Sync And Share Your iCal Calendar With Multiple People Using BusySync and Google Calendar
My wife and I keep our calendars in iCal, but without some divine intervention we couldn’t sync our calendars or view each other’s calendar in iCal. We ran into this same issue at the office as well – I needed our Project Manager to see my calendar, but because we were both using iCal we were isolated into our own little islands of calendar hell.
So we started using Google Calendar, where we could share calendars and see each others events – even add events to each others calendars. But let’s face it… it’s just not as pretty or convenient as iCal, and it won’t sync events to my iPhone. If only there was a way to do this in iCal…
Well, I found a way. Using BusySync, I can use Google Calendar as a conduit, which holds and shares all of our calendar information. So I can see the calendars of others, and they can see mine. When I add an event in iCal, BusySync sends that information to Google Calendar, and BusySync on the other user’s computer picks it up and updates the information in iCal for them. The whole process happens within seconds – it’s pretty amazing. Watch the video to see what I mean.
So what happens if I have multiple computers and an iPhone? (Which I do). That’s where MobileMe comes in. Here’s the full setup:
We have an iMac at home which we use as our “base” – that’s where BusySync is installed. This computer is always on, so there’s never a lag in the data getting synced. If I add a calendar event on my laptop, MobileMe syncs that information with my iPhone and the iMac at home. BusySync then picks it up and syncs it to Google Calendar, which in turn triggers BusySync on other user’s machines to update the calendar event on their iCal calendar. And with MobileMe it shows up on their iPhones as well.
So with the two services combined, you can have multiple shared calendars, managed by multiple people, syncing on multiple computers and phones without doing anything more than simply adding an event.
Awesome! This sounds like you may have found the holy grail. I’m going to definitely look into this. Thanks!
Now if we could only find a solid, reliable solution for syncing iPhone/Mac Address Books, MobileMe, Gmail/Google Apps Contacts without causing duplicates! Hint hint
@Andrew
Using Google as the conduit and keeping all information there has prevented any duplicates for me. And the one time I did find duplicate calendar items, I turned off calendar syncing in BusySync, deleted the calendar from iCal, turned BusySync back on for that calendar and everything was back to normal.
Address book syncing with Google (in Address Book Preferences) has been great – I’ve only seen a duplicate once or twice in 6+ months.
I also recently added an Exchange calendar in iCal (after 10.6 upgrade) and BusySync now pushes that one out to Google so I can see everything there as well.
i don’t know what i’m doing wrong here. i have downloaded busy sync. i have a google calendar. i am logged in. i have a mobile me account and anything i add to busy sync goes there. but nothing seems to go to the google calendar. any help would be great…thanks.
@gail Hi Gail,
It looks like they moved the video URL – here’s the updated one: http://www.busymac.com/busysync/videos.html
(I’ll update this in the post as well)
Hi Michael,
I’ve been trying to get something similar set up lately, and luckily stumbled on you blog. BusySync has worked pretty darn well so far, thank you for that!
I’d like to ask though, how are you getting your exchange calendar to push through to MobileMe? I can get it into google calendar via BusySync, but not MobileMe.
Would you be so kind as to describe your setup in this area a little more please?
Any thoughts or insight you have would be appreciated…
Thanks,
// Ted
Hi @Ted,
In general, you don’t need to since you can use Exchange to do the same thing MobileMe does (I can subscribe to it on any computer and my iPhone, and all sync through the Exchange server). However, if you wanted to (for instance, some services require an additional fee to sync to an iPhone) you can use BusySync to publish the Exchange calendar to Google Calendar, and then subscribe to that on any computer that you haven’t set up the Exchange account on.
In BusySync > Google tab > Left side (Publish to Google), publish the Exchange calendar to Google. What this will NOT do, however, is display the account in the web/online version of MobileMe (in the browser). I’m not aware of any way to do that at this time.
Thanks @Michael,
As far as BusySync goes, I do have my Exchange calendar publishing to Google Calendar already, which was a big step forward in my overall goal… but sadly the second part of then having it come back in and be visible on the web interface of MobileMe I was not able to achieve. I thought maybe I was just missing something.
So it is good at least to know that it’s not just me… sad to know I still have not been able to reach my ultimate goal of backing up my Exchange calendar on MobileMe.
Well, I do have good “anywhere” sharing of Calendars between my wife and myself as of right now thanks to your article! I was just trying to consolidate and back up what seemed to me a bit messy… this will definitely do for now!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this article and answer my question. I had honestly been looking for something for days before I found your blog.
// Ted