Calendars and I are something that have never quite gotten along. I’ve tried using everything from iCal on my mac, the calendar on my iPhone, Google Calendar, Backpack Calendar, and to-do applications like Things or ToodleDo. With each system, I would eventually just resort to using a piece of paper or a notebook to track everything. I’m now starting two companies and I have a need to actually share/see both my availability and that of the people I’m working with. So unless moleskine notebooks someday become internet-enabled, I needed to teach myself to use something else.
I managed to sync my Google Calendar, iPhone, iCal on Mac, Salesforce calendar and Basecamp Milestones. Each one of the technologies supports integration without third-party applications except Salesforce, which I will show you below.
What You Will Be Able To Do
As illustrated above, you will have bidirectional integration with each system except Basecamp, which will only be imported into Google Calendar as a read-only calendar (fortunately that is all I really need for Basecamp).
You will be able to create/edit/delete events most efficiently between iCal, GCal, and iPhone, as if they were all the exact same calendar. This includes being able to invite people to those events.
How To Do It
We’re now able to do this thanks to a wonderful technology called CalDav which is supported by most of these platforms.
Setup Google Calendar
I use Google Apps on my own domain but this should work with the regular Google Calendar as well. Simply setup Google Calendar how you would like to use it.
Add Basecamp to Google Calendar
Login to your Basecamp and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find your global feeds. Right-click on the Global iCal Feed and copy the link address. Go into Google Calendar and in the left sidebar, click the Add+ link and select Add by Url. Paste in your URL and you can select whether or not you’d like to make it publicly accessible. I would only enable this if you want to publish your GCal on a website somewhere.
Add Salesforce to Google Calendar
For this integration, I had to use Appirio Sync for Google Calendar. It’s free on the AppExchange. Install the app inside of Salesforce and it will step you through the setup. You can select from bi-directional syncing or opt only for Salesforce to Google or Google to Salesforce functionality.
Syncing Google Calendar and the iPhone calendar (link)
You must have at least the 3.0 version of the iPhone firmware for this to work.
These instructions were provided by Google:
- Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.
- Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
- Select Add Account…
- Select Other.
- Select Add CalDAV Account.
- Enter your account information:
- In the Server field, enter [ google.com ]
- In the Username field, enter your full Google Account email address.
- In the Password field, enter your Google Account password.
- In the Description field, enter the name you’d like to appear on the account.
- Select Next at the top of your screen.
After you’ve completed setup, open the Calendar application and syncing will automatically begin.
By default only your primary calendar will be synced to your device. You can sync additional calendars by visiting one of the following pages from any browser (via desktop or mobile device):
Select the calendars you’d like to sync, and click Save. The selected calendars will display on your device at the time of the next sync.
Syncing Google Calendar and Ical (link)
- Open Apple iCal, go to Preferences and then the Accounts tab.
- Click on the + button to add an account.
- Under Account Information, enter your Google Account username and password.
- Under Server Options, add the following URL:
https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/userReplace ‘youremail@domain.com’ with the email address that you use to log in to Calendar. Make sure to include the ‘@domain.com’ portion (which is @gmail.com for Gmail users) in this section.
- Click Add.
- Under the Delegation tab, select the calendars you’d like to add to iCal by checking the boxes next to them. You may need to hit refresh to get the latest list of calendars.
- Add your email address to your Address Book card by selecting Add Email. You’ll be prompted to add your email address only if your address is not already in your Address Book.
You won’t be able to invite or email guests to Google Calendar events within iCal if your address is not in your Address Book.
Your Google Calendar will now appear in iCal’s list of calendars, and changes you make to your Google Calendar in iCal will be reflected when you sign in to Google Calendar.
Syncing <Insert Name Here> with Google Calendar
If you use a web application that has dates and events as an iCal feed that you can subscribe to, you can add any of them to Google Calendar.
A few things to note
It’s not perfect but it works for me. Now, I can use whichever calendar is on-hand at the time and it will almost always be reflected elsewhere because my Google Calendar is acting as the master calendar.
Someone recommended I check out Pocket Informant on the iPhone, which syncs with Google Calendar and looks like it has a better method for visualizing events and availability when you have a lot of calendars. I haven’t tried it yet as it costs $12 on the App Store but its worth taking a look at it if you use a lot of calendars.
Hope this helps!
