Share booking availability from Google Cal while keeping details hidden

If you manage room or space bookings, you may have some information on the booking calendar that you do not want to share with the public. For example, you may include contact information for people who have booked a room. That's important information for staff members to have, so they can manage the bookings. However, it shouldn't be shared any further. 

This scenario creates a challenge if you'd like to show which rooms are available so people can check the dates before they make a booking request. How do you share room availability without also sharing the confidential details on the calendar? 

Google Calendar doesn't provide the needed options to set up sharing with this kind of confidentiality. But you can use Teamup to set it up, so you get a customized feed from Google with information hidden to protect confidentiality. 

Here's how:

1. Create a Teamup calendar. 
2. Set up iCalendar feed(s) from your booking calendar (i.e. Google calendar) to the Teamup calendar. 
3. Create a secure shareable link to the Teamup calendar. 
   • In the link, include all the feeds from the booking calendar and set the permission to read-only, no details. 

The resulting view from the secure shareable link will show the events with their assigned sub-calendar (feed) name, but with all event details hidden. The event title will show as Reserved. 

Alternately, if you want people to be able to see the event title, you can use this approach:

1. In the Teamup calendar, deactivate any fields which contain information you do not want shared publicly. 
2. Create a read-only link to the Teamup calendar, and embed it in a website.

The events from the booking calendar will feed into the Teamup calendar. But the information in any deactivated fields (e.g. name, phone number, description) will not "carry through" into the Teamup view. 

Note: In most cases, a special purpose calendar like this could be free (Basic subscription). A paid subscription would allow for more frequent feed refreshing.