Calendar / CalDAV

Calendar server settings

The calendar server can be configured on the Groupware admin settings page. You can globally disable sending invitation emails for events, generating the built-in birthday calendar, and sending email notifications about upcoming events.

New in version 30: The section will be hidden if no app makes use of the CalDAV backend.

Starting from Nextcloud 30, the calendar server settings section will be hidden if no app uses the CalDAV backend. Install and enable an appropriate app to show the section again, e.g. Calendar or Tasks.

Events

You can customize the events user interface.

Hide export buttons

By default users can export their calendar data from the editor and the sidebar. Admins can disable this feature:

php occ config:app:set calendar hideEventExport --value=yes

Invitations

Nextcloud can send invitations for event attendees if this option is activated. Be sure to have configured the email server first so that the invitations go through. See Email.

You must also make sure the “Send invitations to attendees” setting is activated in the admin setting groupware section for the emails to be sent.

Birthday calendar

Contacts that have a birthday date filled are automatically added as events to a special Birthday calendar. If you deactivate this option, all users will no longer have this calendar.

When activating this option, users birthday calendars won’t be available right away because they need to be generated by a background task. See Using the occ command section DAV commands.

Reminder notifications

Nextcloud handles sending notifications for events.

Nextcloud currently handles two types of reminder notifications: Built-in Nextcloud notifications and email notifications. For the emails to be send, you’ll need a configured email server. See Email.

Make sure the “Send notifications for events” and the “Enable notifications for events via push” are activated in the admin setting groupware section for this feature to work.

Background jobs

Running background jobs can be an expensive task when there are a large number of events, reminders, event sharees and attendees. However, this needs to happen often enough so that the notifications are sent on time. To accomplish this you should use a dedicated occ command that runs more often than the standard cron system:

# crontab -u www-data -e
*/5 * * * * php -f /var/www/nextcloud/occ dav:send-event-reminders

See Using the occ command section Dav commands.

You’ll also need to change the sending mode from background-job to occ:

php occ config:app:set dav sendEventRemindersMode --value occ

If you don’t use this dedicated command, the reminders will just be sent as soon as possible when the background jobs run.

Event alarm types

Nextcloud allows users to set notification and email reminders for events. Admins can enforce one of the two options:

occ config:app:set calendar forceEventAlarmType --value=EMAIL

Allowed values are EMAIL (email) and DISPLAY (notification).

Note

This only enforces alarm types for events created with the Nextcloud Calendar. This setting has no influence for other connected applications.

FreeBusy

When logged-in, Nextcloud can return FreeBusy information for all users of the instance, to know when they are available so that you can schedule an event at the right time. If you don’t wish for users to have this capability, you can disable FreeBusy for the whole instance with the following setting:

php occ config:app:set dav disableFreeBusy --value yes

Subscriptions

Custom public calendars

In addition to the public holiday calendars, it is possible to define your own calendar. They act in the same way as the holiday calendars and can be configured with the following command:

php occ config:app:set calendar publicCalendars --value '[{"name":"My custom calendar","source":"http://example.com/example.ics"}]'

The setting is specified as a JSON array of objects with the following options:

name - name of the calendar in the listing
source - URL of the calendar’s ICS file
displayName - optional, to overwrite the name of the subscribed calendar
description - optional, description in the listing
authors - optional, copyrights and so on

Refresh rate

Calendar subscriptions are cached on server and refreshed periodically. The default refresh rate is one week, unless the subscription itself tells otherwise.

To set up a different default refresh rate, change the calendarSubscriptionRefreshRate option:

php occ config:app:set dav calendarSubscriptionRefreshRate --value "P1D"

Where the value is a DateInterval, for instance with the above command all of the Nextcloud instance’s calendars would be refreshed every day.

Allow subscriptions on local network

Because of security issues, Nextcloud forbids subscriptions from local network hosts. If you need to allow this, change the following parameter to:

php occ config:app:set dav webcalAllowLocalAccess --value yes

Trash bin

Nextcloud supports a calendar, events and tasks trash bin.

The default delay before objects are purged from the trash bin is 30 days. A background job runs every 6 hours to clean up expired objects.

To set up a different retention period, change the calendarRetentionObligation option:

php occ config:app:set dav calendarRetentionObligation --value=2592000

Where the value is the number of seconds for the period. Setting the value to 0 disables the trash bin.

Resources and rooms

The Nextcloud CalDAV backend supports resources and rooms. Resources and rooms can be booked for appointments, and the system will schedule them so they can only be used once at a time. Those resources and rooms have to be provided by an app that provides a backend for this.

Once a backend app is installed, the app typically allows admins, or even users, to define the resources, but this is subject of the specific implementation.

Nextcloud periodically queries all registered backends, therefore new/updated resources and rooms will show with a delay.

Known backends

Calendar Resource Management: database backend with CLI configuration for admins

Rate limits

Nextcloud rate limits the creation of calendars and subscriptions if too many items are created within a short time frame. The default is 10 calendars or subscriptions per hour. This can be customized as follows:

# Set limit to 15 items per 30 minutes
php occ config:app:set dav rateLimitCalendarCreation --type=integer --value=15
php occ config:app:set dav rateLimitPeriodCalendarCreation --type=integer --value=1800

Additionally, the maximum number of calendars and subscriptions a user may create is limited to 30 items. This can be customized too:

# Allow users to create 50 calendars/subscriptions
php occ config:app:set dav maximumCalendarsSubscriptions --type=integer --value=50

or:

# Allow users to create calendars/subscriptions without restriction
php occ config:app:set dav maximumCalendarsSubscriptions --type=integer --value=-1