Calendar

The Calendar pulls together everything date-related in ORCA and shows it on a single view. To-dos, logged meetings, communication follow-ups, and standalone events all appear in one place, colour-coded by type.

Open it from the Calendar entry in the main navigation.

If you do not see Calendar in your navigation, it has not been enabled for your account. An Admin user can request it be turned on by contacting your ORCA account manager.

What Appears on the Calendar

The calendar merges four sources of date information across your account:

To-dos appear as all-day events on their due date. A completed to-do is shown with a strikethrough title and muted colour so it stays visible without drawing attention. See Assignable To-Dos for how to create and manage them.

Meetings are logged interactions (calls, visits, sessions) with a date. If a time was recorded, they appear as timed blocks; without a time, they show as all-day events. See Meetings for the full picture.

Communication follow-ups appear when a logged communication has a follow-up date set. They are scoped to the user they were assigned to. See Communications for details.

Events are standalone calendar entries created directly in the calendar or from a record. They have a type, optional location, notes, assignees, and can be linked back to a specific record. These are covered in more detail below.

Views

Use the view dropdown in the toolbar to switch between:

• Week (default) - a timed grid, one column per day, showing events as blocks at the correct time
• Day - the same grid zoomed into a single day
• Month - a monthly overview; events appear as colour-coded pills
• List - a compact chronological list, useful on mobile or for a quick agenda scan

Use the Prev, Today, and Next buttons to navigate between periods. The calendar defaults to List Week view on small screens.

Filters

Click the Filters button in the toolbar to open the filter panel. When any filter is active, the button shows a count of how many, and hovering it tells you that some events are being hidden.

Event categories - toggle To-dos, Comms follow-ups, and Events on or off. Useful if you want to focus on one type without the others getting in the way.

Event types - if your account has custom event types set up (see below), each type appears here with its colour swatch. Tick and untick to show or hide specific types. Use "Show all" to reset, or "Select all" to tick everything.

Assignees - filter the calendar down to one or more team members. All users on the account are listed. Use "Show all" to clear the filter.

Reset filters clears the lot in one click. It sits in the filter panel and greys out when nothing is filtered, so it doubles as a way of checking.

Filter settings are saved per browser and they do not expire. They survive reloads, logouts, and new sessions, which is handy right up until it isn't: an assignee left ticked last week keeps hiding events this week. If the calendar looks emptier than it should, the filter count on the toolbar button is the first thing to check.

Adding an Event

Click Add Event in the top-right of the toolbar to open the new event form. You can also click or drag on the calendar grid itself to open the form with the date and time pre-filled.

Fill in:

• Title - required
• Type - pick from your account's event types (see below)
• Start and end date/time - or tick All day to remove the time fields
• Location - free text; used for directions in the event detail
• Notes - any context you want attached to the event
• Assignees - one or more team members

Save to add the event to the calendar immediately.

Putting a Booking Into Your Pipeline

An appointment booked straight into the calendar used to stop at the calendar. The Pipeline box on the event form gives it a route into your pipeline section, either by attaching it to a record you already have or by creating one.

The box shows "Not in the pipeline" until you do one of two things:

Attach an existing record. Start typing in the search box and pick from the results. The event and the record are linked both ways, so the appointment shows on the record and the record shows in the event detail. Use Unlink to detach it again, which leaves the record alone and only removes the link.

Create a new lead from this booking. Tick the box and ORCA raises a record when you save. The new lead gets:

• The event title as the record title
• The contact on the event, written to the section's contact field
• Your default open status, if you have one configured
• The rep, taken from whoever the appointment is assigned to
• The date of the booking, stamped on the section's date field

This needs a section to put leads in. In Settings > General, under the sales pipeline block, set Calendar bookings create leads in. It defaults to "same as the pipeline section above", so most accounts only need to set the Pipeline section and leave this alone. Leave both blank and the option is switched off.

Where the rep and the date go

ORCA works both out on its own where your section makes the answer obvious. If there's exactly one person field on the section, the rep goes there. If your account runs an escalation clock, the booking date goes on whichever field that clock counts from.

Where the answer isn't obvious, ORCA asks rather than guesses. Two optional settings sit in the same block:

• Put the rep in - which person field holds the lead's owner. Only needed if the section has more than one.
• Stamp the booking date on - which date field records that the booking happened.

Both are worth setting if you're offered them. A lead with no owner belongs to nobody and won't show up for anyone filtering by their own name. A lead with no date is worse: the escalation clock reads an empty date field as never contacted, so a booking made for next Tuesday would escalate as a neglected lead on the first overnight run, which teaches everyone to ignore the clock.

If a section is missing one of these fields, the rest of the lead is still created. A partly filled lead in the pipeline beats an error thrown at somebody standing in a customer's kitchen.

Event Types and Colours

Events are colour-coded by type. Types are managed in Settings > Picklists - look for the picklist with the calendar category. Each option gets a background colour, text colour, and border colour that carry through to the calendar display.

Setting a default type means it is pre-selected in the new event form, saving a step for your most common event category.

Linking Events to Records

Events can be linked to a custom section record, so a visit or appointment sits directly against the relevant entry in your pipeline or project tracker.

To create a linked event from a record, open the record's show page and use the Add Event action. The event form opens pre-linked to that record. Once saved, the event appears on the calendar and the record detail shows the appointment.

When you open the event on the calendar, the detail panel shows:

• The linked record title, with a direct link to open it
• The contact associated with the record: name, email, and phone
• The contact's address, formatted and tappable as a maps link
• A Street View preview of the address (where coordinates are available)
• Quick-action buttons to email, call, or get directions (Google Maps and Apple Maps)

This makes the calendar useful as a day-planner for field teams: everything needed before a visit is in the event itself.

See Working with Records for more on records.

Partner Portal Bookings

When a partner submits a lead via the Partner Portal and the Sales tool is active on your account, they can book an appointment slot at the same time as submitting the lead. That booking lands directly on the calendar as a linked event.

The Partner Portal checks real-time slot availability against existing calendar events, so the same slot cannot be double-booked. Once the lead is submitted, the event appears on the calendar already linked to the new record, with no manual diary work needed on your side.

See Partner Portal for how to set up and configure feeds.

Rescheduling by Dragging

Events can be dragged to a new date or time directly on the calendar. Drop the event in the new slot and the change saves immediately. This works across all four event types in the week and day views.

In month view, dragging moves the event to a different day. In the time grid views, you can also resize a timed event by dragging its bottom edge to adjust the end time.

Your Calendar in Apple, Google, or Outlook

You can subscribe to your ORCA schedule from the calendar app you already live in. The feed includes calendar events you created or are assigned to, plus your to-dos with due dates (shown as all-day entries).

1. Go to your Profile page (click your avatar, then Profile) and find the Calendar Feed section.
2. Click Generate feed address and copy the URL.
3. Subscribe from your calendar app. In Apple Calendar: File → New Calendar Subscription. In Google Calendar: Other calendars → From URL. In Outlook: Add calendar → Subscribe from web.

Treat the address like a password: anyone who has it can read your schedule. If it leaks, click Regenerate address, which invalidates the old one immediately, or Disable feed to switch it off entirely.

One thing to know about subscribed calendars: the calendar app decides how often to refresh, and some (Google especially) only check every few hours. Changes in ORCA appear on the next refresh, not instantly.

Meeting Invites by Email

A subscribed feed is read-only, and some tools cannot see it at all. Outlook treats it as an "Other calendar", which means scheduling tools that read your Outlook diary, Calendly among them, do not know your ORCA appointments exist and will happily book over them.

Meeting invites solve that. When an appointment is created with an assignee, that person gets a real meeting invite by email, the same kind a colleague would send. Accept it and the appointment is written into your actual calendar, where everything that reads your diary can see it.

Invites are sent when an appointment is created:

• from a record, using the Add Event action on the record page
• by a partner booking a slot through the Partner Portal
• through the ORCA API

Events created directly on the calendar with the Add Event button in the toolbar do not send an invite. Neither does the subscribed feed, which continues to work as described above and is a good way to see everything at a glance.

Two things worth knowing:

• The invite is sent when the appointment is created. Changing the time later, or deleting the appointment, does not currently send an update or a cancellation, so tell the attendee yourself if something moves.
• No assignee means no invite, since there is nobody to send it to. If invites are not arriving, that is the first thing to check.

Confirming the Booking to the Customer

Everything above sends to your team. The customer who booked the appointment gets a thank-you page and then, historically, nothing at all: no reminder, no address, nobody's name, and nothing to put in their own diary.

Switch on Email the customer when an appointment is booked in Settings > General and they get a confirmation instead. It covers the time, the place, and who is coming, with a calendar file attached so it drops into their diary in one click.

It is off until you turn it on, and deliberately so. This is the one setting in that block that writes to your customers rather than to your team, and sending email on your behalf is your decision to make, not ours.

Once it is on, it sends on every route that produces a booking: an appointment made in the calendar, a slot booked through the Partner Portal, or anything created through the API. It also sends when the booking has no rep attached yet, which is exactly the case where nobody has been in touch.

A few details worth knowing:

• The customer's copy has no Accept or Decline buttons. It drops into their calendar without asking them to RSVP, which keeps replies from bouncing around your inbox. The rep's invite is unchanged and still asks for a response.
• Replies go to the rep on the job, not to your shared inbox. Somebody replying to a confirmation is nearly always replying about that appointment, and the person who can move it is the one going.
• It comes from your account's own email address where you have one set under Communications, so the confirmation arrives from you rather than from ORCA.
• Internal notes are not included. Notes on an event are written by your team for your team, and they stay that way.

Related

• Assignable To-Dos - create and assign tasks that appear as all-day events
• Meetings - log interactions that appear as timed calendar events
• Communications - set follow-up dates on communications
• Working with Records - link calendar events to section records
• The Hot List - find the leads behind those bookings that have gone quiet
• Partner Portal - partner bookings that feed into the calendar automatically