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Consultants rarely work in one system. This tab keeps the hospital calendar honest about the rest of a clinician’s week — either by connecting their own account both ways, or by subscribing to an outside calendar one way.

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What this tab controls

The tab has two halves, and they do different jobs.

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Connected Accounts — two-way

“Connect your Google or Outlook calendar with two-way sync. Each staff member links their own account.” Select Google or Outlook, sign in, and choose which calendars to sync. Appointments here are copied out to that calendar, and its events come back. Each connected account has Sync now, Choose calendars, Reconnect and Disconnect.

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Calendar Subscriptions (read-only) — one-way

“Subscribe to an external calendar (Google, Outlook, Apple, or any .ics URL) … Events appear on your clinic calendar and stay in sync — read-only, one-way.” A privacy card above the list sets how much patient identity appears on a synced calendar, clinic-wide.

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Set it up

1

Decide which half you need

Use Connected Accounts when a clinician wants their hospital diary and their own calendar to agree in both directions. Use Calendar Subscriptions when you only need to see an outside commitment — a rota, a teaching block, a platform like Headway or Alma.
2

Connect an account

Select Google or Outlook, sign in as that clinician, then use Choose calendars to pick which of their calendars sync.
3

Or copy a secret .ics address

In the other calendar, find its private iCal address. The How to connect a calendar panel spells out where it lives in Google, Outlook, Apple iCloud and the therapy platforms. Always take the secret / private link and treat it like a password.
4

Add and test it

Select Add calendar, paste the address, then Test connection. You should see the calendar name and a count of upcoming events before you save.
5

Assign it and set the frequency

Pick the staff member it belongs to, and a Sync frequency that matches how often that calendar really changes.
6

Save

Select Connect & import. The first sync runs immediately and reports what it created.
7

Choose blocking or info only

On the feed’s row, use the Blocks booking / Info only switch. It confirms with “Now blocks booking” or “Now info-only”.

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What changes once you save

Imported events appear on the hospital calendar at the venue you nominated, and stay in step on your chosen frequency. A blocking feed makes that time unbookable — but does not create a ClinikEHR appointment. This is the distinction that decides how you use the switch:
  • Blocks booking — the provider’s slots at that time disappear from availability, and a booking, move or repeat made from the calendar over that time is refused, so nobody double-books them. There is no appointment, no patient, no invoice and no clinical record. New feeds start here.
  • Info only — the event is visible to staff and changes nothing about what can be booked.
Sync is periodic, not instant. An event added to the outside calendar a minute ago is not here yet; it arrives on the next run, or immediately if you select Sync now. Plan around that when a clinician cancels at short notice — use Sync now, or block the time here directly. Imported events are not linked to a patient. “Open one on the calendar to link it if it represents a clinical encounter.” Connecting an account also sends the other way, and that is your responsibility to manage: “your ClinikEHR appointments are copied to your external calendar — including telehealth visits and their secure join links. Anyone with access to that calendar can see them.” Set the clinic-wide privacy card before you connect anything. Removing a feed stops syncing at once and removes its imported events; anything you linked to a patient is kept as a normal local appointment.

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Out of Office and your connected calendar

Out of Office and a connected Google or Outlook account work together, in both directions.
  • Out of Office you add in ClinikEHR appears on your calendar. Each person it covers who has a connected account set to receive clinic appointments gets a busy entry titled Out of office — marked as out of office where Google or Outlook supports it. It carries the time only: never the memo or the reason. A repeating Out of Office appears as one entry per occurrence. Changing or deleting it in ClinikEHR changes or removes the entry.
  • Out of office you set in Google or Outlook comes into ClinikEHR. A Google out-of-office entry, or an Outlook entry shown as Out of office, becomes an Out of Office for you on the clinic calendar and stops clients booking you at that time. It does nothing else: it never cancels appointments, emails anyone, pauses reminders or changes client messaging. It follows your calendar — change or delete it there and ClinikEHR follows at the next sync. To apply your clinic’s full Out of Office settings to it, open it on the calendar and select Adopt. An adopted Out of Office still follows your calendar’s times and is never copied back to it.
  • Your calendar is not flooded while you are away. While you are out of office, changes to your appointments are not copied to your connected calendar straight away. Once you are back they are brought up to date in one go, with each appointment in its final state — an appointment booked and cancelled while you were away never appears at all.
  • Ordinary busy time still protects your diary, exactly as before: a timed event on a calendar set to Blocks booking stops you being booked, and an Info only calendar does not.
  • An all-day “Busy” entry does not block your diary unless you turn that on. Open Choose calendars on the connected account and find All-day busy entries block my bookings under the calendar — off by default. A full-day block you keep on your outside calendar as an all-day event has no effect here until you switch it on for that calendar. Turning it on takes effect from the next sync of that calendar (immediately if you select Sync now); turning it off unblocks your diary right away. A native “Out of office” entry always blocks, whether this is on or off.

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Check it worked

Open the hospital calendar for the assigned clinician and find one event you know exists in the other calendar. Then, on a feed set to Blocks booking, try to book that provider over the top of it — those times should not be offered. On a feed set to Info only, they should still be.

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Common issues

It appears for owners and managers only. Everyone else with settings access does not see it at all.
Subscriptions are clinic-wide governance and load for owners and managers only.Connecting your own account is a personal action and is open to any staff member. If your role cannot open clinic Settings, do it from your own account instead: . Pick the clinic there — a calendar is connected per clinic, so someone who works in two has two separate connections.
You almost certainly have the public sharing link, not the secret iCal one. It must start https:// or webcal:// and end at an .ics feed.
“…auto-paused after repeated sync errors. Check the URL, then re-enable to resume.” A regenerated secret address is the usual cause — edit the feed and paste the new one.
That feed is Info only. Switch it to Blocks booking on the row.
Correct — it never does. It reserves the time and nothing more. Book a real appointment if the visit belongs in the record.