[Calendar] Import calendar from ICS file

[Beth_Young]

I am aware that we can export our canvas calendar feed to another calendar but it would be nice to import calendar feeds too.

For example, I would like to be able to import my institution's academic calendar into canvas. I find myself having to re-enter important dates so that I can see them as I schedule assignments and tests--it seems silly to have to retype them when they are available as an ics file, if only I could import it.

Originally suggested on the old forum by Michael Young.

[ruh]

Yes, please please please! (I cannot vote, or so it seems - would really like to vote this up.)

[JohnMcGuigan]

Please add this feature to Canvas. 

Thank you

[Nick_Riches1]

Please add this feature. It would greatly improve Canvas for the reasons proposed above. I can't see a way to vote on this.

[Nick_Riches1]

Ah.. I'm just told I rated this idea five stars.

[jwalsh1]

This would solve so many problems - being able to add the Google Calendar items to Canvas would save one of our school admin's adding it manually!

[PeterEdward]

Just adding my plea for this too. I have had a student come from another uni where they had found a way to implement it and I can clearly see the benefit. I'm not sure if they had a capable coder who set it up or whether they did it manually (which must be a nightmare task for admin so not really a feasible solution). But it is crazy that after so many years of requests for this Canvas still have not sorted it!

[PaulHermans]

I have a situation where my school uses an A/B day rotation and I have a standing assignment for every day that my Engineering course meets to make a journal entry. I don't grade individual entries so I do not want a column in the grade book, but want to use the course calendar to put it on the student's radar every day the course meets. 

I could sit and manually create 80+ events per section that would show up on the correct days, but tedious is the word that comes to mind at best. 

Since Google Calendar doesn't really help with an A/B rotation, I wrote a program that takes our rotation into account and creates an ICS file that I import to Google Calendar.  So I can easily generate a CSV or an ICS file that would have all the events for the Calendar in Canvas. ICS seems like a good enough standard but really any method would work. 

I may look into the RestAPI but feel like this shouldn't be too hard to implement. Hoping I am just way out of date and there is a better way already 🙂

[Nick_Riches1]

I've already voted on this, but just to reiterate what an important feature this could be.  Students require timetables in an electronic format, and Canvas would be an ideal way to do this, but this is hampered by an inability to import ics files.

[dbrace]

With the release of Account Calendars (as referenced in Canvas Release Notes (2022-11-19) > Account Calendar) in Canvas, it would be very helpful to not have to do duplicate data entry (or create a new account/sub-account admin role(s) with limited permissions only for maintaining calendar entries) and instead use an ICS file/link from another source (e.g. Google Calendar).

Without the ability to import/feed a Canvas Account Calendar an ICS file/link, our institution will probably never use this feature because the administrative staff in our Academic Affairs office already maintains (creates, edits, and deletes events as needed) a calendar and this would be duplicate work.

[bgillies]

In light of the recent release of Account Calendars, it would be EXTREMELY helpful to be able to import an existing iCal into Canvas Calendar. Hopefully, more attention will be given to this request which appears to have started over 7 years ago.