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Bugs
Holidays blocking my calendar as busy
Various holidays are blocking the entire day as busy, regardless of start/end time--but erev and Shabbos are free. Can you make a way to turn on/off the busy setting so we have more control over our calendar?
Answer
Hi, thanks for using Hebcal.
If you're using the default "subscribe" feature for most calendar applications (Apple, Google, or Microsoft Outlook), then your calendar will never be blocked. The Hebcal holidays will be displayed and managed as separate calendar from your main calendar without affecting your main calendar's free/busy time.
If, in fact you imported Hebcal events and merged with your calendar (using our .ics download + import, or the .csv download + import), then yes, holidays that are yom tov such as Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, the beginning days of Sukkot, Simchat Torah, the beginning and ending days of Pesach and Shavuot, will indeed be blocked all day (typically using the "out of office" type, but in some cases "busy"). This is a feature, not a bug, because work is forbidden on those major holidays.
We're sorry, but we don't have the ability to offer customizations for these major holidays. If you choose to download/import/merge, then you'll need to adjust any holidays from busy/oof to "free" on your own.
Hi, I am subscribed in Google, and my calendar is showing as busy. I have not imported the ICS. So I am pretty sure there is a bug if you are saying it shouldn't be blocked.
Work is forbidden on Shabbos too, but the calendar isn't blocked for that--and that's part of why I am confused--why block some and not others?
We're confused, too. Unless Google changed something, the free/busy status of a subscribed iCalendar should not block the availability of your main calendar. That would be a big departure from how Google Calendar has worked for 10+ years.
You're correct, work is forbidden on every Shabbos, and Hebcal does not use the "out of office" / busy setting for events that occur on Saturdays. Shabbos is always on Shabbos, and it's not part of the workweek in the western world or in Israel, so there's not much need to mark it as a "busy" day.
The major holidays can fall on different days during the week, including the typical western Monday-Friday workweek. We're sorry if this seems inconsistent to you.
Well, I hope you do look into what has changed.
And I am confused by why you would suggest that Shabbos doesn't impact the typical Western Monday-Friday workweek. I live in a time zone where Shabbos starts before 4 pm for part of the year, and people definitely try to schedule meetings with me at 4 pm on Fridays. So if the calendar is going to block anything, it should definitely be blocking those times on Fridays (besides, many people do have lives in which people try to book things on Saturdays--for instance, educational institutions offer Saturday classes, law firms hold weekend meetings, etc.). What I would encourage you to do is offer two version of the calendar subscription, one of which blocks all days in which work is restricted, regardless of day of week, and the other in which there are no blocks, so users can choose what is right for them.
Thank you for the feedback!
It's easy in most calendar applications to set a recurrence rule every Saturday to block off your calendar as busy the entire day. Hebcal.com doesn't have that feature because it's built into standard Gregorian calendars, and our users will have more control and more familiarity if they do so using their native calendar app.
I personally block off Friday afternoons in the winter with a "do not schedule" starting at about 3:30pm so I can get home in time for Shabbos and so my coworkers won't try to schedule anything late.
It would be a handy feature to automatically block Friday afternoons using a user specified number of minutes before candle lighting time (e.g. 90 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever you choose). Alas, we are unlikely to have time to implement it anytime soon.
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi, thanks for using Hebcal.
If you're using the default "subscribe" feature for most calendar applications (Apple, Google, or Microsoft Outlook), then your calendar will never be blocked. The Hebcal holidays will be displayed and managed as separate calendar from your main calendar without affecting your main calendar's free/busy time.
If, in fact you imported Hebcal events and merged with your calendar (using our .ics download + import, or the .csv download + import), then yes, holidays that are yom tov such as Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, the beginning days of Sukkot, Simchat Torah, the beginning and ending days of Pesach and Shavuot, will indeed be blocked all day (typically using the "out of office" type, but in some cases "busy"). This is a feature, not a bug, because work is forbidden on those major holidays.
We're sorry, but we don't have the ability to offer customizations for these major holidays. If you choose to download/import/merge, then you'll need to adjust any holidays from busy/oof to "free" on your own.