Support

Bickford Sports Calendar puts every kid's every team in one calendar.

Paste each team's calendar link once; every parent sees the whole family's week, what changed, and who's driving.

No accounts: one family code, shared with a link.

Finding your link

Every team app shows parents a calendar link in three to five taps. The steps for each app are on one page: Where to find your team's calendar link. A team with no app works too: paste the schedule page's address, or copy the schedule as text and paste that.

Common problems

The code didn't work

A family code looks like ABCD-2345. Check it with whoever set up your family calendar; the usual mix-ups (an O for a 0, an S for a 5) are forgiven. If the family made a new code, the old one stopped working and every other phone was signed out: ask for the new one, or open the link they share from the Family screen.

A link stopped working

Every team's link is read when a parent opens the calendar. A link that fails is retried quietly for a day before the team's card says anything; after that you will see one of these lines, each with what to do next:

• That doesn't look like a calendar link. Paste the link from the team's app (tap "Where do I find my link?").
• That link points somewhere we can't read.
• The team's app says this link no longer exists. Copy a fresh one from the app.
• The team's app won't let us read this link. Log in to the app, copy the link again and paste it here.
• This link has expired. Copy a fresh one from the team's app.
• That's a web page, not a calendar link.
• We couldn't read that calendar. Send it with Report a problem and Bickford will look.
• That calendar is too large for us (over 2 MB).
• That link bounces around and never lands.
• The team's app didn't answer. Try again in a minute.
• We couldn't reach the team's app. Try again in a minute.
• The team's app is having trouble. We'll keep trying.

To put in a fresh link, open the team and tap "Fix the link". Nothing is removed on its own: the team keeps its events until a good read replaces them.

Times off by an hour

Some calendars publish their times without saying which time zone they are in. Open the Family screen and check the "Time zone" line first. If it is right, compare one event with the team's app and tell us with "Report a problem", ticking the box that includes the team's link, so we can fix the reading for everyone on that app.

A team that doesn't update

Each app publishes its changes on its own schedule, from a few minutes to about a day; the team's card says how long its app usually takes. "Check now" on the team's card reads the link at once. "Pause" stops reading a team you don't need for a while; its events stay.

I added the wrong team

Open the team and tap "Remove team". Its events and changes go for everyone in the family.

Your phone's calendar

The Family screen has a link that puts the whole family into your phone's calendar: every game and practice with the kid's name on it, a reminder the evening before and an hour before, and who's driving in the title. Apple and Google read that link on their own schedule, often hours later; the app itself is always current. Anyone with that link sees every kid's events, drivers and family notes, so make a new one from the Family screen if it gets out.

Alerts on your phone

"Alerts on this phone" on the Family screen sends an alert when a game or practice this week moves or is cancelled. Tap Turn on alerts, then Allow: a first alert comes at once, so you know it works. On iPhone (iOS 16.4 or later), alerts come to the calendar on your Home Screen: open this site in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, open the calendar from the new icon, type your family code (it's on the Family screen) and turn alerts on there. Each phone or computer turns alerts on for itself, and Turn off alerts stops them on that one.

Alerts cover every kind of team: one we read from its app or website (each is checked about every hour), a league's e-mail you pasted and paste again when the league sends a new one (Replace the schedule on the team), and a change you or the other parent type in. The phone or computer that made a change gets no alert for it; the others do. When a team takes five or more of its upcoming games and practices off at once, we wait about an hour to be sure it wasn't a glitch, then send one alert that says so.

Contact

Email derek@bickfordtechnologies.com. Bickford Sports Calendar, by Bickford Technologies.