iCal and Outlook

Lazyweb request: someone should use either Niobe (the "prototype project that allows managed, smart client add-ins to be developed for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003") or a straight-ahead COM add-in to to build support for iCal file subscription in Outlook. Heck, since I'm asking, how about support for publishing those files to a WebDAV server as well? Outlook 2003 dramatically improved the UI for multi-calendar support (side-by-side viewing) and single-calendar event coloring; from a user experience perspective it should be a no-brainer. Now "all we need" is the subscriber / parser.

Yeah, yeah, yeah -- "buy a Mac." Or, even better, "download Mozilla Calendar." Despite the best efforts of Apple and Mozilla, iCal usage isn't going to get anywhere until it's supported in Outlook. Natively. An active development community that's pushing the app on their own will make it that much more apparent to Microsoft that it needs to add that functionality in the next rev.

And in case you're interested in simply exporting iCal files from Outlook, try Outport. It's ugly, but it works.

Comments

[Bill Seitz]

Have you tried entering someone's iCal URL as the "Internet Free-Busy" URL in their address book entry? I think that might work.

Likewise you can publish your Outlook Free-Busy info to a WebDAV URL.

(Big disclaimer: I've only looked at docs and dialog boxes, I haven't actually done this stuff.)
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/GroupCalendaring

I've also read that Outlook can publish ICal.
http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$7904?mode=day

[michael]

I've tried the free/busy thing, and assigned it to a user. But that only works if you're trying to invite them to a meeting; it's not possible to view their calendar (like you can with iCal or Mozilla Calendar) in Outlook. And you can use Outlook to send individual iCal events (in order to invite someone), but not to publish an entire schedule.

What I haven't tried is publishing free/busy out of Outlook to a webdav server and seeing if that's actually subscribable through a "real" iCal application. I used that functionality a couple of years ago, but I don't remember how much detail it published, or if it was just, literally, "free/busy" information.

[Bill Seitz]

I'm pretty sure Outlook only publishes Free-Busy info, since that's what that dialog is pretty specific in its wording.

Personally, I like providing/seeing only Free-Busy info...

[Kurt Voelker]

I would love a simple server-side app that would convert .ics (iCalendar) to .vfb (FREEBUSY) so that my organizations mozilla calendar and apple iCal users could easily share calendar information with our Outlook users. Seem simple enough. Anyone heard of this being undertaken anywhere?

[Neil Jensen]

Disclaimer: the following post is promoting the use of my site, but I feel it is relevant to this thread.

In reference to the above comment by Kurt, you can try out http://ifreebusy.com. It allows for server-side conversion of freebusy files to ical and back. I'm the process of adding Outlook meeting-scheduler functionality so that groups can see everyone's freebusy info at the same time.

[LastHope]

Hi!
Why don't you try RemoteCalendars? It's a plugin I've developed in order to subscribe into Outlook an iCalendar...;)
You can find it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars