Google Calendar
Connecting your Google Calendar stops your everyday agenda and ReadyChatAI from ignoring each other. They remain two calendars, not one: each holds different things, and there are concrete rules about what crosses from one to the other. This page is that list of rules.
Path: Settings > Calendar
What connecting does
Two things, in opposite directions:
| Direction | What happens |
|---|---|
| From your Google Calendar to here | Times you have already blocked stop being offered: the assistant never proposes an hour where you already have something. |
| From here to your Google Calendar | Every appointment booked in ReadyChatAI is written as an event on the calendar you picked. |
What it does not do: turn your Google events into ReadyChatAI appointments. That is the rest of this page.
Choosing which calendar
When you connect, you choose which calendar the assistant checks. Only calendars you own are listed: one somebody else shared with you is not yours to point an assistant at. Busy times are read from the one you pick, and new appointments are written to it.
If you switch calendars later, the appointments already written stay where they are; the change applies to new bookings.
What we read from your calendar
There are two different reads.
To decide availability we read busy or free only. No title, no guests, no description. It is all it takes not to offer that hour, and it applies everywhere: chat, your Booking Page and the dashboard.
To show you your own agenda we read your events with their titles, and that appears only on your Appointments screen. Only administrators of your account can see them, an agent handling conversations cannot: the titles of your own agenda are your business.
Your Google events count, but they are not appointments
An event on your Google Calendar blocks that time and is drawn on your Appointments screen. It is not a ReadyChatAI appointment:
- it does not appear in the Appointments table, or in its filters, statuses or counts;
- it has no customer attached, no conversation and no rescheduling link;
- it carries no reminder.
In the calendar view they show as grey blocks; in the list view, in their own section above the table, covering the next 30 days. Both are read-only: you edit them in Google.
Google tells an event that leaves you busy from one that leaves you free. Since we read busy or free, an event marked free does not stop the assistant offering that time, even though you see it.
ReadyChatAI appointments are written into your Google Calendar
Every booking — from chat, your Booking Page or your own team — is written as an event on the calendar you picked, and keeps itself up to date:
| When the appointment… | The Google event… |
|---|---|
| is booked | is created |
| moves to another date, time or duration | moves with it |
| is cancelled, or deleted | is removed |
| is marked completed | stays: it really happened |
The event carries the appointment's title, the customer's name in the description and a mark saying ReadyChatAI booked it. The customer is not added as a guest, so Google never emails them an invitation from your account.
Our appointments are written without marking you busy, and that is not an oversight: ReadyChatAI already holds that time itself and knows how many appointments fit in it. Marking them busy as well would leave a service that takes several appointments an hour with no places left as soon as the first one arrived.
A booking a customer started in chat and never finished is not an appointment yet, so it is not written. It reaches your calendar when they finish it.
An appointment created by hand inside Google is NOT a ReadyChatAI appointment
An event you create inside Google Calendar does not enter ReadyChatAI. It does not enter the Appointments table, it has no customer and, above all, it carries no reminder: there is nobody to remind and no channel to do it on.
All it does is block that time so the assistant does not offer it.
If you want the appointment to carry a reminder, create it from the dashboard, under Commerce and Services > Appointments (Real Estate in a real-estate account): it is recorded as a real appointment — customer, status and reminder — and still shows up on your Google Calendar.
If you move or delete one of our appointments inside Google
| What you do in Google | What happens |
|---|---|
| You move one of our events, or change its duration | The appointment takes the new time, and its reminders are re-scheduled onto the new hour. Not instantly: we notice shortly after, not at the moment. |
| You delete one of our events | The appointment is not cancelled. It stays in your dashboard, keeps holding the time, and its reminders still stand. |
That is deliberate: from outside, an accidental delete and a real cancellation look identical, and cancelling gives the time away and calls off the reminders of a booking a real person is expecting. We do not do that over an event you may have dragged away by mistake.
To cancel for real, set the appointment's status to Cancelled in the dashboard: the time is released, the event disappears from your Google Calendar, and any reminders still due are called off.
Cancelling in the dashboard sends the customer no message. What does happen is that they stop receiving reminders for that appointment — but nobody tells them it is gone. If a real person was expecting it, write to them yourself.
The safest habit is to move and cancel from the dashboard, not from Google: the change reaches Google right away and the reminders come out right the first time.
Reminders
Reminders belong to ReadyChatAI appointments, never to your Google Calendar: an event of your own generates none, even though you can see it on the Appointments screen.
In short: one goes out 24 hours before and another 1 hour before, and on a single channel, never both — email whenever the customer left an address, and WhatsApp only when there is none. The full detail is in Appointment reminders.
If Google does not answer
The connection never leaves you without service:
- Bookings keep working. If we cannot read your busy times, availability behaves exactly as it did before you connected the calendar: we prefer that risk to leaving everyone unable to book.
- Your Appointments screen does not lie to you. If we could not load your Google events, you are told so; you are never shown an empty calendar as if you had nothing scheduled.
- An appointment already booked is not lost. If Google refuses the event, the appointment stands in ReadyChatAI and the customer keeps their time.
If Google takes our access away — for instance, if you remove the app from your own Google account — the Settings > Calendar screen tells you and offers to reconnect. Until then your busy times stop being taken into account.
Disconnecting
In Settings > Calendar, with Disconnect. What we stored to reach your calendar is deleted. From then on:
- your busy and free time stops being read, so the assistant offers those hours again;
- your events stop appearing on the Appointments screen;
- new appointments are no longer written to Google;
- the events already written stay on your calendar. They are yours; if you do not want them, delete them from Google.
Related pages
- Appointments
- Appointment reminders — when and on which channel
- Service Management — hours, duration and capacity
- Booking Page