We have spent many days over the past few weeks trying to solve a technical issue involving Google Calendar. A number of our members who use Google’s service have been experiencing syncing issues between booking jobs in their ShootQ calendars and their Google Calendar instances. Unfortunately, after a lot of time and effort, we have confirmed that this is, in fact, an issue on Google’s end and there is nothing we can do to resolve it. As a result, we do not recommend using Google Calendar moving forward.
It’s important to note that our developers sent Google a request to review this issue via their "help" interface. We never received a reply.
What does this really mean?
- If you use calendars that "live" in Google, they are probably safe to use without missing appointments or losing data. However, if you are using the ShootQ calendar subscription with Google Calendar, where you have to add a calendar by URL, there are persistent issues beyond our control. Therefore, we cannot recommend using Google Calendar with ShootQ – if you do, it’s imperative to have a backup plan in place.
- iCal settings allow users to manually refresh their calendar feeds and determine how often they would like to retrieve the feed (e.g., every 15 minutes). Google Calendar does not allow users to manually refresh their feeds or set the frequency of how often they retrieve the feed. From what we can tell, Google is retrieving the feed 3 to 5 times a day, which is every 5 to 7 hours (and this significant lag time can result in missed appointments).
- We can only support what we can fix, and we have confirmed that our calendar feed is not the issue.
There are several third parties that have documented this chronic problem. You can learn more in these Google Forum posts:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/iXp8fZfgU2E%5B101-125-false%5D
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/ixQnzHmWDSk
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/uujn04TDRbw%5B1-25-true%5D
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/wNJy-nWeul0
If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at 888-9-SHOOTQ, ext. 2. Thank you for your continued support!
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