Outlook, Exchange, Calendars and Iphone

[MobileTechie]

One of my business clients has an Exchange/Outlook setup. I've set up their iphones to connect via Active Sync to give them phone access to mail and calendar.

They rely heavily on a shared calendar which, at the moment, is a Sharepoint Calendar on their company intranet. This works well in the office as it can be opened in Outlook. However, this calendar is not visible on the iphones and so they are not getting live access to their most valuable calendar but only their personal ones.

I'm trying to work out what the best way is of giving them iphone and Outlook access to a single shared calendar. E.g. can I get their iphone calendar to look at the sharepoint one, or have them all look at a singles user's calendar.

One iphone can see several calendars, the other only sees one. Possible this is due to different iphone OS versions?

Any idea?

 

[ProTech-MN]

To the best of my knowledge, syncing public folders such as shared calendars, contacts, etc. is a deficiency of ActiveSync itself. I don't think it's possible to sync these shared folders through it - at least, not without some kind of additional software on the Exchange server that replicates shared content to the users personal folders...

Honestly, I can't believe that MS hasn't added this functionality to ActiveSync... although, with the current push towards SharePoint vs. Exchange public folders, I'm not sure they they'll ever fix this...

-Randy

 

[Frank]

iPhone OS 4 can sync with multiple exchange accounts. So one thing you could do is set up an exchange account, grant the appropriate permissions to share the calendar, and configure the iPhones to sync with that account for only calendar items.

 

[MobileTechie]

iPhone OS 4 can sync with multiple exchange accounts. So one thing you could do is set up an exchange account, grant the appropriate permissions to share the calendar, and configure the iPhones to sync with that account for only calendar items.

I'm iphone ignorant - is OS4 available on all phones or just the newest ones?

 

[Frank]

http://www.apple.com/ios/

Scroll to the bottom.

 

[MobileTechie]

Thanks man. That covers all their devices by the look of it.

That should do the trick then. I'll just create a new account and have them all share it's calendar and add it to their iphones. I guess it will depend on how the iphone deals with multiple accounts. I think on Calendars it allows you just to look any one of the ones it's linked to but not sure if Email does. I think I've seen this before and I seem to remember you had to select the email you wanted to view each time you opened it, but could be wrong.

 

[Frank]

Thanks man. That covers all their devices by the look of it.

That should do the trick then. I'll just create a new account and have them all share it's calendar and add it to their iphones. I guess it will depend on how the iphone deals with multiple accounts. I think on Calendars it allows you just to look any one of the ones it's linked to but not sure if Email does. I think I've seen this before and I seem to remember you had to select the email you wanted to view each time you opened it, but could be wrong.

No problem.

For the calendars, you can either choose to view the calendars individually or merged (You won't see a split screen like you do in Outlook.)

With email, you can either view individual inboxes, individual accounts and subfolders, or all inboxes merged into one view (this excludes subfolders). But... you can just choose to sync only the calendar and not worry about email or contacts.

 

[ProTech-MN]

iPhone OS 4 can sync with multiple exchange accounts. So one thing you could do is set up an exchange account, grant the appropriate permissions to share the calendar, and configure the iPhones to sync with that account for only calendar items.

Frank - nice tip, never thought about that!

-Randy