Public and private events?

Honestly I was not aware of this option at the event level. I’ll investigate whether or not Google Calendar includes this information in the ICS feed, and update the plugin accordingly.

To make sure I am building this option optimally, would your preference be to have private events still appear as a blocked-out time but with no information, or would you prefer to have them completely absent from the displayed calendar?

I just did some testing with my sample Google Calendar, and here’s what I found:

1. If you are using the Public address in iCal format, then events marked as “private” do not appear in the ICS feed at all.
2. If you are using the Secret address in iCal format, then events marked as “private” do appear in the ICS feed, but the feed includes CLASS:PRIVATE on those events. At this time ICS Calendar does not do anything with that information, but I can look into adding it as an option in a future update.

My general recommendation is not to use the “Secret address” for your feeds; that address includes everything and is generally only intended for the personal use of the owner of the calendar. That said, if your calendar has not been set to “public”, it’s the only way to get the feed. Still, it’s better to set the calendar to “public” and use the public address. After all, you are making the calendar public by posting it on a WordPress site with this plugin.

That’s my “best practice” recommendation. But I know there are exceptions to everything.

Just a quick follow-up on this: I confirmed the spec for the CLASS property and am adding a new parameter in the next update of the plugin (which I expect to release today):

hideprivateevents="true"

This will apply to both the PRIVATE and CONFIDENTIAL values for CLASS.

At this point this parameter will not give you the option to show the blocked-out time with masked details; it simply excludes the event entirely from display. (I did that because this approach is very easy for me to implement, whereas having a mask is a lot more complicated.) I may add that option in the future, however.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by room34.

That is absolutely fine by me – this is only for display and not part of a booking system where people will get mislead by my apparent availability.

I’ll watch out for the update – and many thanks ?? ?? ??

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Adam.

It looks great now, thanks for the update ??