the course you want to share with an external calendar
4. Open course settings by clicking the 3 dots
5. Select “Share Calendar” in the dropdown

6. An overlay will open…
7. Select whether you want to export your planned tasks and events together, only your events, or only your planned tasks.
8. Click the “copy” icon to copy the .ics link to your clipboard

Finding your .ics link for your entire calendar

To export all your courses and activities at once, you can export your entire calendar. This will not allow you to change the colors of each course in your external calendar, but it speeds up the process for exporting your entire Shovel calendar.

1. Open Shovel web-app on your computer or tablet
2. Navigate to the calendar tab
3. At the top of the calendar, click the “share” icon

4. An overlay will open
5. Select whether you want to export your planned tasks and events together, only your events, or only your planned tasks.
6. Click the “copy” icon to copy the .ics link to your clipboard

Adding Your Shovel Calendar to Google Calendar

1. Open Google Calendar.
2. On the left sidebar under “Other calendars,” click the + icon.

3. Choose From URL from the dropdown menu.

4. Paste your copied .ics link into the URL field.

5. Click Add calendar.

Your Shovel course calendar will now appear and update automatically in Google Calendar.

Adding Your Shovel Calendar to Apple Calendar

1. Open Apple Calendar on your Mac
2. From the top menu, click File > New Calendar Subscription.

3. Paste your copied .ics link into the provided URL field
4. Click Subscribe
5. Enter course name
6. Set “auto refresh” to every 5 minutes
7. Configure alert settings
8. Click OK

Your Shovel course calendar is now connected to Apple Calendar, automatically syncing any updates.

Adding Your Shovel Calendar to Outlook Calendar

1. Open your Outlook calendar in the web-based version or the desktop application
2. In the calendar view, click “Add Calendar”
3. Select “Subscribe from web”
4. Enter the Shovel iCalendar URL provided to you above
5. Customize the calendar name, color, and charm (optional)
6. Choose the calendar list to add the shared calendar to
7. Click “Import” or “Add” to subscribe to the calendar

Repeat for every course and activity

To help you differentiate each course and activity in your external calendar, you can only share one course or one activity at a time.

Repeat steps above for each course and activity.

Edit Shovel Events

To edit Shovel events, you need to update them in Shovel. External calendars only show the events.

Use widgets from your external calendars

A great benefit of sharing your Shovel events and planned tasks with external calendars is that you can use their native widgets to have a clear view of your schedule across all your devices.

Time it takes to update (about 3 hours)

Shovel does not control the rate at which Google Calendar or Apple Calendar checks updates in external calendars. The sync is not immediate and can take up to 3 hours to reflect changes you make inside Shovel.

View external calendar events inside Shovel

When you share your Shovel calendar with an external calendar, it is a one-way connection. This means that your Shovel events will display in the external calendar, but not the other way around. To display external calendar events inside Shovel, please follow these guides:

View Google calendar events inside Shovel

View Apple calendar events inside Shovel

View Outlook calendar events inside Shovel

Other external calendars

If you’re using different external calendars other than Google and Apple calendar, you should be able to copy and paste the Shovel .ics link to any other calendar that supports .ics links.