Syncing Schedules as Events [eg. Outlook, Thunderbird]

[Phil Franjo]

Hello, 

A coworker brought up today that it would be useful to sync or be able to export one's schedule with Outlook/Thunderbird/etc to Ftrack. I was thinking it might be achievable in a similar fashion to the excel import in the tasks view, but in the context of events (Rows/Columns of event name, time, users assigned, etc); just to make it easier to manage and not have to be manually inputted, especially when someone has several meetings that need to be scheduled daily.  

Thanks,

-Phil F

[JPrydz]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your input and feedback.
You might be able to achieve this, using our API.
We are also looking at enhancements to the scheduling.
So I've added your information as reference.

Regards,
Johan

[Chandler]

Representing the scheduled events in a project as a CalDAV calendar is a feature we've always wanted with any project management software we use at my company. Presenting the events using the CalDAV protocol would allow all major calendar apps to view basic ftrack schedules which would go a long way towards replacing the need for a mobile app. This seems like a no-brainer to us in terms of propagating our studio's schedule out in the easiest to view way possible, so we will absolutely be developing this ourselves internally if ftrack doesn't get to it first. 😉

Our idea is basically to represent everything as read-only, which simplifies the needs. People don't need to edit from Outlook, they just need to see things.

Using the calDAV Python library should go a long way to making this possible. The only design decision I still need to make is weather the calendars should be presented directly from the script itself, requiring open ports and a DNS address to point to wherever that script lives.... or, it could integrate with another calendar provider like Google Calendar, and simply sync the events to that service, making the calendars available for any users of that service instead.

[Jed Frechette]

+1 for this feature request.

I see two potential use cases.

1. A live read-only calendar(s) that ftrack users can subscribe to (authentication managed by the ftrack instance) so they can keep track of their ftrack schedule within their main calendar app.
2. One-time export of a schedule snapshot as a static .ics file. This would be a good simple way to share schedule info with users outside the organization who don't need access to ftrack. The same could also be achieved with subscriptions, but a snapshot export would be a simpler way to manage non-sensitive data without worrying about managing credentials.

 

[caebrasil]

+1 for this request. Integrations like this are essential to project management nowadays.