DoItBetter Calendar: Google isn't syncing and getting an error trying to subscribe in Team Calendars

Question

We use Google suite for calendars and email. We're trying out DoItBetter Calendar, and are running into two problems:

* I can export the calendar to an .ics URL and Subscribe by URL in Google Calendar. Existing issues show up in Google Calendar. However, if I make changes to the calendar in Jira/DoItBetter, the issues do not update in the Google Calendar.
* When I attempt to use the same .ics URL to add the calendar to Team Calendars for Confluence, I get an error message "Specified calendar does not exist. Possible problems: Check that the Calendar URL you provided exists and you have the correct permissions to access it." This is after I am able to subscribe to the calendar in Google Calendars, so I know that the calendar does exist. It is shared by URL and is not listed publicly.

Does anyone know what's going on here and how to fix it? We have a similar problem with Team Calendars in general, and have a very fragile setup right now that syncs between Team Calendars and Google Calendar (but which requires a manual restart/reconnection about once a week); I am looking to make that more robust and resilient.

Alex _Doitb_ · Answer

Unfortunately, ICS exports at unpredictable times; according to Google's documentation, this time can be up to 6 hours, which is extremely long. As a result, we created our synchronization service using the Google API, which, unlike ics, works in both directions. https://doitbe.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CFJC/pages/1867743233/2-way+sync+with+Google+Calendar

I'll also post here when we enable sync for all instances.

Antonio Rodriguez_jshu2y · Answer

By the way, I thought/assumed the issue was that the ICS URL generated when exporting didn't update its content after a change in events.

However, checking the ICS file, it does inmediately! It's just Google not syncing, which I now guess it's the API issue you mentioned?

So in other words, another Calendar that grabs that ICS file frequently will update events as expected, right? (eg. if I were to implement an ICS viewer somewhere)

Antonio Rodriguez_jshu2y · Answer

Oh, amazing to know! I can wait until next week :)

Thank you!