I’ve discussed my vision of calendar nirvana in previous posts, and tried to get closer to it using Microsoft Outlook’s inbuilt ability to publish calendars to the internet.  As I discovered this feature is rather limited and couldn’t publish to Google Calendar (despite Microsoft’s assurances otherwise). 

Google has recently released a Google Calendar Sync application to perform uni- or bi-directional synchronisation of your Outlook and Google Calendars.  Its time to test if this will help me publish my up-to-date master calendar to the web.

Testing 1-way: Microsoft Outlook calendar to Google Calendar

My calendar data is pretty important to me so I’ll be testing a one-way sync from my master calendar (in Outlook) to Google Calendar before I’ll consider enabling the 2 way option.  As a seasoned beta tester of PIM software I know how painful duplicate or corrupted calendars can be so there was no way I’d risk giving an unproven tool write access to my master calendar if I have any other option.  I also backed up my Outlook calendar (zipped a copy of my .pst file) and exported my current calendar from Google Calendar, using the private iCal link, before installing the software.  Did I mention that I’ve been burnt before when testing PIM software?

The Google Calendar Sync application is quite small (version 0.9.3.0 was 662 kb to download and 1.3 Mb to install) and the UI to configure it is fairly spartan.  A summary of my key installation and configuration steps are included below:

1. Backup your Outlook calendar before testing the software.  The Outlook calendar can be backed up by closing Outlook and creating a copy of your main calendar’s .pst file, or by taking a copy of your main calendar folder within the Outlook UI.
2. Backup your primary Google Calendar.  This can be done via a right click\Save As on the private iCal link within the Google Calendar’s Manage Calendars options panel.
3. Navigate to Google’s Manage Accounts facility and make use of the Edit personal information option.  At the bottom of this page should be the following section:
   

   Associate email addresses with your account

   ---

   Adding email addresses helps Google associate useful information with your Google Account. For example, Google Calendar can show invitations sent to any of your addresses.

   If you haven’t previously done so add email addresses for your default Outlook account, and any other email accounts that would have been used to invite you to the calendar appointments. This is required to address one of the known limitations of the sync software that would otherwise prevent certain calendar entries from syncing.

4. Complete the previous step by opening the emails sent by Google and clicking on the verification links.
5. Download a copy of the Google Calendar Sync application and install it, accepting all of the default options.
6. Select the 1 way sync from Outlook to Google Calendar option, and enter your Google Calendar account settings. 
7. Save the configuration and your calendar will begin syncing to Google Calendar.

The Verdict: Most events synchronise, but not all

Google Calendar Sync did a pretty good job of publishing my calendar, but refused to synchronise certain events despite attempts to force them to be published. 

Most of my recurring appointments didn’t make it across.  The most difficult example to synchronise was a meeting scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Friday most weeks (with specific instances cancelled on public holidays etc.), but there were many simple recurring appointments (e.g. weekly and monthly meetings) that also refused to synchronise.

A quick look at the log file (C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Calendar Sync\logs\20080317T114410Z.log) found a number of entries similar to:

Loading outlook event 00000000539C5B9F3396574893319BF96A8E727024512600
SEVERE: Unable to load tz label
SEVERE: Load failed (see details above)
sync to right -> import right event to left calendar

and

Loading outlook event 00000000539C5B9F3396574893319BF96A8E7270A4452700
SEVERE: Load failed (see details above)

Unfortunately I haven’t worked out how to resolve these (or even how to identify the problem events) and the issue isn’t covered by the current version of the FAQ or known limitations resources provided by Google.  So the application appears to have a lot of potential but the current version can’t be relied upon due to issues with synchronisation quality.

[via Teck.in and Lifehacker]

Previously I’ve discussed my version of calendar nirvana, and just how far I am away from it today.  its time to start removing some of those roadblocks by freeing my master calendar from its Outlook shackles and sharing it (appropriately) with others.

I’ve been keeping my master calendar in Outlook 2007 for a few months now.  Before that I was a Palm Desktop user (or more accurately an Agendus for Palm Desktop user), but the lack of software support for Palm Desktop based data wore me down until I eventually decided to convert.  Publishing my data to a web based calendar was one of the major triggers for this decision.

Outlook 2007 includes a calendar "Publish to Internet" feature so this was a natural starting point for my quest.  It supports two possible destinations – Publish to Office Online or Publish to WebDAV Server – and I have tested them both.

Publish to Office Online

Publish to Office Online takes an Outlook calendar and sends it through to one of Microsoft’s online calendar services.  The steps to enable this are discussed in depth in an article on the Office Online website and a post on the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog.  A summary of the key steps are included below:

1. Right click on the Outlook calendar folder you wish to publish, and select the Publish to Internet\Publish to Office Online menu option
2. In the resultant dialog select the section of your calendar, level of detail and how accessible you want your online calendar to be.  For my purposes I want all of my detail to be up there (for my family’s benefit) but I want to restrict access to the information.
   
3. Click on the Advanced button at in the dialog.  Here you can control how frequently the information and updates are published.  The defaults were fine in my case, except I did want private details published to the site.
   
4. After clicking OK then OK you will be prompted for your Windows Live user ID (Passport) credentials so the information can be uploaded to Office Online.  After successfully entering this you will see a progress box as the data is uploaded.
5. Once the uploaded is complete you will be asked whether you want to notify others of the calendar’s availability.  In my case I wanted to make my family aware of the new calendar so I clicked Yes.  This sends an email with the webdav:// link to the calendar so they can subscribe to it from "any iCalendar compatible client".
   

The Verdict: Simple, but ineffective

The whole process is relatively painless, but the service didn’t live up to its advertising.  The post on the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog mentioned earlier contained the following statements:

Any application that can read an .ics file can subscribe to the calendar. Users that do not have an .ics aware mail application can view the calendar at Office Online in a web browser.

Here is a short list of popular clients that implement ICalendar functionality. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list and that there are many other applications that provide this functionality.

Application	Publisher
Chandler (PIM)	Open Source Applications Foundation
Evolution	Novell & GNOME
Facebook.com	Facebook.com
Google Calendar	Google
iCal and iCal Server	Apple Computer
Kontact	The Kontact Team
Lotus Notes	IBM
Microsoft Entourage	Microsoft
Microsoft Exchange	Microsoft
Microsoft Outlook	Microsoft
Windows Calendar	Microsoft
Sun Java Calendar Server	Sun
Zimbra Collaboration Suite	Zimbra

My whole reason for publishing my calendar is so my family can access it from both Thunderbird/Lightning and Google Calendar.  I used the notify feature and then tried to help them subscribe to my calendar, but both of these products refused to read the data.  Details of the problems are listed below.

Using the "Add by URL" feature in Google Calendar resulted in an error message.

Changing the webcal:// to http:// didn’t help.  When I tried to embed the relevant Windows Live ID username and password in the URL (e.g. http://user:pass@URL) this wasn’t accepted as a valid URL because my Windows Live ID contains an at (@) symbol.  I’ve tried to work around the issue a number of ways but have had no success.  Others have reported the same problem so I’m not holding out much hope for this technique.

In Thunderbird/Lightning I tried similar approaches to get the the webcal:// URL to work but no matter what I did no data would appear in the GUI.  It would rarely complain about the URL, but it wouldn’t achieve its intended purpose.

In fact the only application I found that could subscribe to the calendar was Outlook 2007.  Even when I pointed Firefox at the URL it had difficulties.  It should have tried to download the .ics file but I ended up with this error message instead.

I’m not 100% sure where the problem lies but I believe it is a combination of requiring a Windows Live ID to subscribe to the calendar (see the description in the notification email above for detail) and using WebDAV instead of vanilla http/s.  This feature must have worked in the past because Chaz and others have posted about it but it definitely isn’t working right now.  I was originally willing to consider that the iCalendar clients might be the problem… until Firefox reported the redirection issue.  Too much evidence is mounting against Office Online in this case.

Publish to WebDAV Server

Using the Publish to WebDAV Server is a little more difficult than the previous option.  Not because of the Outlook configuration, but rather that you need to have write access to a suitable WebDAV server to store your calendar.  They are not as common as other forms of hosting though there is at least one free iCalendar WebDAV service available (ironically a Mac centric site).  Once again the steps to enable this are discussed in depth in an article on the Office Online website.  A summary of the key steps are included below:

1. Right click on the Outlook calendar folder you wish to publish, and select the Publish to Internet\Publish to WebDAV Server menu option
2. In the resultant dialog enter the http: URL for the folder to publish the calendar to into the Location box.  Outlook will automatically generate the .ics file name itself.
3. Select the section of your calendar, level of detail and how accessible you want your online calendar to be.  For my purposes I want all of my detail to be up there (for my family’s benefit) but I want to restrict access to the information. 
   
4. Click on the Advanced button at in the dialog.  Here you can control how frequently the information and updates are published.  The defaults were fine in my case, except I did want private details published to the site.
   
5. After clicking OK then OK you will be prompted for your WebDAV credentials (if required) so the information can be uploaded to your server.  After successfully entering this you will see a progress box as the data is uploaded. 

The Verdict: Unusual pre-requisites, but worked with Thunderbird/Lightning

Assuming you have access to a WebDAV server this option is also pretty painless to implement.  It too was unable to be subscribed to by Google Calendar, even when embedding the username/password in the URL, but the same URl worked fine with Thunderbird/Lightning even without embedding the username and password!

Results

The current Outlook 2007 calendar publication methods are a little disappointing and don’t deliver the outcomes they promise.  I’d like to see them support more standard publication methods – after all even Outlook’s Internet Free/Busy option can publish to a standard FTP server – and services other than the two limited options currently available.  I’m really surprised there hasn’t been some tie in with Windows Live Calendar if nothing else but it would be nice to think they would look further afield than that.

For the moment I’m using the WebDAV publication mechanism as a stop gap for sharing my master schedule but I’m actively looking for something better.  Calendar nirvana is still looking pretty far away right now.

I like to think of myself as a reasonable person.  I try not to be too demanding, and while I like to keep up with the latest advances in technology I’m usually not right on the bleeding edge.  But the current gulf between my calendar organisational regime and where I want it to be makes me wonder whether my self-image is truly accurate.

I have my own concept of calendar nirvana.  I’ll attain it when I can:

• Create, update and check all of my work, personal and family appointment details at any time and location.  Even when I have no network access and am not in front of my main PC
• Be able to check all of my family’s appointments at any time (including those I’m not participating in)
• Have controlled access to schedules by third parties, so clients, colleagues and myself can arrange meetings at times that are mutually acceptable
• Have all of my calendars work together seamlessly without manual intervention

That doesn’t seem a lot to ask for, does it?  There are a lot of people out there who work and have families so I find it hard to believe I’m the only one who wants their calendars to work this way.

Unfortunately my current calendar regime is nowhere near nirvana.  I’m doing better than most but its still a mess:

• My work calendar (Lotus Notes) won’t share its information with any other application, service or device so its only accessible via my laptop or a web browser.
• My colleagues also use Lotus Notes so I can access their schedule details, but my clients use Outlook so I’m unable to view their availability.
• My personal calendar is in Google Calendar so my whole family can have access, but I rarely work directly in the web UI.  Of late I have been accepting invitations via GMail but in the past I’ve used Thunderbird and Lightning (with the Google Calendar provider) to manage this personal calendar.
• The combined work/personal calendar I use as my master calendar is kept in Outlook 2007, and is bi-directionally synchronised with my Treo.  I manually recreate work appointments in here at the same time I accept/create them in Lotus Notes.  I subscribe to my personal calendar in Outlook and manually copy entries from the Google Calendar subscription to my main calendar.
• The combined work/personal calendar is published a couple of different ways.  I’m publishing internet free/busy (.ifb) information to a personal website so selected clients can have visibility of my availability through Outlook.  I’ve tried a couple of approaches for publishing the content of my calendar for my family’s benefit but have yet to find anything completely satisfactory.
• My family publish their main calendars in Google Calendar.  The alternate between using the web UI and Thunderbird and Lightning (with the Google Calendar provider) to manage this.  Currently the latter approach is preferred because Google Calendar can’t subscribe to my combined work/personal calendar the way it is published today.
• I also subscribe to my family’s and children’s calendars in Outlook 2007 (read only).

As you can see there are a lot of technologies, manual steps and potential failure points in how my calendar is managed today.  There are also certain aspects of nirvana that I can’t emulate at all (e.g. subscribe to client availability information in Lotus Notes) and would prefer not to do (e.g. store details of work appointments in Google Calendar) but are essential to the way I share my data today.

How can I reach nirvana?  There is no easy answer right now but I’m determined to move closer to my vision of the future and take out the manual steps in my calendar management regime.  I’ll share the good, bad and indifferent steps I take along the way.  Hopefully they may be of use to you in the journey to reach your personal version of calendar nirvana.

Availion runs a service to help you share your availability information – not your calendar – with others.  This is quite a powerful concept because its often more appropriate for others to know when you have time in your schedule rather than what you have in your schedule.  e.g. If I want to talk to two vendors about the same piece of work, if they can see each other’s meetings in my schedule they might focus on highlighting the other vendor’s weaknesses instead of addressing the request I’ve placed before them.

The service has quite a promising list of features and calendar support.  The key ones that caught my attention:

• Automatic – No Synchronization
• Email Your Availability
• Use With Multiple Calendars
• Supports Microsoft Outlook
• Supports Lotus Notes
• Supports Google Calendar
• Supports iCalendar

The two most compelling items on this list are Lotus Notes and Google Calendar.  This is the only tool I’ve found that states it supports publishing Lotus Notes free/busy information, and in the past Google Calendar has ignored any attempts to import internet free/busy information so I was curious whether it had resolved this issue.

The site provides only limited information about the product capabilities so I dived right in, signed up for a free account and downloaded the ~5Mb installer to try it out.

After installation I opened the program and saw a fairly basic looking calendaring application.  Stepping through the menu options I quickly came to the realisation this would be a proprietary service requiring others to download the GUI  if they wanted to see my availability.  Either that or I use the email facility to send snapshots of my schedule to others, which negates the "schedule meetings without my intervention" benefit that makes a free/busy service valuable in the first place.  Strike number one: I had been hoping for a service that would publish an ifb or vfb data file so calendar clients could directly lookup my availability when scheduling meetings without installing extra software.

Next I tried to add my Lotus Notes 6.5 calendar to the GUI.  Strike number 2: it didn’t matter whether I used the local replica or server options when adding my calendar, it always returned the same "unable to read availability from Lotus Notes" error.  If I shutdown the Notes client I saw a slightly different message telling me to make sure Notes was running, so I made sure the client was running and I had my File\Security\User Security "Don’t prompt for a password from other Notes-based programs (reduces security)" preference checked, but that didn’t help either.

Strike number 3?  The complete set of Lotus Notes configuration documentation is a single page with a few screenshots and scant commentary.  It describes only part of the configuration process and didn’t help with my particular situation.  No indication of Lotus Notes client versions supported.  Using the application’s help facility referred me back to the same page.  No general help information, FAQ or forum is available.  Any help with this problem requires me to talk to their support staff but strangely enough they have yet to respond to my request given its Sunday today.

This service promised a lot but failed to deliver.  Even if the Lotus Notes functionality had worked the proprietary nature of the service would have kept me looking for a better, more open option that didn’t require my clients to install yet another piece of software on their PCs.  My search for schedule synchronisation nirvana continues.

(Via CalendarReview)