As the Web Manager for a science center, I get a lot of people who come to me at work with random technology questions. For a couple of months, I have had coworkers asking me how they might be able to synchronize their Novell GroupWise calendar at work with their iPhone. I have always just typed in important appointments into the iPhone by hand, but yesterday I did a little Google searching, and I found out that GroupWise to iPhone synching can actually be quite seamless when you use the right middleman: Google Calendar!
Get a Google Account
If you don’t have one already, sign up for a Google/Gmail account at gmail.com. If you don’t use your Gmail account for anything other than this, that’s fine. However, your Google account will also be good in the future for logging in to all sorts of other cool Google online services.
Google Calendar
Now visit calendar.google.com and log in with your new Gmail account. It asks for a couple additional bits of info to activate your Calendar, and then you will be set to go. The default calendar will be named after your Gmail address, but you can edit the name to something more appropriate like “Work.” Also, you can add additional calendars for other types of appointments (I have a “Personal” calendar for myself and a “Family” calendar that I share with my wife in addition to my GroupWise-synced “Work” calendar). Note that when you initially sync your iPhone to Google Calendar, all existing appointments in your iPhone will be wiped clean, so take time to fill your Google Calendar with anything you want to keep from your iPhone calendar.
Delegate GroupWise Appointments to Gmail
Open your desktop GroupWise client (web version won’t work) and create a new rule much like you would for an out of office auto-reply. The new rule should do the following: “When event is “Filed Item” to “Calendar” folder, if conditions are “Appointment,” the actions are “delegate to (your username)@gmail.com.” In the delegate action, type “GWDelegate” in the comments to recipient.
This new rule will automatically send a delegated copy of any appointments you accept in GroupWise to your Gmail address (which is attached to your Google Calendar). We will use the “GWDelegate” comment to keep your Gmail inbox from getting flooded with your appointments in the next step.
Filter Out (Delete) the Messages to Gmail
Log into Gmail and click “Create a filter” up near the search box. Filter out messages “From: (your work email address)” that “Has the words: GWDelegate” and click “Next Step.” On the actions menu, check “Skip the Inbox” and “Delete It.” This will send all of your delegated appointments straight to your Trash (they will already be added to your Google Calendar).
Test the Connection Between GroupWise and Google Calendar
Create a new appointment with yourself (an actual appointment – “Posted Appointments” don’t seem to work). Accept it and check to make sure it shows up in your Google Calendar soon after you accept it. You can also check your Gmail Trash for the delegated appointment that was automatically filtered from your Gmail Inbox.
You will need to open all of your existing accepted future appointments and manually delegate them to your Gmail address with the “GWDelegate” comment in the message body to add them to your Google Calendar. The new GroupWise Rule will take care of all future appointments from this point forward.
Synch iPhone with Google Calendar
Make sure your Google Calendar contains all of the appointments that you will want to have in your iPhone, because your iPhone calendar will be wiped clean during the initial synch with Google Calendar. Google has very clear instructions about synching your iPhone with Google Calendar. You can use Safari on your iPhone to select which calendars you want to synch with your iPhone (multiple calendars will show up on the iPhone as different colors, and new events you create on your iPhone can be assigned to any of the calendars!).
Enjoy Your New Synchronized Life!
Your accepted GroupWise appointments will now show up on your iPhone minutes after you accept them in GroupWise! As an added bonus, any events you manually add in your iPhone will sync back to Google Calendar as well. If you share a calendar (like the “Family” one my wife and I share), then either person can add items to that calendar on their iPhone, and the item will sync to the other person’s phone as well!
I still don’t know what took me so long to do this! 
36 Responses to “Synchronizing Novell GroupWise Calendar with iPhone”
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June 9th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
This is a brilliant piece of work. Great job laying it out with real eye on the system organization. I’m going to try it this afternoon!
June 11th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Thank you for your clear instructions. I was wondering if there is away to set up where your Groupwise Appointment show up in a separate gmail calendar instead of going directly to your default one. For example I have a calendar name “Work” on my Gmail calendar. I wanted all my appointments from GroupWise to go directly to that calendar instead of the main one.
Thanks
June 11th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Fantastic idea! Too bad it doesn’t sync iPhone created appointments back to Groupwise…
June 15th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
James:
Glad you found it helpful. I set up my default calendar as my “Work” calendar to get around this problem – I’m not sure if there is a way to get Gmail to put them into a secondary calendar (although it seems like there should be).
June 15th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Joshua:
Agreed, but it sure beats typing my work appointments into my iPhone every week
June 17th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
This is an OK option at best. There are a lot of inherent issues when using this method. First, not all of the appointments show up in your google calendar and/or iphone. Second, there’s an issue with alerts to let you know when you have an appointment. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Third, if you change an appointment it’s a huge pain. You have to manually go in to your google calendar and delete the old appointment. I don’t know about everyone else, but I have appointments change on a daily basis and this is way too big of a hassle to deal with every time something changes. As much as I like the iphone, I’m being pushed more and more toward blackberry for business reasons.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
DJ:
You’re right – there are a lot of shortcomings in terms of true synchronization back to GroupWise from the iPhone with this method. Without access to an Exchange server and with really just needing to be able to check up on my schedule from my iPhone (and continue to do my updating and scheduling from GroupWise), this method was a huge step forward for me over manually typing in appointments. It may not be the solution for everyone as you point out, but I wanted to share it as it’s been a big help to me
June 17th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I use a palm pre, I have been looking into this alot as well lately, my calender changes daily and most appointments I make myself on my phone (which is my true calender) and this creates chaos with the office who is using my lower priority GW calender. There is a product ‘companionlink’ that states it can do wireless sync of google calender back to groupwise as well, that would fix many of the issues. Does anyone have any experience with this program?
June 19th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Ok. You are my new BFF!! This works great!
June 30th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
You have greatly simplified my life. No more double entry of events and appointments. Thank you so very much.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:54 am
What do i do about the 1400 posted appointments for the next 3 months. We use one calendar for all the department and nobody, I mean nobody here, sends appointments. Our schedulers just post the appointments. They are changed so quickly that we do not have any schedulars who stays long enough to learn the Send appointments.
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:13 am
I am currently syncing with an emulated microsoft smartphone it is true twoway synchronization with all appointments and contacts being synced
This are the steps to archive this:
1. install the emulator and get a Windows Mobile vm running with a network connection
http://www.amset.info/pocketpc/emulator.asp
2. install intellisync on the VM and configure syncing with GMS
3. create a gmail account and configure it for active sync
4. sync Windows Mobile with GMAIL using Active Sync
5. Sync Iphone with Windows mobile VM
July 7th, 2009 at 8:14 am
It looks like when you make a appointment in Google Calender and you invite your work-adress, then the appointment will also appear in Groupwise…. I’m still testing it, but I think it works…
July 7th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Is there a way to set this up so that all appts sent to me are placed into Google Calendar without having to accept it? Perhaps changing the rule from “Filed item” to “New Item”? Anyone played with these settings?
Also, is there a workaround for the recurring appt delegation/sync issue in Google Calendar? Any appts I delegate to my Gmail account that are recurring don’t sync to my iphone. (other new recurring appts that I accept sync fine though)
July 17th, 2009 at 9:30 am
This worked some, but not fully. The appointment still has to be accepted in gmail. It goes on my calendar with a question mark. I still have to accept it in Gmail. Any way around this?
July 17th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Wording correction: It goes on my Gmail Calendar with a question mark. It is waiting to be accepted. I went into the settings of Gmail Calendar and made sure it was set to: Automatically Add Invitations to my calendar. I’m going to try logging off/on gmail and see if the setting takes place.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:57 am
TH, new item will not make a difference. That’s how I had mine initially. All that does is send the appointment to your gmail account as soon as it is received in your inbox at groupwise. The same as it doings now. The only difference is with the settings stated above it sends the appointment to gmail once you actually accept the appointment. Which is really helpful. But having to accept it again in Gmail is a little redundant.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:39 am
yes, simply set the Groupwise-rule to new message, Type=Event.
That will forward all new schedules to your google-account (just tried ..)
regards,
Friedhelm.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:11 am
G – I don’t follow why you have to accept the appt in Gmail. It still syncs to the iphone calendar per instructions above. Maybe I missed something?
July 20th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Maybe it does sync to the iphone, but it has a question mark on the Google Calendar waiting for me to actually accept the appointment.
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 am
It’s a neat concept and it works. But it technically isn’t accepted on the Gmail Calendar. Which I can live with. Works like you’ve said though. It looks accepted on iPhone. And that’s the whole point.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Two-way sync is accomplished using MS Outlook (newer than 2003) as the intermediate step. Outlook will automatically sync to GW and set up to sync with Google Calendar.
I have been doing this for some time and I get very good over the air syncing with my Iphone and GW.
August 19th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I have groupwise 6.5 and followed all of the above instruction multiple times. The delegated appointments show up in my gmail inbox (I turned the filter off after a couple of attempts) but the appointments arent reflected on the google calendar.
Is there an option within gmail that I’m missing that will allow it to put these appointments directly to the google calendar?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:55 am
That looks like info from
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/18586.html
August 28th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
4not: Thanks for the direct Novell link – I wasn’t able to locate that information on their site during my search, but instead I compiled it from a handful of other sources in a consolidated manner primarily for the benefit of my coworkers. Never claimed this to be an original process – just wanted to put it all in one place
September 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Most of my appts are posted….how do I get those to sync w/ Google? It sounds like only appointments can be sync’d.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Hey !
Thanks for th etip.
However, it is not working fo rme.
Mails are sent and received into gmail’s inbox.
But no appointment is actuelly synched with the Google calendar.
Any idea ?
Thanks
September 25th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
My boss and I are having the same “Mails are sent and received into gmail’s inbox. But no appointment is actuelly synched with the Google calendar.” issue. It seems that our gmail accounts are not recognizing the appointment item type in the delegated message.
Has anyone else seen/solved this behaviour?
October 11th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Hi If I creat an event on googl calender after 5y , it didnot show up on Iphone list in calender ??
October 12th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I have this working for the most part. The rule is delegating to my gmail account and I see the deleted message in my gmail trask, but the appt doesn’t show up on my calendar. Using ‘GroupWise 6.0.4 fi that helps. Any additional tips?
October 19th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I am using GroupWise 6.5.7 and having the same problem, the emails are getting to Google mail but not being posted on the calendar, I can get the appointments to sync between the iPhone and Google mail without any problem.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Gd job!!! Thank you so much for your advice. I bought my 3G iphone a year ago. I have never dreamed that I will be able to sync my appointments on the phone… It works well and helpful….
Cheers………..
November 15th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Thank you so much! It worked perfectly! AWESOME post!!
January 4th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
The only thing missing is that it does not synch when you delete an appointment on your groupwise calendar. Any ideas?
January 21st, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Thank you so much for this post, Kevin! This is a great work-around until Novell actually lets us sync “normally”, and I agree – it’s definitely better than double-entering all of my appointments!
February 24th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
The emails are getting through but not appearing in the calendar. I got a bit lost looking on the Novell site. Any ideas greatly appreciated.