Connecting Google Calendar to Hades

When you connect Google Calendar, Hades shows your meetings inside the dashboard. Your next call appears on the Today screen with a shortcut to its pre-call, and Hades alerts you when a new meeting lands on your calendar or when one is about to start. Connecting doesn't depend on your plan. Each person connects their own Google account, and Hades reads only that account's main calendar.

Step by step

1. In the dashboard, click Calls in the left menu. The first tab, Schedule, opens on its own.
2. In the Meetings section, click Connect Google Calendar. (Shortcut: on the Today screen, the Next call card and the Start here box have the button too.)
3. You go to a Google screen. Pick the account that has your meetings and allow access. Leave the Google Calendar box ticked.
4. Google sends you back to the Hades Schedule.

What Hades reads and what it keeps

• Reads only the main calendar of the account you connected, not its other calendars.
• Never changes anything on its own. Hades only creates, moves or deletes a meeting when you do it from here.
• Keeps, so it can alert you without you opening the screen: the start and end time, the title and your response (accepted, maybe or declined) for meetings in the next 60 days. It does not keep the description, the meeting link or the guest list. All-day events, birthdays and out-of-office entries are left out.
• Meetings that already happened leave that copy a day after they end, and a meeting deleted in Google disappears from it on the next read.
• The Schedule screen reads Google at the moment you open it. It doesn't save any meeting into that copy.

Viewing, creating, moving and deleting meetings

The calendar has three views, on the Day, Week and Month buttons. The Today button jumps back to today, and the arrows go to the previous and the next period. Follow-up touches you've scheduled show on the same calendar, and a click on one opens the Follow-up touch.

1. Create: click New meeting (at the top), or click an empty time slot in the Day or Week view, or drag across the slots you want. A panel opens on the right. Type the title, adjust the date and times, and click Save.
2. Move: in the Day or Week view, drag the meeting to another time or another day. To change its length, drag its bottom edge. If you change your mind mid-drag, press Esc.
3. Edit the title, date, time or description: click the meeting, change what you want and click Save.
4. Delete: click the meeting and then Delete. If the meeting has no guests, Hades asks Delete this meeting? and, once you confirm, it also leaves your Google Calendar. If it has guests, it asks whether to notify them, right below.

If the meeting has guests, before saving a change or deleting, Hades asks Email the guests?. With Send email, Google emails the new time (or the cancellation). With Don't send, it changes without sending anything. Cancel undoes it.

• A meeting created here has no guests: it goes with a title, a description and a time.
• If the meeting belongs to someone else and you're not the organizer, the panel says Only the organizer can change this meeting. and the fields are locked.
• On a recurring meeting, the change applies to that one occurrence only.
• Birthdays, Gmail events and out-of-office entries can't be moved from here.
• If Google changed the meeting while the screen was open, Hades shows the version from Google and tells you.

When you see “Reconnect your calendar”

People who connected before the calendar could edit have a read-only permission. For that account the calendar opens normally, but a banner at the top says Reconnect your calendar to create, move and delete meetings from here. with a Reconnect button, and creating and dragging don't work. Click Reconnect, allow access again on Google, and editing turns on.

The two calendar alerts

Once connected, the bell in the dashboard alerts you to:

• New meeting on the calendar — when someone books a meeting with you in Google. A repeating series, like “every Tuesday”, alerts once. Hades doesn't alert you about a meeting you booked yourself from here, one you declined, or ones that were already on the calendar when you connected.
• Meeting in 15 minutes — the alert says Your meeting starts at and the time. Because Hades checks your calendar every 10 minutes, the alert arrives between 5 and 15 minutes before the start.

Both come turned on. To turn them off, go to Choose what I receive (the footer of the bell). More in The alert bell.

Disconnecting

1. Under Calls, on the Schedule tab, scroll to the end of the Meetings section.
2. Click Disconnect this account.

Hades deletes the connection and the copy of your meetings and stops reading your calendar. This doesn't remove the permission on Google's side. To close both ends, remove Hades from the list of apps with access on your Google account's permissions page.

If it didn't work

• “You cancelled on Google's screen, so nothing was connected.” — you closed the Google screen before allowing access. Click Connect Google Calendar again.
• “The connection expired halfway through.” — you took too long on the Google screen (you have 10 minutes). Connect again, it's quick.
• “Google refused the connection.” — check that the Google Calendar box stayed ticked on the permissions screen and try again.
• “The Google connection stopped working” — usually a permission withdrawn on Google's side. Click Reconnect. If the reason written below tells you to remove Hades on your Google account's permissions page and connect again, that's exactly what fixes it.
• A meeting you just booked isn't showing? Reload the page: the Schedule reads Google every time you open it.
• Didn't get the meeting alert? Check that New meeting on the calendar and Meeting in 15 minutes are on under Choose what I receive. A meeting you booked from Hades, an all-day one, or one that already existed when you connected doesn't alert.