Calendar subscription: see your appointments in your own calendar

Calendar Subscription gives you a read-only subscription link that makes your Piyzi appointments visible in your own calendar app — Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. You follow your day in your phone's calendar without switching apps.

How it works

Piyzi gives you a long, random calendar address. Your calendar app fetches that address at intervals it decides itself and shows your appointments in your own calendar. The connection is one-way.

• The flow only goes from Piyzi to your calendar: when you create, reschedule or cancel an appointment, the change reaches your calendar at the next refresh.

• Edits you make in your calendar app do not come back to Piyzi — moving an event, deleting it or adding a new one there does not change the appointment in Piyzi.

• The subscribed calendar sits in your calendar app as a read-only calendar; most apps do not allow editing it anyway.

• Piyzi does not connect to your calendar account; it neither sees nor reads your private events there.

Prerequisites

• A Piyzi account with an active subscription.

• Pi Store view permission — needed to open the Pi Store page in the web app.

• No extra permission is needed to create the link for your own appointments.

• Can manage calendar subscription links permission, or being the workspace owner — needed to create, refresh and close another staff member's or the company's link.

Three kinds of subscription link

• My Own Calendar: only the appointments assigned to you. Every staff member can create their own link.

• Staff Calendars: a separate link per staff member. Because each one is added as its own calendar, you can give every staff member a colour and hide the ones you don't need.

• Company Calendar: every staff member's appointments in a single calendar, with the staff name shown in brackets in the event title.

Creating the subscription link

1. In the left menu, open My Business → Pi Store.

2. Under the Calendar heading, click the Calendar Subscription card.

3. In the My Own Calendar section, click “Create Link”. If you have the management permission, you can also create links in the Company Calendar and Staff Calendars sections of the same dialog.

4. “Add to Calendar” opens the link straight in your computer's calendar app; “Copy” puts the link on the clipboard.

5. The QR button shows the same link as a square code — scan it with your phone camera to move the link to your phone.

Adding it to your calendar app

Apple Calendar (iPhone, iPad, Mac)

1. On iPhone or iPad, tap the “Add to Calendar” button or the QR code; the Calendar app opens the subscription dialog by itself.

2. To add it manually, go to Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar and paste the link (depending on your iOS version, the path may start at Settings → Apps → Calendar).

3. On a Mac, in the Calendar app choose File → New Calendar Subscription and paste the link.

Google Calendar

1. Open calendar.google.com on a computer; this cannot be done from the Google Calendar mobile app.

2. Click the plus sign next to “Other calendars” on the left and choose “From URL”.

3. Paste the link starting with https that you copied from Piyzi and add the calendar.

4. Once added, the calendar also appears in the Google Calendar app on your phone; if it doesn't, tick the calendar in the app's settings.

Outlook

1. Open the Calendar section in the web version of Outlook.

2. Follow “Add calendar” → “Subscribe from web”.

3. Paste the link starting with https, give the calendar a name and a colour, then save.

4. In the Outlook desktop app you can use Calendar → Add Calendar → From Internet.

How often does the calendar refresh?

The refresh interval is decided by your calendar app, not by Piyzi. Piyzi puts a “refresh every 15 minutes” suggestion in the calendar file, but apps are free to ignore it.

• Apple Calendar: usually every 5 minutes to an hour. On iPhone you can change the interval under Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Fetch New Data.

• Google Calendar: the interval cannot be chosen by the user; Google usually fetches the address every few hours, sometimes up to a day. It is not suitable for up-to-the-minute tracking.

• Outlook: refreshes every few hours.

• Piyzi also caches the generated calendar file for 5 minutes, so a new appointment can show up a few minutes late even if your app fetches immediately.

What appears in the calendar?

• The event title is in the form “Customer name — Service”; in the company calendar the staff name is added in brackets.

• The event description carries the service, the staff member, the resource (room or equipment) and the online meeting link if there is one.

• If an appointment has more than one service, each service appears as a separate event.

• Appointments awaiting approval also reach the calendar; online booking requests are visible before you approve them.

• For online appointments the meeting link is also written into the event's location and link fields, so you can join with one tap from the calendar.

• The window runs from 30 days in the past to 180 days ahead; appointments outside it are not included in the feed.

• Times are written in universal time; whatever time zone your phone is in, the appointment is shown at that local time.

• For very busy businesses the company calendar carries at most 3,000 appointments; the furthest-future appointments beyond that limit may not appear.

The following are not part of the calendar subscription:

• Cancelled appointments — they drop out of the feed and are removed from the calendar at the next refresh.

• Class sessions and group events.

• Staff leave and blocked hours.

• Sensitive data such as prices, payments and customer contact details.

Closing and refreshing the link

• Refresh: the circular arrow button on the link row creates a new link and the old one stops working immediately. Every calendar that used the old link has to subscribe again with the new one. This is the first thing to do if a link leaks.

• Close: temporarily disables the link so calendar apps can no longer fetch data. “Open” brings the same link back.

• The link is never fully deleted; apart from closing and refreshing there is no removal action.

• When a staff member's membership in the business becomes inactive (they leave), their own link automatically stops working.

• The “Last sync” line on each row shows when calendar apps last fetched that link.

Security

• The link alone is enough to read the calendar without signing in. The link is the authentication; anyone who knows the address can see the appointments.

• The link contains customer names and service titles; that is personal data. Do not share it in chat groups, shared documents or on social media.

• The company calendar link holds every appointment of every staff member; it is the link to treat most carefully.

• The QR code carries the same link — sharing a screenshot of it is the same as sharing the link.

Troubleshooting

• No appointments appear in the calendar: a staff calendar only carries the appointments assigned to you. If you are not assigned as staff on the appointments, the calendar looks empty; try the company calendar.

• A new appointment did not reach the calendar: your calendar app has not refreshed yet. In Apple Calendar pull the list down to refresh; in Google Calendar you may have to wait a few hours.

• The link was added but the calendar is empty or shows an error: the link may have been closed or refreshed. Check under Pi Store → Calendar Subscription that the link is open, and subscribe again with the current link.

• I edited the calendar but Piyzi does not show it: the subscription is read-only; edits in your calendar app do not reach Piyzi. Edit the appointment in Piyzi instead.

• A cancelled appointment is still in the calendar: it has already dropped out of the feed, but it can stay on screen until your calendar app refreshes; wait for the refresh or refresh manually.