Launching SchoolCal to Your Community

Access: School administrators with SchoolCal configuration permissions

Note: This guide should be reviewed after you have completed pilot testing and are ready to make SchoolCal available to your broader community.

Overview

This guide walks you through the final steps before launching SchoolCal to your faculty and students. It covers strategic rollout options to minimize sync issues and includes sample communication templates you can adapt to announce SchoolCal to your community.

How To Launch SchoolCal

1. Choose Your Launch Strategy

Select one of the following approaches based on your school's needs:

Option A: Limited Date Range Launch

Navigate to your SchoolCal flow settings
Use the Meeting Dates Filter to sync only a limited date range (e.g., first month or first few weeks)
After verifying the sync, gradually expand the date range

Option B: Limited Slice Launch

Use event-level and attendee-level filters to sync a subset of your community
Choose one or more filters:
- School levels event filter - sync one school level at a time
- Grade levels attendee filter - sync only teachers (select "Do not include any students as attendees") or specific grade levels
- Course types event filter - sync certain class types first
Once verified, expand filters to include remaining groups

2. Disable Pilot Mode

Navigate to your SchoolCal settings
Locate the pilot mode toggle
Disable pilot mode to begin syncing to your community

3. Communicate the Launch

Review the sample templates in the Additional Info section below
Customize the templates based on your chosen launch strategy and settings
Send communications to faculty and students before your launch date

Additional Info

Benefits of a Limited Date Range Launch:

Syncs complete more quickly, allowing faster verification
Ensures first class meetings appear immediately without waiting for large syncs
Reduces likelihood of hitting Google's 100,000 event creation limit
Provides flexibility to adjust event filters or templates with faster future syncs
Gives users time to adjust notification settings before additional events sync

Benefits of a Limited Slice Launch:

Faster initial sync with fewer events
Easier communication to smaller groups
Opportunity to identify issues before full rollout
Clearer messaging possible for final launch

Drawbacks of a Limited Slice Launch:

Events may appear differently than their final state (e.g., if teachers launch first without students, no students appear as attendees)
May require additional communication rounds when expanding to full community
Some benefits (like viewing full guest lists or student schedules) won't be immediately visible

Sample Launch Communication Templates

For Faculty:

Note: Review all highlighted sections and update based on your school's settings before sending.

Dear Faculty,

We are excited to announce that starting on [DATE], we will begin using SchoolCal, a tool that synchronizes your class schedule with Google Calendar. On that day you should see that academic classes* for which you are a teacher** appear automatically on your primary school Google calendar at the correct locations and times. Going forward, these events will be adjusted as changes occur. For those interested in additional details about the settings of SchoolCal-created events, details follow at the bottom of this email.

We hope that this will be a great help in keeping your schedule up to date and your free and busy times accurate on your primary school calendar. Since class schedules will be synced for all teachers and students, this should make scheduling meetings and finding common free time much easier for everyone at the school. Just check the person's availability in Google Calendar or use the "find a time" feature. By doing so, you will easily be able to establish convenient meeting times with teachers in your division or another. Students will be able to see when their teachers are free for extra help. Counselors and administrators will be able to find the least disruptive times to meet with one or more students.

You will not need to do anything to start this sync. However, prior to [DATE], we highly recommend that you adjust your Google Calendar notification settings. The default calendar notification setting in Google adds an event reminder 10 minutes before every event, so if you'd prefer not to be notified 10 minutes before the start of each class, you should choose one of two options:

Follow the instructions under "For all events" here to turn off notifications from Google Calendar entirely
Follow the instructions under "For specific calendars" here to remove the default notification 10 minutes prior to events on your primary school calendar (when instructed to click the calendar you want to change, choose the calendar with your name)

To begin with, we will sync only the first month of classes. A week later, we will sync the rest of the classes for the semester***. If classes do not appear on your primary calendar during that first week, or if you notice errors about how your classes are syncing, please reach out to [YOUR SCHOOL HELP EMAIL ADDRESS].

[INCLUDE YOUR SIGN OFF HERE]

Additional Details about SchoolCal-Created Events

When classes are added to your calendar, they will be added as individual calendar events with faculty and students in grades [GRADE RANGE] added as event attendees. All attendees will automatically be marked as attending and busy during the event. The event details and the guest list will be publicly viewable to all employees and students at the school****.

The events that SchoolCal creates should not be edited because updates may overwrite the event. If you would like to edit or add to the event, you should duplicate the event to your own calendar and edit the copy as desired.

SchoolCal-created events will appear the same color as your primary calendar. If desired, you can change the color of your primary calendar or the color of non-SchoolCal-created events (brief instructions here) instead.

*Add more types of classes as applicable based on your filters

**Add more faculty roles as applicable based on your filters

***Dependent on how you choose to launch, these statements may not be necessary, or they may need to include information about who should see events at what times

****Dependent on the settings selected within the event template

For Students:

Note: Review all highlighted sections and update based on your school's settings before sending.

Dear Students,

We are excited to announce that starting on [DATE], your class schedule will be synchronized with Google Calendar. On that day you should see that your academic classes* appear automatically on your school Google calendar at the correct locations and times. Going forward, these events will be adjusted as changes occur.

We hope that this will be a great help in keeping your Google calendar accurate. Since class schedules will also be synced with Google Calendar for teachers**, this will make scheduling meetings and finding common free time easier any time you are trying to meet with a teacher** or other students. Just check the person's availability in Google Calendar or use the "find a time" feature.

Before this sync begins on [DATE], we highly recommend that you adjust your Google Calendar notification settings. The default calendar notification setting in Google adds an event reminder 10 minutes before every event, so if you'd prefer not to be notified 10 minutes before the start of each class, you should choose one of two options:

Follow the instructions under "For all events" here to turn off notifications from Google Calendar entirely
Follow the instructions under "For specific calendars" here to remove the default notification 10 minutes prior to events on your primary school calendar (when instructed to click the calendar you want to change, choose the calendar with your name)

To begin with, we will sync only the first month of classes. A week later, we will sync the rest of the classes for the semester***. If classes do not appear on your calendar during that first week, or if you notice errors about how your classes are syncing, please reach out to [YOUR SCHOOL HELP EMAIL ADDRESS].