Christmas shapes Christmas shapes
Santa's best deal Get up to 60 off! Get up to 60 off!
Grab the deal

Configuring Apple Calendar Integration with the Amelia WordPress Booking Plugin

To prevent conflicts between your Amelia appointments and your personal schedule in Apple Calendar, you can sync your working hours. This integration will update your Apple Calendar with all your Amelia bookings, marking those times as busy. As a result, Amelia will avoid accepting new reservations during these busy periods on your Apple Calendar.

Key Point to Remember

The Apple Calendar app (iCal), which you may use on your MacBook or iPhone, is not a calendar service itself; rather, it acts as a calendar viewer. Since iCal/Apple Calendar serves only as an interface for displaying calendars, direct integration with Amelia is not possible. For example, if your primary calendar is Google Calendar but you access it through the iCal app, you should integrate your Google Calendar instead. For further details, please see below.

During setup, we recommend opening two tabs in your browser:

  1. Amelia > Settings > Integrations > Apple Calendar page in your WordPress dashboard
  2. Your Apple account page

Please note that full 2-way synchronization is not yet supported. This means that if you reschedule or delete an event in your Apple Calendar, it will not be updated in Amelia.

Configure the App-Specific Password in your Apple account

Before enabling Apple Calendar integration in Amelia, you must have two-factor authentication (2FA) set up on your Apple account, along with an App-Specific Password.

To begin, log in to appleid.apple.com. Under Account Security, ensure that two-factor authentication is enabled (if you haven’t already done so). After enabling 2FA, click on “App-Specific Passwords” and then select “Generate Password.”

You’ll see a popup where you’ll need to click on “Generate an app-specific password“:

You can choose any name for the password. On the next screen, enter a name (e.g., “Amelia”) and click “Create” to generate the App-Specific Password.

You may be asked to enter your Apple ID password to verify your identity. Once confirmed, you will receive a password in the following format:

xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

Copy this password (including the hyphens) and store it in a secure location. You won’t be able to view this password again once you close the popup, so it’s important to save it. Afterward, you’ll be able to link your Apple Calendar with Amelia.

If you revoke the app-specific password, you will be automatically logged out of Apple Calendar in Amelia. In that case, you will need to generate a new app-specific password and repeat the process to restore the integration.

Please Note:

A few Apple users have encountered problems while generating this password using the Safari web browser. If you’re experiencing similar issues, we suggest trying a different web browser.

Enter Apple Calendar Integration Data in Amelia

After generating an app-specific password in Apple, the next step is to navigate to your WordPress dashboard, to the Amelia > Settings > Integrations > Apple Calendar page specifically.

There, you will find the “iCloud Email Address” and “iCloud App-specific Password” fields, where you need to enter the iCloud Email Address and the previously generated app-specific password.

Below the two aforementioned options, you will find more options which we will go through one by one.

  • Redirect URI: This URI is automatically generated in Amelia and indicates the page where the Apple Calendar Integration is done.
  • Event Title and Description: This setting defines the title and description for events created in Apple Calendar from bookings made in Amelia. The information provided here will be reflected as the event’s title and description in your Apple Calendar.
  • Insert Pending Appointments: When enabled, this option ensures that pending bookings in Amelia are also transferred to Apple Calendar, even if they haven’t been confirmed yet.
  • Add Event’s Attendees: Enable this option if you want employees to see the customers who are attending the appointment within the event in Apple Calendar. This helps keep track of the attendees directly from the calendar.
  • Remove Apple Calendar Busy Slots: When enabled, this option will remove busy slots in Apple Calendar from the employee’s working schedule, ensuring that those slots are not available for future bookings.
  • Include Buffer Time in Apple Events: If this option is disabled, the buffer time set for scheduled appointments in Amelia will not be added to the events in Apple Calendar. This means only the actual appointment time will be displayed, without the additional buffer time before or after the event.

Connecting Employees to Apple Calendar

After saving changes to the Amelia > Settings > Integrations > Apple Calendar page, you will need to navigate to the Amelia > Employees page and choose an employee you want to connect to Apple Calendar to and choose which calendar to connect that employee to.

Once an employee has successfully been connected to an Apple Calendar, the “Disconnect from Apple” button will appear, which allows you to disconnect an employee from the connected calendar in a matter of seconds.

Connecting Employee to Apple Calendar through Employee Panel

Along with connecting employees to Apple Calendar through back-end, employees can connect to it themselves through an employee panel. After logging into the employee panel, the employee will need to navigate to “My profile” page, where they can choose the Apple Calendar to connect to.