Coaching.com provides calendar integrations with Google, Microsoft, and Apple's iCloud/iCal calendars. Every calendar provider has their own unique characteristics in terms of functionality and behavior. This document is specifically focused on some of the limitations that come with the integration with Apple Calendars. Please note that these issues are not related to Coaching.com, but instead the implementation of iCal/iCloud calendars.

A coach or a client may use Apple calendars. And a coach may use their Apple calendar in different capacities. For example, it may just be used to look for free/busy times. Or the coach may use their Apple Calendar to serve as their 'Primary' calendar in Coaching.com. (More details here on setting a primary calendar.) Regardless of the scenario, this document details some limitations that may be experienced by the coach or coachee.

Coaches may use iCloud for their calendar, but their clients may not be on iCloud. When a client receives an invite to a session they are able to respond with a yes, no, or maybe through their calendar UI (This is also called RSVP). If the client responds, the coach may not receive an email with the RSVP information. Despite the lack of email, the coach will see the participant marked as attending on their calendar.

Session invitations that are sent by calendar providers (or by the Coaching.com platform) are sent via email. This email contains an attachment that is called an ICS file. The ICS file provides a universal format for the calendar invitation, and most email services will automatically read the file to retrieve the calendar information. In many cases, the calendar is automatically added to the calendar of the coachee. In the case of coachee that use iCloud, the event does not always get added to their calendar. Instead they can manually add the event to their calendar. The client may see a Siri dialog when they click into the invitation email from their desktop or mobile calendar app (but not the web app). The dialog looks something like this, but with an “add” button, and slightly different text:

The following scenario happens when the coach uses iCloud as their primary calendar, and coachees do not use an iCloud calendar. When events are sent to the coachee, there will not be a specific organizer (or additional attendees) within the invitation. (i.e. the coach).

When a coach uses iCloud as their primary calendar and send calendar invitations to coachee, in some cases the coaches email may appear as a long sequence of random characters. This may be done by Apple for privacy reasons.

In iCloud calendars, there is an “Invitees” section within the event details. When an event invitation is sent to a coachee from the Coaching platform, or from another Calendar provider (eg. GMail or Microsoft), no attendees are displayed in the iCloud invitees section.

On occasion, iCloud users may see invitations from coach calendar providers go into their Junk folder. These emails may come from Microsoft, Gmail, or from Coaching.com. When this happens, the events do not get automatically added to their calendars, and they may not see the option to add the event to their calendar.