Connect Google Calendar: reminders where your team already looks

How do I connect Google Calendar?

Each person connects their own calendar, in Settings, under My Calendar. Anyone on your team can do it, care partners included, with their normal sign-in; FlockConnect does not ask for a second step here.

When you click connect, FlockConnect sends you to Google's own consent screen. You sign in with Google, on Google's site, and review what is being requested before you approve it. Your Google password never passes through FlockConnect. After you approve, Google sends you back to the page you started from, which shows the connection status.

• Each person connects and disconnects their own calendar, from Settings, under My Calendar, with their normal sign-in.
• You approve the connection on Google's own consent screen; your Google password never passes through FlockConnect.
• Writes only approved reminders and your own bookings, with generic text and a secure link, never pastoral details.
• Reads your list of calendars for the destination picker, whether the calendar you connected shows you as busy, and the reminders it wrote there; what your other events say is never opened or imported.
• Writes only to the personal destination calendar of the person a reminder or booking is assigned to, verified for write access before use, and never to a shared church or team calendar.
• Disconnecting clears the stored credential immediately and pauses your destinations until you reconnect.

What does FlockConnect write to my calendar?

Follow-up reminders a person has approved, and bookings made with you. FlockConnect drafts a reminder, you approve it, and the approved reminder becomes a calendar event; a booking goes on your calendar when it is made, because you turned on booking. The event text is generic and localized: a title reads something like "FlockConnect follow-up" or "Care team reminder," and the description is a short line with a secure link back into FlockConnect, where the real context lives behind a sign-in.

No names of who is being cared for, no notes, no prayer details, and no assessment answers appear in the event. There is one other small write: when you add a destination calendar, FlockConnect proves it can actually write there by creating a tiny private placeholder event and removing it right away. If you ever catch a glimpse of one, it is safe to ignore.

FlockConnect also updates or clears the reminder events it created when a follow-up changes or is completed, so stale reminders do not pile up on anyone's week. It never touches events it did not create.

What does FlockConnect read from Google?

The consent screen asks Google for three things. The first is permission to manage calendar events, which FlockConnect uses to create, update, and clear the reminders it wrote, and to re-read the reminder events FlockConnect itself created, so it can tell when one has been moved or deleted on your calendar. The second is permission to see your list of calendars, which FlockConnect uses to show your calendars by name when you pick a destination. The third is permission to see your availability, which FlockConnect uses to read whether the calendar you connected shows you as busy, so your own availability can be checked for follow-ups and bookings. For your availability it reads busy blocks only, stretches of time marked busy: no titles, no attendees, no descriptions.

That is the whole read path. FlockConnect never opens, imports, stores, or analyzes what your events say, and outside its own reminders it never reads an event at all. Your appointments stay yours; only whether a stretch of time is busy reaches FlockConnect.

If you are on the care team, who sees that busy summary follows your role. A care coordinator, meaning an owner or a church leader with care access, always sees the day summary for everyone on the care team, including yours. The sharing setting on your calendar page is narrower than that: an owner or church leader uses it to let care partners see their days too. A care partner has no such setting, because there is no one below a care partner to share a day summary with.

Which calendar does a reminder land on?

A destination is the calendar a reminder lands on, and it is always personal: one person's own Google calendar, added for themselves. A reminder goes only to the destination of the person it is assigned to, and FlockConnect does not write to shared church or team calendars. If that person has no destination, no calendar event is written, and the follow-up stays in FlockConnect.

When you add a destination, FlockConnect verifies it can write there. If it cannot, the destination is switched off and never used, and the Add destination dialog says so. If a saved calendar later stops accepting reminders, an owner or church leader sees it in Integration Health, in Settings, under Integrations. Choose a calendar only you use as your destination: the event text is generic, but anyone who can see that calendar sees the reminder titles.

How do I disconnect, and what happens then?

Disconnect from the same card where you connected. The stored Google credential is cleared immediately, so FlockConnect can no longer write to, update, or clear anything on your calendar.

Your destination settings are kept but paused, so reconnecting later restores them without rebuilding. Reminder events already on the calendar stay there; since FlockConnect can no longer clear them after a disconnect, remove any leftovers by hand if you want them gone. And if your church ever deletes its FlockConnect account entirely, the deletion process revokes the Google credential FlockConnect held as one of its steps.

How is the calendar credential handled?

FlockConnect keeps the Google credential on the server only. It is never sent to your browser, and it is never included in workspace exports. The connection uses OAuth, the standard way to grant an app limited access without sharing your password, and you can withdraw that access at any time by disconnecting.

How integration credentials are protected at rest, and how every connected service is held to the same bar, is covered on our Trust and Security page.