The Google/Outlook Calendar Dating Game

When my university first moved to Outlook, one of the first things people asked was how they could see events from their personal Google calendar in their MacEwan Outlook calendar. So, we’re going to take a look at a few things:

1. Show your work availability from Outlook to anyone (great for users outside of your domain)
2. Share your Outlook events with details (to share with individuals or your personal Google calendar)
3. View your personal Google calendar in Outlook.

You must use the web client to set this up. Sharing or publishing your calendar allows you to view the information — you can only make changes in the original calendar.

1. Share your availability with everyone

MacEwan Outlook users can use the Scheduling Assistant (https://goo.gl/AtxGQL) to see each other’s availability when booking a time. However, external users can’t do the same unless you publish your calendar. This will not only provide a html page with showing your busy/free times (no details), but a link to have the same information appear in your Google calendar.

To start:

1. Login to http://outlook.com/yourdomain.
2. In the top right, click on the Settings icon (i.e. gear) and go to Calendar - Shared calendars - Calendar publishing (https://goo.gl/A9bXWu).
3. Select the calendar called Calendar (your personal calendar) and select Availability only for permissions. This will not display any details of your schedule.
4. Save

You’ll now have 2 links:

• HTML (generates a web page)
• ICS (used by other calendar apps to subscribe to your schedule)

With the HTML link, users can view your schedule by Day, Week, or Month for any date.

To make this easy to access, add the link to the signature line in your email (you can use a link shortener like http://goo.gl). Here’s my signature:

Trevor Beck

Web Services, MacEwan University

See my availability: https://goo.gl/YKOyGl

2. Sharing the details of your schedule

Sometimes you have people you want to be able share the details of your calendar (e.g. your personal Google account, a colleague, your spouse). As you don’t want to change the sharing on your published page for everyone to see (as above), we will share the calendar with just the individual.

From the Calendar view, select Calendar (i.e. your MacEwan calendar) from the Share menu.

Here you can choose different individuals to to share your calendar with different levels of details. To share with my personal Google account:

1. Enter personal email.
2. Choose Can view titles and locations from the permissions.
3. Click Share.

An email will be sent to that email with a link that will allow the user to subscribe to your schedule. If they pass that link on to someone else, the other users will also see your schedule.

When you receive the email in your Gmail do not click on the Add this calendar button (this will prompt you to login to Outlook). Instead, click on the attached file (don’t download or add to your drive) for a preview of it’s contents. At the bottom you’ll find a link that starts with https and ends with .ics.

Copy the link and go to your Google Calendar. From the Other calendars list on the right, select Add by URL and paste in the link.

Your work calendar, with details, will now appear in Google Calendar under other calendars. You can use the settings to change the name and other preferences.

3. Add your personal Google Calendar to Outlook

Rather than repeat what’s already available, check out this handy tutorial from Microsoft:

https://goo.gl/BVZvuS

Trevor Beck is a tech enthusiast whose training expands everything Mac, Google and is slowly making his way back to Microsoft.