Forum Discussion
Greg Edwards
Dec 14, 2017Iron Contributor
Aggregate availability from multiple calendars
I prefer to keep personal appointments on one calendar (on Outlook.com) and work appointments on my work calendar (O365 Exchange), but Exchange only seems to use my work calendar to show my availability to other people in my organization. I'd like to have a way to aggregate my availability from multiple calendar sources, the way that you can overlay multiple calendars in Outlook. It's not really a matter of me seeing all my appointments, because I can easily see everything in a consolidated view in Outlook on my desktop or mobile; it's more about letting others in my organization know when I'm free to meet. I know there is (used to be?) a "free/busy server" option in Outlook client, but I feel like this should be something that can be set on my Exchange profile, so that it doesn't matter what client I'm using.
Aside from that kind of option, I guess I'd guess I might be OK with a solution that duplicates anything added to my personal calendar as a block on my work calendar or vice versa, even if it's an IFTTT-type thing. I saw a similar post that mentions some 3rd-party tools from CodeTwo and Connecting Software, but given this is just a preference of mine, I'm probably not going to spend a lot on a workaround.
TLDR: Is there a better approach to showing consolidated availability than manually duplicating my appointments between calendars? Thanks!
- BSAAMCopper Contributor
Greg Edwards Not that this answers the question of being better than duplicating events, I've 'solved' the availability issue by:
- Creating a GCal for the purpose of amalgamating 'secondary' calendars
- Using this script to import webcal links from my multiple secondary calendars into the main GCal calendar
- Connecting the GCal to my main (work) calendar as my 'personal' account.
As a result, my availability from my multiple secondary calendars are all now displayed in my main work calendar to colleagues.
- Brian-TheNRGguyCopper Contributor
Why does MS not solve this problem. It seems so easy.
1.) Add an "Availability Calendar"
2.) Let users decide, what calendars feed into it, and level of detail.
3.) Provide ability to not include, specific items. ie By default all events show, however the user can open the specific event and choose to not include it in the "Availability Calendar".
- danielvivarCopper Contributor
Greg Edwards
You can do that now with "Add personal account" feature, check documentation here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/show-personal-events-on-your-work-or-school-calendar-6ffc71a9-0943-415a-8482-ce0122528a35- aco_stulicCopper ContributorGreat.. we are getting somewhere here. But this is just an option for Outlook or Gmail, and I need an iCloud option to add in my Apple account… as I run my personal life through that iCloud account.
Please can this be added soon?
- joncrosbyCopper Contributor
I'm constantly baffled that MSFT hasn't addressed this issue, it's not that hard and will make the Bookings product actually useable! Here is my FREE Calendly hack for this in case it helps anyone else in the future:
1. Setup a Google Calendar account you can use to just for calendar syncing. (e.g. mycalendarsync at gmail dot com).
2. Go to your online Outlook account and click 'Share' on the calendar you want to sync, and then put in the Gmail address you just created. You will get a link to then go to your new Google calendar and then add new 'Other' calendar as web subscription.
3. Setup a free Calendly account using your normal calendar/email.
4. In the Calendar Sync section, add the sync Google calendar you created earlier, then in 'Check for conflicts' hit Edit and choose those subscribed calendars from your new google calendar.
Not sure how scalable this is but it works for the 4-5 calendars I'm trying to sync and provides me a share URL I can use for my clients. - Brian-TheNRGguyCopper ContributorThis has been a frustration for me... for years!!! This is such an obvious feature that is needed!
Makes me hate using MS365!!! instead of helping me, by making their products more productive.... The give me new "emoje"s . I do not need "cute" I need things that make me faster than my coemption! Don't get me started on how hard it to MS apps on your phone....might as well sit at my computer. - mosesriveraCopper Contributor
Greg Edwards I haven't found a way to merge the availability across calendars. For now, I've ditched my various Outlook calendars and replaced them with the built-in Categories feature (all calendar events are within the default calendar). Although I haven't found a way to quickly show/hide calendars based on Categories, I'm questioning whether I truly need to do so.
- luffy13Copper ContributorI've been having this issue recently, and I came across this question. After some research, I found https://www.onecal.io/
This tool has been working like a charm. - mrmike_evoCopper Contributor
Greg Edwards https://calendarbridge.com/ solved it for me.
- MMreedCopper ContributorDid anyone find a solution? I have 2 sub calendars for groups of tasks and need them separated bc I allow others access to my appts. I dont want everyone to have access to everything.
My prob is that my teams acct only pulls information from my main calendar so I am getting double booked with meetings.. thanks- Michael_Johnson990Copper Contributor
MMreed I set up a Zap in Zapier to copy events from another calendar into my work calendar. I wanted to show my time as busy whenever there was a men's basketball game for my alma mater. So I pointed the Zap to a public calendar for the team's schedule and had it add events to my work calendar whenever a new game was posted.
The nice thing about using Zaps is that you can make the event title anything you want--have it fill in information from the other calendar directly, or call it something innocuous (like "Personal").
Here's a link to my Zap:
https://zapier.com/shared/6b3640fe05514bec57f84cc902f9b9d9d2a88b2b
- embeddedcapCopper Contributor
Michael_Johnson990 How do you remove the Reminder so you don't double your reminders in Outlook? Zapier wasn't giving me the choice of Reminder.
it's crazy after 7 years this still isnt solved by microsoft and we have to come up with workarounds
- BernardoFortesCopper Contributor
For a while, I was able to get it working via www.syncgene.com, an online calendar sync application. It got the job done well.
Unfortunately my company account now has blocked access to external applications and I'm back in square one.