Publish GroupWise Appointments on your iPhone!
Can’t wait till iPhone firmware 2.0 to get your corporate calendar on your iPhone? Here is a great trick to get your enterprise appointments onto you’re your iPhone.
What you will need:
- Novell GroupWise (tested, though should work with other mail applications)
- A Google Account with:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
For the bonuses, you will need:
- A calendar that can subscribe to .ics files (iCal) I found the basics of this idea here, but have elaborated it to iCal which works great for me.
Ever since I purchased the iPhone I have longed for a way to get my GroupWise calendar onto my iPhone. I use a PC at work and an iMac/PowerBook G4 at home. I sync my iPhone with my iMac. Since I don’t actually sync with my PC, how can I get the calendar on my iPhone? The answer: Google… to the rescue!
What you can do is configure a rule in GroupWise to delegate (forward) a meeting to your Gmail account. When Gmail receives, this, Google automatically adds it the Google Calendar on your account. You can then subscribe to the Google Calendar Feed in iCal. Then, sync your iPhone! You instantly have all of the calendars you are currently syncing with but now you have your “work” appointments too! There is a downside; you can’t add appointments to the read-only calendar from Google. However, this has not proved to be a huge roadblock for me. Also, if you want to take full advantage of this, don’t use Posted Appointments, only Appointments. This way you will have all of the appointments you make delegated (more on this later).
There are added benefits too. I have Google send me a daily agenda and SMS reminders. These items are based off of the appointments delegated to my Google Calendar, so I am always in touch with what is going on for the day.
Now, let’s discuss how to set this up in more detail…
Step 1:
From GroupWise, create a rule like this: ”When event is Filed to Calendar folder and if condition is Appointment, Add Action to Delegate to: name@gmail.com Comments to recepient:GWDelgate”
Step 2:
From Gmail, create a filter where the search criteria is from your GroupWise email address, name@source.domain, and has the words GWDelegate.
Step 3:
Set the action to “Delete it”.
Step 4:
On the computer that can subscribe to .ics files (preferably the computer you sync your iPhone with, for this example, iCal on a Mac) open Google Calendar and click on the options for your “work” calendar.
Step 5:
Find the iCal icon and click on it, this should open iCal for you to subscribe.
Step 6:
Accept the settings in iCal, but make sure you set the calendar to refresh on an interval you find acceptable.
Step 7:
Make sure that you configure the reminders and email options in your “work” Google Calendar to the criteria you want. I have it set to email me a daily agenda at 5:30 AM and send me an SMS reminder 30 minutes prior to a meeting. I then added the text number from Google to my Address Book and I now have an SMS thread called “Google Calendar”.
That is it! You are done! Place your iPhone in the cradle and sync. Of course, you may have to manually add the calendar in iTunes for syncing with your iPhone.
For an extra cool tip, if you have an Apple .Mac account or if you have your own FTP server, AND if you publish your personal calendar from iCal, you can subscribe to it in Google Calendar and have all of your calendars online! This works great for me and comes in very handy; I can access all of my appointments on ANY web browser. Keep in mind that this does only sync Appointments and Meeting Requests; tasks and notes are not included. We will have to wait for Apple to add note and to-do syncing functionality to Mail and the iPhone for that.
Your mileage may vary based on the Enterprise mail/server client and configurations you are using. There is already an Outlook sync tool from Google, but it does not sync Meetings, bummer. So, this solution is currently more useful. Post your comments if this works for you, or you got it working on another client other then GroupWise!
June 16th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Can you elaborate on Step 7?
You state:
I then added the text number from Google to my Address Book and I now have an SMS thread called “Google Calendar”.
How do you do this and what benefit does it provide?
June 16th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
In Google Calendar you can set up an SMS reminder at an interval you prefer. This message comes into my inbox as “Message from 483-68″. I added this number to my address book with the contact name of “Google Calendar”. This way, when it appears in SMS, I get a text from Google Calendar. Does this make sense?
I forgot to add why I would do this; it then texts me 15, 30 minutes, whatever I designate before a meeting. Very handy!
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
OH MY! This is incredible. You can’t imagine what I did before. I would sync my Treo 650 with GW on my windows side, then syne treo with missingsync, THEN sync iPhone. I am getting rid of the Treo tonight. I wish I was that smart….
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Glad to be of service!
July 7th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
What do you guys think about this?
http://www.companionlink.com/iphone
July 8th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I love you
July 9th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Does this only work with groupwise 7? I’m trying it from 6 and nothing shows up on my google calendar.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:03 am
I have done exactly the same thing as well but the appointment does not show up in my google calendar.
I am on GroupWise 7.
In gmail if I open the email, I do get the “Add to Calendar” option on the right hand side…
July 10th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Unfortunately, my gmail does not do that… It is just an e-mail and not a calender item. What do I overlook?
July 14th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I have the same problem as Allissey–I have to open the message and say I’ll be attending before it gets added to the calendar, which kind of defeats the purpose for me. I can’t find a gmail setting anywhere that automatically accepts appointments, either.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Have you guys logged into Google Calendar and created a calendar? This is all I did, and it worked fine for me. There is nothing to “turn on”, it just works.
July 15th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Well, Chad,
Your last suggestion did the trick.
Standard, Google supplies you with a calender linked to your Google account. Sofar I only examined this one.
I quickly created another one, in the same account, and: appointments from Groupwise are actually popping up in this calender! Now I can swiftly go on configuring my iPhone G3 ~ thanks a bunch for thinking with us, Chad.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
For those of you that have the event is not showing up, you have to set up the option “Automatically add invitations to my calendar:” to yes. This setting is in the general settings tab of Google Calendar.
Hope it helps… M
August 12th, 2008 at 1:27 am
I added the ability to sync my google cal directly with the iPhone “over the air” with the help of a company called nuevasync.com . It’s free and it takes your google cal and converts it to an exchange format. This way it’s directly imported into your iPhone. And it’s free! check it out.
August 12th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I am afraid I am stuck after step 4 (i.e. syncing GW with GMail). On GMail, after setting the search filter, there is a “test search”. When I try it, it says there are no items found. I tried adding a new appointment to my GW calendar and seeing if it picked it up on the Google calendar…but no luck. Suggestions?
August 13th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Did the GW appointment delegate even show up in Gmail?
August 14th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I am stuck also. I went through everything, including creating a new calendar. It picks up everything that is already in my calendar, but not new events. very strange. The rule works fine and says it is automatically adding as a calendar item. Also, where do I tell it how often to synch - this may be the issue
August 15th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I am not sure what your specific issue is graeme. There is no “sync” in Google, it does it automatically.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Chad & Others,
Earlier I stated that my problems to forward my groupwise appointments to Google Agenda had been solved. lately the problem returned. I didn’t want to bother you. Now I found the definite solution:
You should have your Groupwise and Gmail system settings in the same language.
Why? Gmail recognizes appointments automatically by scanning header text. When GW & Gmail are not set to the same language Gmail will not recognize your forwarded appointment. Then, it does not show all the functionality that Chad describes. E.g.: I had many appointments already forwarded. When I turned Gmail from dutch (yes I am) to english language Gmail showed all possibilities with the appointment. My GW server is in english.
I already informed Google (which were very helpfull) about this issue (if you consider it one, actually it’s quite logical behaviour).
August 20th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
In addition: it’s a pitty that whenever in GW an appointment is changed, the original appointment will NOT be deleted in Google Agenda. Quite logical, but annoying since you’ll have to keep your agenda up to date manually for changed events.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:00 am
I have recently started using a solution called NotifyLink which syncs my email, calendar and contacts over the air with my Groupwise. We also have Blackberrys, Palm Treo and Windows Mobiles working on it and it works well with all of them. We are looking at moving to Google Apps and NotifyLink will work with that as well.
You can get it in the UK from a company called London Web.
John
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Stuck on step 4 and 5 — I don’t see an iCal icon. Under “settings?”
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Found it! Nevermind!
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I set up a rule in my GroupWise to delegate appointments to my gmail and google calendar. Everything was working fine and I was able to sync my GroupWise calendar to my iPhone, then all of a sudden it stopped working. GroupWise is still sending the appointments to gmail and gmail is receiving the appointments but not posting them to google calendar. Any suggestions/ideas?
Btw. I tried posting an appointment directly on my google calendar and that synced to my iCal. So it doesn’t seem there is a problem with my google calendar and iCal
September 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Sorry to clarify again but wasn’t sure if I made sense up there. GroupWise was sending meetings to my gmail and they were being posted on my google calendar and I was able so sync my google calendar with my iPhone. Then all of a sudden, google calendar is not displaying any meetings even though gmail is receiving the appointments. I also have the setting checked to automatically add invitations to calendar. Any suggestions/ideas???
September 29th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Not having much luck with this… great idea and one that would benefit me but I just cannot get it to work!!
I have created a new calendar called ‘new work’ and have set up a rule in GroupWise 7 to delegate appointments to my gmail address, which it does. However Gmail won’t automatically accept the appointment??
I have changed all the language settings to read the same which is ENGLISH (US) but still no joy.
Please can someone help!!!
October 13th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Any ideas people?? I would really like to get this set up!!
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 am
This is pretty good. I’m just doing the part to delegate to Google calendar. It works for meeting requests, but doesn’t work for posted appointments - the rule doesn’t seem to kick in for them. I’m guessing that posted appointments can’t be delegated.
Never mind, I’ll just send myself a meeting request rather than posting an appointment.
Any ideas of how to apply it retrospectively to existing meetings?
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Has anyone found a solution yet?
I’m having a similar problem - I can get GW to export the event to gmail. The mail arrives as an appointment, but it does not get added to the google calender. Also - while looking at the e-mail in gmail I do not see an option to add the appointment to the calender as someone said in an earlier post.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Mark
November 19th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Has anyone confirmed that this fix only works with GW7? Any chance Chad could publish detailed screen shots of the execute? The GW/Iphone world would love you! Thx. Terri