What is the right way to calendar?
February 1, 2017 9:07 AM   Subscribe

I have an Outlook work calendar that I cannot share to external devices. I also use 3 personal calendars and reminders from G-Suite. I currently view my personal calendars in my personal phone and in always-open Chrome tabs, but if I forget to check Outlook beforehand I can and will book personal things overlapping work things I should not miss. I just got a work iPhone with my work calendar working there, so after I add my personal stuff, it will be the hub for my calendaring. Before that I want advice from the hive mind:

Should I just add my personal google account to the work iPhone? Share all my personal calendars with my work address? Use an app? I know how to setup all of the above but would love to hear suggestions for best practices and to make sure my personal stuff will continue to be available to me and not to the company if (when) I leave.
posted by fjom to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)
 
I put everything on my work calendar, which is a Google Calendar that is set to default to share busy/available only. I gave up on trying to get multiple calendars to work for me. This does mean I lose all my calendar history anytime I change jobs, but I can't say I've ever really needed to look at my calendar from 3 years ago.
posted by COD at 9:34 AM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I'm in a similar situation. Best I've managed is to get the calendar feed URL from Google Calendar and then add it as an internet calendar in Outlook. That'll give you read only access to your personal calendar on your work PC.

You need to be running a version of Outlook later than 2003 though.

When you get your iPhone, you can add Google Calendar as you would normally. Now you'll have read/write on your phone and read only on Outlook.
posted by mr_silver at 10:09 AM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Maybe not helpful, but I separate my calendars by hours. If it's during work hours, it goes on my work calendar. If it's personal, it's marked as private. If it's during home hours, it goes on my personal calendar. Basically, my work calendar is for the time I'm *at* work.

My phone has both. Neither my work calendar itself (Outlook) or my home calendar (Google) has the other. Works 100% fine for me, but maybe it's because I don't do a ton of personal stuff at work, or vice versa?
posted by cnc at 3:26 PM on February 1, 2017


Best answer: Ah, cnc, if only I had regular business and personal hours...

I don't know if you aren't able or if you aren't allowed to share your Outlook calendar. My solution was to sync them all on the calendar app on my android tablet (a personal & freelance Google calendar, job 1 Google calendar and job 2 outlook). It's not quite working though. At job 1 I kept forgetting to check on my tablet (Google calendar so easy to see my personal google calendar at the same time), so now I invite my personal Google calendar to all my job 2 appointments when I put them in outlook. It's annoying, it's work to remember to do this, and I don't think there's a way to hide it from co workers, but it's been 46 days since the last schedule clash!

I wish I had better solutions.
posted by Helga-woo at 4:20 PM on February 1, 2017


Golly, you could pay for a calendar app like Fantastical which consolidates, iCal, gcal, and Outlook. I would have told you Sunrise but they got bought by Microsoft to their detriment. There are other calendar consolidators for iOS so take a look in the App Store.
posted by jadepearl at 4:50 PM on February 1, 2017


I use Fantastical on my iPhone and it shows both my work (Outlook) and personal (Google) calendars - I like it a lot. However when I'm on my work Mac, I use Google calendar in a browser tab and Outlook for work... so that part isn't ideal Fantastical does have a Mac app, but I haven't tried it yet.
posted by jdl at 5:23 PM on February 1, 2017


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