Who this page is for
Your working schedule lives in a system you do not control: a school timetable and duty rota, or a hospital or practice rota and on-call list. It is usually a school- or employer-managed Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account. Your own life is on a separate calendar. This page covers keeping them in step, then the details for:
The problem
The two calendars never meet. The school books you for a parents’ evening on the night you have a standing commitment, or the rota puts you on call the weekend of an immovable family event, and the conversation to fix it happens far too late.
How Hetk helps
Connect your work account and your personal calendar, then sync each direction with the privacy it needs.
- Work → personal, full detail. A one-way sync copies your timetable, shifts and on-call periods onto your personal calendar, so your real availability is in the place you check on your phone.
- Personal → work, details replaced with “Busy”. A one-way sync reserves your personal commitments on the work calendar as “Busy”, with no title or detail. Whoever builds the timetable or the rota sees you are unavailable at 4 PM, not that it is a doctor’s appointment.
A common setup
| Sync | Direction | Privacy | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work calendar → Personal | One-way | None | Timetable, shifts and on-call land on the calendar you live in |
| Personal → Work calendar | One-way | Replace the details with “Busy” | Personal commitments block work time as “Busy”, no details shown |
What stays private
The Replace the details with “Busy” setting clears the title, description and location on the way to the work calendar, and Hetk never copies the guest list onto a synced event. A colleague sees a busy block, not what it is.
By kind of work
Teachers
Your timetable, parent evenings, staff meetings and duty rotas live in the school’s account; your appointments, your children’s pickups, a second job or an evening class live somewhere else. If a shared department calendar appears in your school account, you can sync it like any other, for example one-way onto your personal calendar.
Healthcare workers
Shifts, on-call rotas and clinic sessions change, often at short notice. Changes the work system makes sync onto your personal calendar automatically.
Hetk syncs calendar events and nothing else. It does not read or touch any clinical system, patient record or email. If an event title on your personal calendar contains anything sensitive, syncing it with Replace the details with “Busy” means that title never reaches the work system in readable form. If your employer needs a data processing agreement before you connect a work account, Hetk signs DPAs on request: email [email protected]. What Hetk stores and where is on the security page.
School- and employer-managed accounts
Schools, hospitals and practices often run Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 with admin restrictions, and some require an administrator to approve third-party apps. If you see “Need admin approval” when connecting, your IT admin can approve Hetk once for the whole organisation; see the admin consent guide. Your personal Google or Apple account is not restricted this way.
Pricing
The Personal plan ($15/year) covers up to 3 sync pairs; Professional ($50/year) covers up to 8. A sync pair is one link between two calendars. Both plans start with a 21-day free trial, no card required.
Frequently asked questions
Will the school or the rota team see my personal appointments?
Not when you sync personal → work with the Replace the details with “Busy” setting. They see only that you are busy at that time, not what for.
Does Hetk touch any patient or clinical data?
No. Hetk only reads and writes calendar events on the accounts you connect. It has no access to clinical systems, records or mail.
What if I move schools or change jobs?
Remove the old work account’s syncs in Hetk, connect the new account, and set the syncs up again.
How fast does a change reach my other calendars?
Changes in Google Calendar and Outlook usually arrive within seconds, through push notifications. A safety check runs every 15 minutes in case a notification is missed. Apple iCloud has no push. Hetk checks iCloud every 5 minutes, and less often for a calendar that has been quiet.
See also
Keeping work and personal calendars separate | Microsoft admin consent guide | Use cases