See your Dispatch jobs in Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar
Your jobs live in Dispatch. Your day probably lives in whatever calendar is already on your phone. Here is how to get the first into the second, and what deliberately does not travel with it.
Last updated: August 2026
It is a one-way view, on purpose
Jobs flow out of Dispatch and into your calendar. Nothing flows back. If you drag the entry to Thursday in Google Calendar, Dispatch does not know and the job has not moved; you have only misled yourself.
That is a deliberate choice rather than a missing feature. A schedule that can be edited from two places is a schedule that disagrees with itself, and in a trades business the disagreement usually surfaces as two vans at one address. The office moves bookings in Dispatch; your calendar is where you read them.
So treat the calendar entry as a notification you can see a week out, not as the record. The record is the job.
Two ways to get your jobs across
You pick one or the other. They are mutually exclusive, so you will not end up with the same visit twice.
- Subscribe to a private feed link. Your calendar checks the link periodically and keeps itself up to date. Set it up once and it keeps working: new jobs appear on their own, without anyone sending you anything.
- Get an email invite for each job. A normal calendar invitation lands in your inbox when a job is booked, and you accept it like any other meeting. It arrives immediately, and it is a good fit if you would rather see each job land than have a calendar quietly fill itself.
The trade-off is refresh speed against permanence. Invites are immediate but arrive one at a time. A subscribed feed is continuous but refreshes on the calendar provider's own schedule, as described below.
How quickly things appear
This is the part worth understanding before you decide the feature is broken.
With a subscribed feed, your calendar provider decides how often to check the link, not Dispatch. Google is the slowest of the three and can take up to around 24 hours to pick up a change. Apple and Outlook generally refresh noticeably faster. None of them is instant.
Email invites do not have this problem: they arrive when the job is booked. If you need same-day certainty about a job added this morning, use invites, or simply open Dispatch: the app is always current, because it is the source.
A missing job is usually a refresh, not a fault. If a job booked an hour ago is not in your subscribed calendar yet, that is expected behaviour on Google in particular. Check the job in Dispatch to confirm it exists, and give the feed time to catch up.
What actually gets sent
Only two things leave Dispatch for your calendar provider: the job number and the site postcode.
Customer names, phone numbers and full addresses are never sent. Neither are notes, questionnaire answers or photographs. You open the job in Dispatch for any of that.
This is worth being clear about, because a calendar entry is one of the least private places a piece of information can sit. It syncs to phones, it can appear on a lock screen, and it lives on a third party's servers. A postcode gets you to the street; it does not tell anyone who lives there or what is wrong with their boiler. If you want the detail behind an entry, the app is one tap away, and that is the intended workflow rather than an inconvenience.
Our privacy policy sets out the same commitment in full.
Turning it on
Calendar syncing is off until you switch it on, and each engineer switches it on for themselves in their Dispatch settings. Nobody can turn it on for you, and enabling it for yourself does not enable it for anyone else on the team.
Once you have your private feed link from Dispatch, adding it is the standard subscribe flow for each provider:
Google Calendar (desktop web)
Subscribing to a feed is a desktop-web job in Google; the mobile apps do not offer it. Open Google Calendar in a browser, go to Settings, choose Add calendar and then From URL, paste the link and add it. It will then show up in the Google Calendar app on your phone too.
Apple Calendar (iPhone)
In the iOS Settings app, go to Calendar, then Accounts, Add Account and Other, and choose Add Subscribed Calendar. Paste the link and save.
Outlook (web)
In Outlook on the web, open Calendar, choose Add calendar, then Subscribe from web. Paste the link, give the calendar a name and add it.
If you chose email invites instead, there is nothing to set up beyond switching the option on. The invitations simply start arriving.
Turning it off
Switch it off the same way you switched it on, in your Dispatch settings. Separately, a business can turn calendar syncing off for everyone, which is the right control to reach for if a phone goes missing or someone leaves.
If you had subscribed to a feed, remember to remove the subscribed calendar in Google, Apple or Outlook as well, or a stale, empty calendar sits in your list looking like a live one.
Who this actually helps
Engineers who already live in a calendar, mostly. If your day is organised around one app and Dispatch is a second place to check, syncing removes the second place for the ninety per cent of moments when all you need is where and when.
It also helps the person who books the work, because “it is in your calendar” stops being a thing that needs saying. For the broader question of keeping a small team's week straight, see job scheduling for a small trades team.
Questions
Calendar sync FAQ
Does Dispatch sync with my calendar both ways?
No. It is a one-way view: jobs appear in your calendar, and the schedule is still managed in Dispatch. Moving or deleting the entry in Google, Apple or Outlook does not change the job, so always make changes in Dispatch itself.
What data is shared with Google, Apple or Microsoft?
Only the job number and the site postcode. Customer names, phone numbers and full addresses are never sent, and neither are notes, questionnaire answers or photographs. You open the job in Dispatch to see any of that.
How do I turn calendar syncing on or off?
It is off until you turn it on, and each engineer turns it on for themselves in their Dispatch settings. You switch it off the same way. A business can also switch calendar syncing off for everyone, which is the control to use if a device is lost or someone leaves.
Why has a new job not appeared in my calendar yet?
If you subscribed to a feed link, your calendar provider decides how often to check it. Google can take up to around 24 hours; Apple and Outlook are generally faster. Email invites arrive immediately instead, and Dispatch itself is always current because it is the source.
Can I choose both the feed link and email invites?
No, the two options are mutually exclusive, so you will not get the same job twice. Pick the feed if you want a calendar that keeps itself up to date, or invites if you would rather each job arrive as an invitation you accept.
Keep reading
More guides for trades and service businesses
Put your jobs where you already look
Calendar syncing is built in, off until you turn it on, and shares only a job number and a postcode.