Digital Law Lab CourtSA Calendar User Guide Request Invite Sign in

Getting started with CourtSA Calendar

A step-by-step guide for new users. Once you're set up, your hearing dates will appear automatically in your Outlook calendar.

Contents

  1. Sign in with your magic link
  2. Configure your settings
  3. Run your first scrape
  4. Reading the run log
  5. Connect to Outlook

1 Sign in with your code

CourtSA Calendar uses sign-in codes — there is no password to remember. To sign in, go to the site and enter your email address. A 6-digit code will be sent to your inbox. Enter that code on the next screen and you're in.

When you were first invited you would have received a welcome email with a code. If that code has expired (codes last 15 minutes), simply go to the sign-in page, enter your email, and request a fresh one.

2 Configure your settings

After your first sign-in you will be taken to the Settings page. Fill in each field as described below, then click Save settings.

FieldWhat to enter
CourtSA username Your CourtSA login email address.
CourtSA password Your CourtSA password. It is encrypted before being stored — it is never saved in plain text. Leave blank on future visits to keep the existing password.
Calendar name The display name for your calendar in Outlook and Thunderbird. "Court Hearings" is the default — change it if you prefer something else.
Max pages to scan Leave this at 0 (no limit). This tells the scraper to scan every page of your cases list. A full scan can take several hours for firms with a large caseload — this is normal. Setting a limit (e.g. 5) restricts the scan to that many pages, which is useful for testing.
Run every (hours) How often the scraper runs automatically. 24 hours is the default and is recommended for most firms. You can reduce this if you need more frequent updates, but bear in mind each run takes several hours to complete.
Don't forget to click Save settings at the bottom of the page once everything is filled in.

3 Run your first scrape

After saving your settings, go to the Status page (top navigation). Click Run now to start your first scrape immediately.

The scraper will log in to CourtSA and work through your cases page by page, looking for upcoming hearings. For a full scan this will take some time — progress is shown in real time in the Log section below the buttons.

Once the run finishes the Status card will update with the number of cases checked and future hearings found.

After the first run, scrapes happen automatically on the schedule you configured. You can always trigger a manual run at any time by clicking Run now.

You can click Stop at any time to halt a run in progress. The scraper will finish the current case and then stop — it will not abort mid-request.

4 Reading the run log

The Log panel on the Status page shows a live feed of scraper activity. Each line is colour-coded:

[OK] Logged in to CourtSA
[OK] Page 1: 10 cases found
[--] Smith v Jones — no future hearings
[WATCH] Brown v State — 3 Jun 2025 09:30 AM, District Court
[WARN] Unknown court code "SAET" — using raw code
[ERROR] Login failed — check your credentials
[SKIP] Page 4 — no cases found, stopping
TagMeaning
[OK]Everything worked as expected.
[WATCH]A future hearing was found and added to your calendar.
[--]A case was checked but had no future hearings — nothing to add.
[WARN]Something unexpected but non-fatal, e.g. an unrecognised court code.
[SKIP]A page or case was skipped (e.g. no cases found on a page, scan complete).
[ERROR]Something went wrong. The most common cause is incorrect credentials.
[RETRY]A request failed and is being retried automatically.
If you experience any problems, use the Copy log button to copy all log messages to your clipboard and paste them into an email to mark@digitallawlab.org.
The log is held in memory only. It is cleared at the start of each new run and does not persist if the server restarts. If you need to capture a log for troubleshooting, use Copy log before the next run begins.

5 Connect to Outlook

Once your first scrape has completed, your private calendar URL will appear on the Status page under Calendar subscription URL. This URL gives access to your hearing calendar — keep it private.

Adding the calendar in Outlook

Classic Outlook limitation: The New button under Internet Calendars is greyed out in Classic Outlook when using a Microsoft 365 account. You must subscribe via Outlook Web Access (OWA) instead — the calendar will then appear automatically in Classic Outlook.
  1. Go to outlook.office.com and sign in with your Microsoft 365 account.
  2. Open Calendar from the left sidebar.
  3. Click Add calendar (top of the page or left panel).
  4. Select Subscribe from web.
  5. Paste your subscription URL from the CourtSA Calendar Status page into the URL field.
  6. Give the calendar a name (e.g. Court Hearings) and click Import.

The calendar will appear in Outlook Web Access immediately and will sync to Classic Outlook within a few minutes. Outlook refreshes the feed automatically — typically every few hours.

Regenerating your URL

If you believe your calendar URL has been shared with someone who should not have it, click Regenerate URL on the Status page. This instantly invalidates the old URL and generates a new one. You will need to update your Outlook subscription with the new URL.