Integrate Your Bookings onto Google Calendar
Takes just a few clicks
If you have a google calendar set up already, Vantora can easily write to it. Each Package has the ability to write to the calendar. For example, maybe you run standard weekend walk-on play, private events during the week and standard weekend hours. If you do not want the standard weekend play to write, don’t set that package to go to a calendar. Want them all to go to the same calendar? You can do that as well. Let’s explore!
Step 1 – Authorize
From any package, scroll down to the google calendar integration.
Click the authorize button and Vantora will pop up the google accounts that you have on that computer. Pick the one you want to associate the calendars with and enter your password. There will be a pop-up screen that says that Vantora.com wants to access your account and calendars. Hit Allow and the authorization is complete!
There is no need to do this for each package. Once you complete the authorization process, it is done for the entire site – no matter what package you are dealing with.
It is also important to note that each site can only be associated with one google account. You cannot set up multiple accounts and authorize for each. Just set one, and if different people need to see calendars, you can share calendars on the one account. There is a lot of information on sharing calendars, etc., on the google calendar pages, so we will not delve into that here and concentrate just on the writing of Vantora information to the calendar.
Step 2 – Set the Package Parameters
For any package you want to write to the calendar, you change Allow Calendar Event Creation to Yes.
Fill in the Event Description. This is the actual info that will be written to the calendar. This can be done with plain text, such as Private Nerf Party, or you can use the Registration Field Templates list and add variables.
For example, something like this:
{{EventName}} by {{YourName}} for {{NumberGuests}} Guests. Phone: {{Phone}}
That yields:
Bob’s Bachelor Party by Fred Johnson for 21 Guests. Phone: (555) 555-1234
Feel free to experiment and add or subtract the parameters you want to include on your google calendar.
Your bookings and google calendar
Must Be A Completed Reservation
It is important to point out that if you have a package that requires a payment, and someone books it but does not finish the payment process, it will not write to the calendar. If the package does not require a payment, then it will finish the process. This is the same as going to the registration pages. Non-Paid, or non-finished reservations that are reflected as Red in your admin panel will not be written to the google calendar. Only properly completed reservations will write to the google calendar.
Push the the calendar from edit
If you have a reservation that did not write to the calendar, you can easily force it to the calendar. Go to the edit screen, make any changes you need, then save the changes. Next, you will see a Send to Calendar Button. Simply click and that event will go to the calendar if that package has been set up for calendar creation. If you send to the calendar from the edit page on a package that has not been set up, you will get a pop-up that asks if you want to set up that package for calendar creation, and you can complete the steps for that package straight from there.
