And then there were three.

Around this time two years ago I added direct sync with your Google calendar.  That fit the bill and did the trick for the vast majority of CA users.

Then around this time last year I added direct sync with your Outlook calendar.  That did the trick for most of the remaining CA users.

Now it seems there’s just remaining a rather small sliver of the CA community that uses neither, and rather instead keeps their online calendar with Apple Calendar with their Apple iCloud account.  Today I’m happy to report CA has them well covered too¹: you can now directly sync your CoachAccountable appointments with your Apple Calendar.

Let’s see what’s new!

How to Sync iCal with CoachAccountable

As with the other two, syncing your calendar is a matter of visiting Settings >> Appointment Config >> Calendar Sync.

Take your pick and you’ll be on your way.

When you click “Sync with Apple!” you’ll be presented with the following prompt:

The first question should be easy…

You probably know your Apple ID, it’s the one that you would use to log in to your iCloud account².

After that, though, you ALMOST CERTAINLY don’t know your App Password: rather than let CA know your actual iCloud password, (yikes, that would be too much sharing, and frankly we don’t want the burden of knowing that!) Apple lets you create a single-use password for specific apps that you want to grant limited access.  In this case, that’s just perfect for letting CA connect to your calendar.

How to Generate an Apple App-Specific Password

For better or worse, Apple requires you to set up 2-factor authentication in order to create app-specific passwords.  If you haven’t done so already, you’ll see the place to do so in the “Security” section on this page:

You see it? Yeah, it’s that blue “Get started…” link right down there.

Once 2-factor authentication is setup, you’ll see in its place the place to generate an app-specific password:

I’m sorry this is such a hassle. Yeah, I like the login-click-and-go flow offered by Google and Outllook better too.

Once you get that, paste it back where called for in CA and you’ll be on your way!

Like any other direct sync, you get to choose which calendar CA should publish your appointments to (if any) and which calendar(s) CA should read from in order to prevent double booking (if any):

Which will it be?

Finally, like any other direct sync, your clients can go through the exact same steps to connect THEIR Apple Calendars.  They’ll find the place to do so under their “My Account” page, and, unlike you as coach, they won’t be prompted for which calendars to read from, but they do get their choice of which calendar their appointments with you should show up on.

Enjoy!

PS: Support for Apple Calendar means CoachAccountable can sync with any online calendaring system based on CalDAV protocol.  If you know what that means and it would be useful for you to connect to a CalDAV server outside of Apple, let me know!