I have a very intricate calendar syncing symphony going on here. My iPhone, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, MobileMe , and Exchange 2003 calendars are all kept in sync within about 15 minutes of each other. I’ve spend some time figuring everything out and setting it all up. I thought I’d share my setup with you in case you’d like to attempt the same synergy.
Overview
Here’s how everything works at the top level. My business Exchange calendar only has events in it that are work related. None of my personal events that are created on my iPhone or iCal are placed onto my Exchange calendar. All of the events on created in Outlook on my Exchange calendar are, however, passed onto my Google calendar, then to my iCal, then to my iPhone.
This allows me to see all events from both business AND personal on my iPhone as well as schedule events for both locations from my iCal. When I create an event meant for my Exchange calendar, i simply choose that calendar when creating the appointment on my iPhone and it eventually syncs its way to my Outlook at the office and into Exchange.
It’s an ALMOST perfect setup.
Google Calendar and Exchange
I start with my Google Calendar. That’s the heart of it all. I’ve created two calendars that really matter. I have more but they do not add to the functionality. For this section, we’ll only worry about the default Google calendar.
On my office computer, I’ve installed the Google Calendar Sync. This performs a two way synchronization between my Outlook/Exchange calendar and my primary Google calendar. It’s important to remember that this tool only syncs with the primary (default) calendar in Google.
If I create an event on my primary Google Calendar, it is sync’ed back to my Exchange in the next sync cycle. It works in the other direction also.
iCal and Google Calendar
To get my iCal on my MacBook Pro to sync with the Google Calendar, I start by creating a new Google Calendar called “Home”. I don’t want to sync with the default Google Calendar because I don’t like my private appointments to show up on my Exchange calendar.
I installed a tool called Spanning sync onto my MacBook Pro and configured it to do a two-way sync between my main iCal calendar and the newly created Google calendar called “Home”
I do want to be able to create a business event in my iCal (and later on my iPhone) that will show up on my work Exchange calendar; I just don’t want my private life events to do this. To accomplish this, I created a new calendar inside iCal called “Work” and told Spanning Sync to do a two-way sync between that calendar and my primary Google calendar.
This is awesome because all that I need to do is create an event in the “Work” iCal calendar to get it to eventually and seamlessly sync onto my Exchange calendar at work.
iCal, MobileMe, and the iPhone(s)
iTunes takes care of syncing all calendars in your iCal with your iPhone every time that you sync with the computer. This is nice but I like things to be a bit more immediate and “in the cloud” than that. I have a MobileMe account that is shared between my iPhone and my wifes iPhone. The MobileMe is constantly updated via Push from my MacBook Pro.
On my iPhone, if I want to create a business appointment, I choose the “Work” calendar. Within minutes, that new event is pushed to my MacBook Pro. Within a few more minutes, the Spanning Sync software syncs that appointment with the main Google calendar. A few minutes later, the Google Sync tool in my office syncs that appointment into Outlook from that same primary Google calendar. Outlook naturally shoves the event into Exchange and the trip is complete.
If I want to create a personal appointment on my iPhone, I choose the “Home” calendar. It also gets synced via MobileMe onto my iCal within a minute or two. Spanning Sync keeps my Google “Home” calendar in sync with my iCal “Home” calendar.
now, I can share my Google “Home” calendar with whoever I’d like. For example, I can set up a sync between my Wife’s iPhone and my home calendar so that she always knows where I’m at and when I’ll be home.
