Calendar feed: your site due dates in Outlook, Google and Apple Calendar

Most builders already live in a calendar. The site visit, the client meeting and the skip delivery are all in Outlook or on a phone. The dates that keep a job compliant usually are not: the next thorough examination on the mini digger, the CSCS card that runs out next month, a subcontractor's insurance renewal. With the new calendar feed, The Site Book puts those dates where you will actually see them.

Turn the feed on once, subscribe from your calendar, and your company's due dates appear as all-day events. When a date changes in The Site Book, the event moves in your calendar too.

What appears in your calendar

Only dates your company has already recorded in The Site Book. Nothing is guessed or filled in for you:

• Project start and finish dates for your live jobs.

• Worker certificate expiries, grouped by day, such as "2 worker certificates expire", with the certificate types listed.

• Permit to work end dates.

• Subcontractor insurance, RAMS and liability expiry dates.

• Company document expiry dates from the company document library, such as your own insurance certificates, on Business and above.

• COSHH safety data sheet review dates.

• Plant inspections and plant certificate expiries from the plant register, on Business and above.

Each event links to the matching page in The Site Book, such as the project, the plant item or the Workers page, so going from "due on Thursday" to "who needs to sort it" is one click.

Works with the calendar you already use

The feed is a standard iCal subscription, so there is nothing to install and no account to connect. After you turn it on, The Site Book gives you buttons to add it to Google Calendar, to Outlook (for work or school accounts and for Outlook.com) or to Apple Calendar on an iPhone or Mac. You can also copy the address and paste it into any calendar that can subscribe from the web.

Your calendar app checks for changes on its own schedule, so a new date can take a while to appear. A changed date replaces the old event rather than adding a second copy.

Private by design

The feed address works like a password, so we treated it like one:

• Shown once. The Site Book keeps only a scrambled copy of the address, so it can be shown only when you turn the feed on or regenerate it.

• Easy to cancel. If the address is ever shared with the wrong person, click Regenerate and the old address stops working straight away. Turn off removes the feed altogether.

• No worker names. Calendar services such as Google and Microsoft read the feed, so certificate expiries are grouped by day and never name the worker. Open Workers in The Site Book to see who.

• Owner or admin only. Only an owner or admin of the company can turn the feed on, regenerate it or turn it off.

How to turn on the calendar feed

1. Open Settings → Integrations and choose your company in the Company box.

2. Under Scheduling, click Turn on calendar feed.

3. Click Add to Google Calendar, Add to Outlook or Add to Apple Calendar, or copy the address and paste it into your calendar.

Share the address with anyone in the office who should see the dates, such as a contracts manager or the person who books inspections.

What a week looks like with the feed

Picture a Monday morning. You open Outlook to check the week and, alongside your site visits, you see that the excavator on the Hartley Road job is due its thorough examination on Wednesday, two worker certificates expire on Friday, and a groundworks subcontractor's insurance renews at the end of the month. None of that needed a report, a spreadsheet or a reminder email that went to someone who was on holiday. It was simply there, in the place you already plan your week.

That is the point of the feed. The Site Book already sends reminder emails for many of these dates, and they are useful, but an email is a nudge that arrives once and then sinks. A calendar is where work actually gets scheduled. When the inspection date sits next to the site meeting, it is far easier to book the inspector for the same visit, move a worker onto a job where their card is still valid, or chase the subcontractor's broker before the policy lapses rather than after.

It also helps the people around you. Share the address with whoever books plant inspections or looks after training, and they see the same dates without needing a login of their own. If someone leaves, regenerate the address and give the new one to their replacement.

What the feed does not do

The calendar feed is read-only. Moving or deleting an event in your calendar does not change anything in The Site Book, so the record in The Site Book is always the one that counts. Update the date there and the calendar follows on its next refresh.

It also does not invent dates. If a certificate has no expiry recorded, or a project has no finish date, nothing appears for it. Dates more than eighteen months ahead are left out to keep the calendar readable, and archived projects and archived plant drop out of the feed automatically.

Which plans include it

The calendar feed is included on Pro and above, alongside Google Drive, Dropbox, Xero and Zapier. Plant register dates appear on Business and above, where the plant register is included. The integrations page has the full list, and the Help Centre guide walks through every step.