How can I sync free/busy data between my multiple calendars?

February 6, 2013 10:06 AM

I have several different calendar accounts that I use on my iPhone, 1 personal Google Calendar, an Exchange account for my primary job, and another GCal that my part time job uses to dispatch technician jobs to me. My part time job uses this calendar to schedule calls, so as it stands now I have to manually block out anything that I schedule on my other calendars so that they don't double book me. How can I create a setup where if I enter something on one of my calendars it will mark me as busy during that time? I don't want to have to create every event 3 times, and I don't want full synchronization as I don't want personal details and business information where other people can see it.
posted by daHIFI to Technology (2 answers total)

I just came to post the same question. Here is what I know so far:

1. Google discontinued Google Sync for everyone but institutional customers

2. Google wants people to use Caldav. Caldav is a way for Google calendar to broadcast events, much like an RSS feed (they are analogous). As such, Outlook could conceivable read google calendar events but not sync, so far as I know

3. Outlook is capable of syncing directly with Ical on my macbook.

Given these restraints, I think what *might* work is to do the following:

a. Put your appointment on Ical

b. Use Icloud to sync that with every version of Ical that you have on various machines

c. Have Outlook set up to auto-sync with Ical

d. Use this to make sure that Ical is also synchronized with your google calendars.

I have about 20 percent confidence that this will work. I'm hoping that someon else stumbles across this and points out a more elegant solution.
posted by mecran01 at 11:21 AM on February 8, 2013

And I just came across this:

Note Outlook does not currently support CalDAV or CardDAV. This means that it is not possible to synchronize your iCloud calendar or contacts with Outlook for Mac. However, Outlook does support iCloud Mail. For more information, see Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 compatibility with Apple iCloud

So it looks like a third-party CalDav solution may be the answer. It would seem the end user is caught between two feuding corporations.
posted by mecran01 at 11:53 AM on February 8, 2013