Subscribe to Team Calendars from Third-Party Calendars

Subscribing to Team Calendars from your favourite third-party calendar app is a great way to view your Team Calendars events when you're not in Confluence. 

There are two ways to synchronize a Team Calendar with your calendar app:

  • Two-way sync (CalDAV) - allows you to view and update Team Calendars events in your app. 
  • One-way sync (iCal) - allows you to view, but not update, Team Calendars events in your app.

 Not all calendar apps support two-way sync, so check the table below to find out if your app supports it.  


Calendar appSync options

Microsoft Outlook (Windows desktop)

One-way and two-way sync

Microsoft Outlook (browser)

One way sync

Apple Calendar (MacOS) One-way and two-way sync

Apple Calendar (iOS) One-way and two-way sync

Google Calendar (browser) One way sync

Google Calendar (Android) One-way and two-way sync

Thunderbird One-way and two-way sync

You can also Subscribe to Third-Party Calendars from Team Calendars.


Other calendar apps

If the calendar app you use isn't listed above, you may still be able to subscribe to Team Calendars. Check your app's documentation to find out whether it supports the iCal or CalDAV standard. If it supports iCal, then you should be able to set up one-way syncronization. If it supports CalDAV, you should be able to set up two-way synchronization. 

To subscribe to a calendar app that's not listed above:

In Confluence:

  1. Choose the Subscribe button at the top of your calendar.
  2. Select either iCal or CalDAV from the Calendar app dropdown (check your calendar app's documentation to find out which standard it supports).
  3. Copy the Calendar URL.  

Then, in your Calendar app, follow the steps in your app's documentation to add or subscribe to the calendar. 

Timezones

Timezones can be confusing! Here's how we decide what time to display.

  • We display the time of an event in Confluence using the timezone set in your Confluence profile - find out how to update this.
  • We display the time of an event in your calendar app using the timezone set in your app or device.
  • We store events using the timezone defined in the Team Calendar itself, and then convert them to the appropriate timezone when you view the event. 

You should always see the correct time, but if you change locations, make sure you update your Confluence profile so you don't see a discrepancy between your calendar app and Confluence. 

Confluence context path

CalDav uses Confluence's root URL as it's well-known URL. If you've configured Confluence with a context path, for example www.yoursite.com/confluence, your calendar app will not be able to connect to your Team Calendars. 

There are two ways to resolve this issue. You can either:

  • Configure your proxy so that any URL that does not end with /confluence (or whatever your context path is) or with /synchrony (if you're using collaborative editing) always redirects to /confluence. This option is only suitable if Confluence is the only application accessed via that domain.  
  • Configure your proxy to redirect the following calls to your URL, with context path.  In the examples below our context path is /confluence.

    Apache
    RewriteRule ^/.well-known/(.*)$ /confluence/.well-known/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
    RewriteRule ^/plugins/servlet/team-calendars/caldav/(.*)$ /confluence/plugins/servlet/team-calendars/caldav/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

    The order of directives is important in Apache.  These rewrites should be placed before the Synchrony and Confluence location blocks. See Using Apache with mod_proxy for general information about configuring your proxy. 

    Nginx
    rewrite ^/.well-known/(.*)$ /confluence/.well-known/$1;
    rewrite ^/plugins/servlet/team-calendars/caldav/(.*)$ /confluence/plugins/servlet/team-calendars/caldav/$1;

    While order is not as important in Nginx, we tested this config with the rewrites before the Synchrony and Confluence location blocks. See Running Confluence behind NGINX with SSL for general information about configuring your proxy. 

Reverse Proxies

If you are using NGINX or Apache HTTPD, don't forget to enable support for DAV methods on them, else, synchronisation may fail due to the following error:

405 Error
    </p>

    <h2 class="content-subhead">Method not allowed!</h2>
    <p>


    The REPORT
    method is not allowed for the requested URL.
    
</p>


<h2 class="content-subhead">Error 405</h2>
<p>
    Server is named <a href="/">confluence-atlas.atlassian.com</a>.
    
    Webserver program <code>Apache/2.4.29 (atlassian@atlassian.com - CEL 7.x) OpenSSL/1.1.0f mod_fcgid/2.3.9</code> served
    the request with unique id <code>W1idbjAGhETV97vZN7bzyAAAAWU</code>
    from <code>64.103.79.190:3443</code> socket
    on <code>Wed Jul 25 16:55:26 2018</code>.

</p>

Modules:

For NGINX - Link

For HTTPD - Link

Troubleshooting

If you have problems adding a Team Calendar to your calendar app, you should check the documentation for your particular app. Here's some issues we know about:

  • You can't subscribe to a Team Calendar on Outlook.com if your Confluence site is not accessible outside your network. 
  • If your Confluence site isn't accessible outside your network, you may need to be connected to your network when you add the subscription, and to sync event data. 
  • If your calendar app supports calendar discovery, your calendar must be listed on your My Calendars screen, so it is available to sync.  To add a calendar to My Calendars choose Calendars on the header > Add Calendar > Add existing calendar. We'll also prompt you in the subscribe dialog, if the calendar is not listed on My Calendars
  • If you're unable to connect to your calendar, and your site has a context path (for example, you access it from www.mysite.com/confluence) your admin may need to make some changes to the proxy configuration. See Confluence context path above. 
  • You can always enable more logging from CalDavSynchronyzer as listed here for more logging and troubleshooting aid.

Team Calendars for Confluence is now part of Confluence Data Center
To get access to the features described on this page upgrade to Confluence Data Center 7.11 or later. Can’t upgrade yet? Depending on your current Data Center version, you can access these features by installing the latest version of the app (
at no cost). See our FAQ for all the details

Last modified on Apr 13, 2021

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