Sharing Calendars

[jbischke]

I'm looking to figure out a shared calendar solution for our business. Here's the background:

I'm running Outlook and pretty tied to it (for a number of reasons ). My business partner uses a Mac and is running iCal and synching with Google Calendar. I have two things I'd like to do:

#1 - Synch Outlook and Google Calendar. I tried three programs (GSyncIt, Calgoo, SyncMyCal) and couldn't get any of them to work. Any suggestions for other things that might work?

#2 - Merge my calendar with my biz partner's to produce a joint public calendar. I love that Google allows you to publish your calendar. If possible I'd like to take this a step further and merge our calendars so we have a single URL we can send someone and say "Here's our schedule, pick a time when we're open for the call/meeting." The busy times on the calendar would be times when either of us are busy.

I'm not sure if #2 is possible yet but would be a huge help.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[pam123]

First question :
Can't get any of them to work?
Why
You just bombed out of 3 otherwise solid programs and you don't give us any clues as to what happened.

Question two .
Don't know but do you want an appointments calendar or the equivalent of a hall sign up sheet?

[jbischke]

Good questions. Sorry for not being more specific.

As for the calendar apps here was my experience:

SyncMyCal installed fine but I couldn't figure out how to get it to sync. So it wasn't so much a case of it not working but rather me looking for something that was more user-friendly.

GSyncIt produced an error message ("DateTime" something or other). I searched the Web and found that a number of people were having that and also that many people were reporting numerous difficulties getting it to work.

Calgoo installed fine but didn't sync (no error messages, just nothing happening when I went to sync). I also would prefer not to have something which introduces a third calendar into the equation (rather just looking for an app to sync Google Calendar and Outlook).

In terms of #2 I'd like something that looks at my Google Calendar and my partner's calendar and says "If X or Y is busy then indicate busy...otherwise indicate free." In other words, a public URL I can give to someone that will show available slots when only both me and my biz partners are free. They don't necessarily need to be able to edit this...just notify us when they want to set up the call/meeting for.

[pam123]

You need to do one thing now, get the calendar established with your partner, anything else can wait.
You got farthest with SyncMyCal, go back to that one.
This is a "one thing at a time " till it's set-up for you.

[Mac Medic]

I thought that Google calendar was a one way street, ie you can subscribe to the calendar in outlook/ical but any changes to the calendar had to be made on google. If you add appointments in ical as far as I know they cannot be pushed to google. Is that correct Pam?

[glc]

Have you looked at the Yahoo calendar?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by Mac Medic I thought that Google calendar was a one way street, ie you can subscribe to the calendar in outlook/ical but any changes to the calendar had to be made on google. If you add appointments in ical as far as I know they cannot be pushed to google. Is that correct Pam?

No, just lately the "sync" is supposed to have changed that.
How well it works may be another matter and until jbishke reports back with the errors that are turning up we won't be able to tell.
I've never tried out the Yahoo calendar so I can't tell if that would be a better deal.

[jbischke]

Thanks so much for all the help here. I re-installed SyncMyCal today and got it to work pretty well (the only annoyance was all of my birthdays copying over as events...working with their support on that one).

So now I'm trying to figure out how get a public calendar that shows the free/busy status of myself and my biz partner. Any suggestions on that front?

[glc]

Look what just showed up:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=177785

[pam123]

OH...,...Bingo!!!!