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What is iCal Feed
iCalendar (iCal) format is a standard for calendar data exchange. iCal Feed enables an application to publish Date and Time based data to an external calendar application (like Google calendar) via the iCal standard. By subscribing to iCal feeds you can view the up-to-date status of your calendaring and scheduling information. Zoho Creator supports iCal Feed for views (list, summary or grid) which has a Date-Time field in its list of selected columns. To subscribe to an iCal Feed, Create the required iCal Feed URL for the ZC view and paste it into your favorite iCal reader.
Steps to Create iCal Feed for a ZC View
To create the iCal Feed URL,
- Access the application and click on Settings -> Links -> iCal Feed from the required report header as shown in the screen-shot given below.
- The dialog to enable the ical feed will be displayed.
- Enable the option Enable iCal Feed for this view to display the basic iCal feed URL. The screen-shot given below displays the basic iCal feed url for the view named "Event Management". The Deluge Field Names for the view is also displayed in the dialog for easy reference while creating the iCal url.
Note:
- If your view is private, you can access the iCal feed only if you are logged in to Zoho Creator. To access the feed without login, select the Click Here option displayed in the iCal Feed dialog. You will now find an encrypted code appended to the basic URL.
- The basic iCal Feed URL is in the format given below. If you access the above url, you will get only the basic iCal feed properties.
http://creatorexport.zoho.com/<app owner name>/<app name>/ical/<viewname>/ - Create your own iCal feed url by adding the required iCal properties to this basic url generated by Zoho Creator:
- Append the required properties to the basic url as <Property Name>=<Value>format , where
- <Property Name> is the name of the iCal property as listed in the property table below. Note that the ical properties DSTART and DTEND are mandatory.
- <Value> is the Deluge field name of the corresponding column in the view. Zoho Creator will take the values of these columns from the corresponding view.
iCal properties supported by Zoho Creator:
| Property Name | Deluge Field Type that can be mapped | Requirement |
| ORGANIZER | TEXT | Optional |
| DTSTART | DATE-TIME | Mandatory |
| DTEND (or) DURATION | DATE-TIME | Mandatory |
| CREATED | DATE-TIME | Optional |
| CLASS | TEXT * | Optional |
| DESCRIPTION | TEXT | Optional |
| LAST-MOD | DATE-TIME | Optional |
| LOCATION | TEXT | Optional |
| ORGANIZER | TEXT | Optional |
| PRIORITY | INTEGER | Optional |
| DTSTAMP | DATE-TIME | Optional |
| STATUS | TEXT ** | Optional |
| SUMMARY | TEXT | Optional |
UID | Generated by default | Mandatory
(need not be specified as it is generated by default) |
* Allowed values for CLASS (the value must be specified in capital letters) : PUBLIC / PRIVATE / CONFIDENTIAL
**Allowed values for STATUS : tentative /confirmed / canceled
iCal feed url format:
http: //creatorexport.zoho.com/<app owner name>/<app link name>/ical/<view link name>/<Property Name>=<Deluge Field Name>&<Property Name>=<Deluge Field Name>&<Property Name>=<Deluge Field Name>
where,
- <app owner name> should be replaced with the application owner name
- <app link name> should be replaced with the application link name
- <view link name> should be replaced with the view link name
- <Property Name> should be replaced with the required iCal property name as listed in the iCal property table. Note that the ical properties DSTART and DTEND are mandatory.
- <Deluge Field Name> is the name of the corresponding column in the view, whose value will be assigned to the iCal property.
Sample iCal feed:
http://creatorexport.zoho.com/sampleapps/ical-feed/ical/Event_Management_Report/ORGANIZER=Coordinator&DTSTART=Start_Date&DTEND=End_Date
Note:
- If you do not want the value of a property to be assigned from the ZC view, you will have to specify the property name and its value in the following format:
ZC_SET:<Property Name>=<Value>
For example: ZC_SET:CLASS=Public
where,
CLASS is the iCal property whose value will be assigned as "Public" for all the rows in your view. (i.e) for all the events in the view. - If your calender data contains a mixture of full-day and finite duration events with starting and ending time, you will pass ZC_FULL_DAY_EVENT_VAR=<field_name> in the url
where,
<field_name> is the deluge field name of the field in which you will set value as true or false. At runtime, if the parameter named ZC_FULL_DAY_EVENT_VAR is available, Zoho Creator checks the value of the specified field name from the corresponding row in the view. If the value is true, the event is taken as "full-day" event. If the value is false, the event is taken as date-time event. - External applications such as Google Calendar and Zoho Calendar synchronize with Zoho Creator by pulling date-time related data from Zoho Creator twice or thrice a day.
Example
- Let us take the example of the following view whose basic iCal Feed url is: https://creatorexport.zoho.com/sampleapps/ical-feed/ical/Event_Management_Report/
- A fully constructed iCal feed of the view is given below. Here the parameter ZC_FULL_DAY_EVENT_VAR is added to the URL with the value as Full_day_event.
https://creatorexport.zoho.com/sampleapps/ical-feed/ical/Event_Management_Report/ORGANIZER=Coordinator&DTSTART=Start_Date&DTEND=End_Date&ZC_FULL_DAY_EVENT_VAR=Full_day_event
- Copy the constructed url and use it in various calendar services like Google, which support adding events by URL. In Google Calendar, you can add the url as mentioned here: Subscribe to calenders in Google Calendar. The data will be shown as in the screen-shot given below:
