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Add to Calendar in Classy

I’ve been in fundraising for many years, and I’ve seen a lot of different platforms for online fundraising and events management. Classy is one of the best. One of the things I love about Classy is how much they listen to their customers. They really do try to roadmap solutions and give their customers a way to give them insights into how their tool is being used.

All good innovations start that way. Twitter, for example, started out as something wholly different than it is today. It was originally an SMS communication platform. But they listened to their audience early on and changed their platform model to match how it was being used, instead of trying to force their users into using their tool how they originally intended. Facebook on the other hand seems to modify their platform all the time, and every single time there’s an adjustment period to get used to the new layout or functionality.  

Classy is an ever-evolving software that really focuses in on questions like “how do we make online fundraising accessible and simple to use?” And one way they discover what tools are most useful is through their online feedback forum.

That being said, not every suggested item in the forum gets attention immediately, so in preparation for a workshop I am helping to lead on campaign design at the 2022 Classy Collaborative event, I went to the Classy Feedback Forum to see what pain points people were already talking about.

One about adding an Add to Calendar link to the Classy Thank You page and emails stood out to me. I have created some “add to calendar” links for Classy events a few times, so I know it is possible to create those links and include them in your emails and confirmation pages.

Instead of waiting for Classy to roadmap a software solution, I thought I would take a moment to share how add to calendar links work, some free resources for getting started, and simple instructions on how to set up your own add to calendar links on your emails and confirmation pages.

HOW DO ADD TO CALENDAR LINKS WORK?

Some digital calendars can use a “calendar link” to generate an event on your calendar, but not all. However, all of them can use an .ICS Calendar File. The .ICS calendar file type includes all the necessary data to create an event on just about any calendar platform, including event title, start and end times, event description and location, and more.

But the .ICS file isn’t the default for all add to calendar links.

Why? Because it’s not the simplest user experience for the person trying to add an event to their calendar.

To create an event on a calendar with an .ICS file, the user has to download an .ICS file and then open it with their default calendar platform. Sometimes a person’s computer has a default platform that isn’t the calendar tool they actually prefer to use, and that can get tricky. For example, Outlook might be the default on my computer, but if I actually use Google Calendar to manage my schedule, opening the .ICS file may automatically use Outlook by default. Opening an .ICS file directly isn’t going to do me any good in that case.

The good news is that some of the most popular cloud-based calendar applications have a simple method of creating a calendar event from a link. But you have to generate the right link and include all the details for the event coded the proper way to make it work. It can be intimidating, but thankfully there are free online tools that make generating those links very easy.

Those platforms that don’t use simple links to create calendar events are still able to use the .ICS file as a backup, so it’s a good default to include, despite the more involved process of downloading and opening the file.

GETTING STARTED

Step 1: Gather the Event Information

Gather the right information for your calendar event. You’ll need to have the following information in place before you get started.

  • Event Name
  • Event Description (including any links you want the event to include)
  • Location of the Event
  • Time of the Event (start and end or all-day if applicable) and the correct Time Zone for the event

NOTE: Including links in your event description can be helpful, especially if the event is virtual. You may run into difficulty if the link you want to include isn’t prepared yet (say for a virtual call). A redirect (sometimes called a vanity URL or a 301 Redirect, technically) can be used to include a URL in the event links and .ICS file. You can then modify that redirect later once you have more details, and in the meantime, that redirect could go to a temporary page that explains when the event link will be available, etc.. You could even put a countdown timer on that temp page as a way to generate excitement for the upcoming event.

Step 2: Decide Where You Want to Place Your “Add to Calendar” Links

Decide where you want the Add to Calendar links to appear in the Classy user experience.

Typically, you’ll want keep add to calendar links off the main event pages. If someone’s not registered yet, they often don’t have access to the links.

But once they do register, you can make the Add to Calendar links immediately available.

The two common places to add these links include:

  • The Thank You page – Make it possible to add this event to someone’s calendar immediately after they register.
  • The Confirmation Email/Receipt – For those who forgot to add the event to their calendar immediately, the receipt or confirmation email makes an easy place where they can return later to add the event to their calendar. Unlike the Thank You page, the email will be available long after they close their browser or navigate away from the Thank You page.

At this stage, you could even place the text into the campaign pages and email so that you can update it later. A simple text-based menu of Calendar links may look like this:


Add this event to your calendar:
Apple/iOS | Outlook Desktop | Google Calendar | Office 365 | Yahoo! Calendar


Though not as mobile friendly, if you really, really want the links to be visual buttons, you could also design several button images and upload them inline, one after another, placing a space between each image on the Classy page. The only thing you lose in that scenario is a little mobile-friendliness because the images may get smaller on mobile devices, and you won’t be able to make the buttons change colors or styles on a hover or “mouse over” state.

For the sake of mobile friendliness, I would personally recommend just listing out the various calendar link platforms in text.

Step 3: Make Your Calendar Links 

Making calendar links for popular digital calendars is really easy, and free online tools can help.

Like email platforms, there are a variety of calendar platforms out there, and frankly, you’re never going to be able to generate links for every possible calendar platform. So find a tool you like that can produce links for several popular calendars, and let the .ICS file handle the rest since nearly all calendar platforms can use an .ICS file.

Google Calendar, Outlook, Office 365, and Yahoo! Calendar are all able to use a simple link to create a calendar event. Recommended by Litmus, Amit Agarwal’s Calendar Links tool is an excellent resource you should bookmark now: https://www.labnol.org/calendar/.

For Apple users unfortunately, making a simple link isn’t possible unless you are sending a calendar invite from within the iOS system. That’s where the .ICS file comes in. Litmus also recommends this this iCalendar Event Maker tool to generate an .ICS file for your event: https://ical.marudot.com/.

Remember, the .ICS file needs to be hosted somewhere. Once you create it, you’ll need to download it to your computer, then upload it to an online location where your audience can access it. This means it needs to go to a publicly accessible storage area. For us at Denver Rescue Mission, we just use our WordPress media storage area. Chances are your website has some kind of public storage option that can accommodate the .ICS file. If your IT department manages your website, explain to them that you need to provide a downloadable file to the public, and you need a direct URL to the file once it’s been uploaded.

If you’re thinking of using a file-sharing platform like DropBox or Google Drive, you may run into trouble, so be prepared to troubleshoot any problems that come from using a shared drive. Unfortunately, troubleshooting those things are outside the scope of this blog post. To avoid any problems, I recommend trying to use your website server as the host for your .ICS event files.  

Step 4: Place Your Links Into Your Classy Campaign

This is the easiest part of the whole process. Now that you’ve generated the links and the .ICS file, go back to Classy and hyperlink each platform name in the Add to Calendar to the appropriate link in the generator, and link the Apple/iOS text to the URL of the .ICS file you uploaded to a public web space. 

Remember to link any text you want to place in the Classy emails as well. Emails won’t be able to insert images, so you’ll have to stick with text-only links for the email, but that’s more mobile friendly anyway, so it’ll turn out well.

Step 5: Test the Links

Finally, test your links. Click on each link to ensure that it opens on the correct platform. While you may not be able to log into each platform, you can at least ensure that the Google text doesn’t accidentally open the Yahoo! Calendar link.

Open an incognito tab and test the .ICS file to ensure someone from the general public can download your .ICS file. The incognito tab ensures that you’re not accidentally logged into a website or something that would give you special access the general public wouldn’t have. The .ICS file should immediately download to your computer. You can open it to see how it works. Typically, it will try to open in your system’s default calendar application.


That’s it, you’re done! 

Remember that if you included any vanity URLs or redirects in the event description, you’ll need to link those redirects to a temporary landing page explaining that the link isn’t ready yet. Or link to a post or other page that is live and related to the event. Just note that once the event links are created, if you wanted to change what URL you shared in the event description, you’ll basically have to start from scratch and rebuild all the event links, and update them all in Classy so that they contain the new information.

WANT TO LEARN MORE? 

Litmus has an excellent article that dives deeper into the details of Add to Calendar Links here: https://www.litmus.com/blog/how-to-create-an-add-to-calendar-link-for-your-emails/

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