iCal/google calendar/iSync support/workflow help

[quactaur]

Hello all, I was wondering if anyone can help me out with my problem.


I currently sync google calendar to ical. This works quite well, I can edit calendar events for my gcal account on ical, and have them instantly synced with the web service, allowing me to use either my mac, or any machine.

The problem I have is currently with adding a device with iSync (nokia e71). It appears iSync will only synchronize calendar events stored locally on my pc, i.e. not gcal ones.

This means that, if I want to use my phone to create calendar appointments etc, I have to have them synced into a local (offline) calendar on ical, which I must then manually sync back to google calendar (by editing the calendar grouping from the offline calendar to Gcal).


I'm basically trying to find a way to do this in automator (but haven't a clue where to start).


1) Have automator grab all entries in the calendar labelled "e71 sync" (the calendar phone events sync to).
2) Create these events anew in the calendar labelled "Gcal" (the calendar that ical and gcal sync via)
3) Delete all events in the calendar "e71 sync".


How would I go about doing this in automator? or failing that, is there another (free) way to sync between Gcal, ical and isync?

Thanks in advance!

 

[jackiecanev2]

Wirelessly posted (BB 8900: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

Have you tried goosync?it is supposed to work well, and the basic service is free.

 

[quactaur]

Jackiecanev2: Thanks for the link, but I'm trying for a local solution so I don't use any of my data bandwidth. Even though calendar syncing isn't too data heavy, I want to use as little as possible of it.

I've had a mess about and have actually figured out a workflow. For anyone else who wants to do this (its a bit inelegant) do this:


1) Download the yellow camp actions installer. Their main site seems to be down, but http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/Yellow-Camp-iCal-Actions-Download-24103.html has it.

2) Download the workflow attached to this post

3) Edit it to match your calendar names.

Create a calendar called "sync" or similar. This is the calendar that your device will be able to edit and sync to. The automator "find" actions should refer to this calendar.

The "move" action should refer to your google calendar.

4) Setup isync so that all calendar entries on your phone/device are synced to the "sync" calendar.


The workflow will do the following when run:

1) Gather all events in the "sync" calendar

2) Create copies of those events in the google calendar

3) Delete the events from the sync calendar (we can do this because you can sync google calendars from ical to your device, just not the other way round.

 

[djbahdow01]

Now not quite a free option but I have tested and really like busysync. They have a trial offer to see if it will work, and I really like it as I have a few google calendars that update from other sources for work and this will update my iCal while allowing it to be synced with anything.

Might want to give it a try, www.busymac.com.

 

[quactaur]

Thanks for the link djbahdow01, and I had seen a number of paid for solutions (spanning sync, busysync, syncje, etc). I was (being a cheapskate) looking for a free solution, and I think I've got it here. When I add the workflow I made to a launch isync and run command, it lets me sync all I need (I use a single unified calendar, so Ical's 1 google calendar limit isn't a problem for me).

I'll leave the workflow on the off chance anyone else has the same issues as me.

 

[ruinfx]

im kind of confused by your post. isync has become irrelevant imo. all your syncing can be done OTA, which means you dont have to worry about syncing your phone to your computer via isync anymore.

basically just sync your e71 and your ical to google calendar using google sync and caldav and you should be good to go. best of all its free.