Ideas for reconciling two calendars

[cfoley]

I have used Google Calendar for years. I'm happy with it and don't want to change.

In my current job and my previous one, the companies involved use Outlook. It would go against the grain to refuse to use the Outlook calendar because things like the Scheduling assistant help people to organise meetings at sensible times.

This leaves me with two sources of the truth and erodes my trust in both.

• I have tried manually adding work tasks to my Google Calendar but it is challenging to keep them in sync when meetings get moved.
  
  
• I looked into Installing Outlook on my phone so I can check it there, but the terms of service allow my employer to wipe my phone which is not acceptable to me.
  
  
• I currently make my work calendar visible to my google calendar as a read only calendar. This is the best I have come up with so far but the lag between adding something to my Outlook Calendar and seeing it in my Google Calendar app is significant. I haven't timed it but I get the impression that it is in the ballpark of an hour.

The need to reconcile work and personal calendars must be common and I would be interested in hearing how you would approach this problem. All suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[sholden]

Calendars have gotten worse for me since COVID-19. I have a local Outlook calendar at work and a separate and not linked Microsoft Teams account. And then my personal account in Google Calendar. It requires a lot of manual processing at the moment. I can't share either of my work ones with my Google calendar. I sometimes BCC my home account for critical meetings. I also found and modified a PowerShell script for Windows that will take my calendar for the next day and turn it into an email to mail personal account. At least then I know my work schedule for the next day in in my personal email.

 

[Ger80C]

I have separate systems, too. If I have entries in my "private life" calendar that are on workday evenings ore at some thime where they may collide with work scheduling, I simply invite myself (my "work self") to the event and, that way, have this transferred to the work calendar. For workdays this is then my single source of truth. Another option would be to have the private/home calender displayed read-only in your work calender, but you have to decide if this is ok for you privacy-wise.

 

[RS356]

My solution to this issue has been my phone. The native calendar syncs to both work on Exchange and personal on google. In this way, I’m able to fully use both calendars in a single interface. I’m on iOS but I understand this works on Android as well.

 

[Ariadne Marques]

I've been through the same problem. I use Microsoft 365 for my personal files, Word, Excel and OneNote. My work is all about Google. I have to use Google Calendar for work. I tried to sync Outlook 365 and Google Calendar (via subscription links) but the sync is not reliable, I completely lost trust on this approach.

The Windows10 Calendar app can sync both both Outlook and Google Calendars, and it works pretty well. So that's one option if you need to quickly check and see both Calendars at once. Or the Outlook app on the phone, which also syncs perfectly.

But I wanted to have a full view of both my Calendars on the browser while at work. Lots of the Google Calendar scheduling options don't work on the Windows 10 app, and I use them to view other's peoples availability, accept meetings, send notes to reschedule meetings, etc.

So the only way to have a seamless sync between my Work and Personal Calendar was to move my Personal calendar to Google.
I have a personal Google account just to use the Calendar, and I sync it to my Work Google Calendar. At least this way I have a completely trustworthy sync between the 2.

 

[cfoley]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Talk of a power shell script got me thinking. Both calendars have APIs so it should be easy to write my own sync that suits my needs:

I can grab events from my work outlook calendar using this:

List events - Microsoft Graph v1.0

Retrieve a list of events in a calendar. The list contains single instance meetings and series masters.

docs.microsoft.com

And add them to a 'work' google calendar using this:

Events: import | Google Calendar | Google for Developers

developers.google.com

Then I can set up a script that performs the sync at regular intervals and share the 'work' google calendar with my 'personal' google calendar.

If I get this working then I will be happy to share what I did.

 

[gtdstudente]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Talk of a power shell script got me thinking. Both calendars have APIs so it should be easy to write my own sync that suits my needs:

I can grab events from my work outlook calendar using this:

List events - Microsoft Graph v1.0

Retrieve a list of events in a calendar. The list contains single instance meetings and series masters.

docs.microsoft.com

And add them to a 'work' google calendar using this:

Events: import | Google Calendar | Google for Developers

developers.google.com

Then I can set up a script that performs the sync at regular intervals and share the 'work' google calendar with my 'personal' google calendar.

If I get this working then I will be happy to share what I did.

Two calendars . . . synced would be awesome.