Syncing shifts to Google Calendar from 7shifts or Deputy
Both do it the same way — a one-way calendar feed URL you paste into Google. Here are the steps for each, why your changed shift still shows the old time, and the thing about that URL nobody reads until it matters.
You want your shifts to show up next to your dentist appointment. Both 7shifts and Deputy support this, both do it the same way, and the mechanism explains every complaint anyone has about it.
7shifts
Per their help centre (August 2026): open the Schedule tab, click the Tools icon, choose Calendar Sync, and filter to the location and department you want. Copy the generated calendar URL. Then in Google Calendar on the web, click + next to Other calendars, choose From URL, paste, and add.
Two things their documentation flags that are easy to miss: you cannot do this from the 7shifts mobile app — Google needs a browser or desktop for the "from URL" step — and birthdays and work anniversaries do not come across, only events someone created.
Deputy
Per their help centre (August 2026): in the Deputy web app click Copy Link to get your calendar URL, then in Google Calendar open Other calendars, click +, choose Add by URL, paste, and add. Same shape, same three clicks.
Deputy also exports a schedule as PDF, XLSX, CSV or JSON if what you actually wanted was the data rather than a live calendar.
What you just set up (and did not)
Neither of these is an integration in the sense of two systems talking. It is a subscribed iCal feed: a URL that returns a text file of events, which Google fetches on a schedule it decides. That has three consequences worth internalising.
It is one-way. Moving the event in Google Calendar does not move the shift. Deleting it does not drop the shift. You are looking at a copy.
It is late, and that is Google's doing. This is the complaint behind most "calendar sync not working" threads, and it is not a bug in either product. 7shifts' docs say the refresh "typically" runs every 2 to 12 hours. Deputy quotes Google's own figure: 8 to 24 hours. Neither vendor can push; Google pulls when Google feels like it, and it throttles feeds it decides are low-traffic.
The operational consequence is the important part: a calendar feed is not a notification channel. If you move tomorrow's shift and rely on the calendar to tell the person, you have not told them. Text them.
The URL is a credential. There is no login on a subscribed feed — anyone holding the link reads the schedule, forever, from anywhere. 7shifts is direct about this in their documentation: personal sync links are unique and must not be shared, and once a link is shared, "access cannot be revoked or removed from an external calendar application". Read that as it is meant: you cannot reach into someone else's Google account and pull your calendar back out. Nobody can, in any product. Which is exactly why the link should be treated like a password rather than like a URL.
The question to ask any scheduling tool
Given that the link is a credential and that you will eventually paste one into the wrong chat window, the question that matters is: can I kill this link?
For what it is worth, here is how we answer it, since it is the part we deliberately built rather than inherited. A Weekwright calendar link is a token that maps to exactly one person and to published weeks only — never a draft, never someone else's shifts. It is revocable from the dashboard or by asking the assistant, and once revoked the URL returns a flat 404 with no detail, so a killed link is indistinguishable from one that never existed. Feeds are rate-limited per token, which turns a leaked URL from a scrapeable data source into a dead end.
What we cannot fix is the refresh delay. Nobody can — it is Google's polling loop, and it applies to us exactly as it applies to 7shifts and Deputy. We send a 60-minute refresh hint and Google is free to ignore it. If someone needs to know about a change now, that is a notification, and it should be a notification.
Details on our side: the Google Calendar page — including what it does not do. If you are comparing rather than configuring: Weekwright vs 7shifts and vs Deputy. And if you want the events pushed to you instead of polled, the webhooks post covers the other direction.
Steps and figures for 7shifts and Deputy are from their published help centres, checked August 2026. Both vendors change their products without telling us; if something here has gone stale, their docs win — follow the links above.