raining ktula » 3.0 beta

iPhone 3.0 beta 1: Weird google calendar CalDAV time zone issue

ktula — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:38:13 +0000

I have a feeling iPhone 3.0 beta does not know how to handle UTC time. For the past few days, i have been trying to get my work calendar in Outlook 2003 (Windows) to show up on my iPhone. I do not want to use iTunes to sync up the information because the last time i did it, it messed up my non-work calendar. So i thought that i could export my Outlook calendar into a CSV file and then import it into Google Calendar. When when i enable the CalDAV calendar i set up on my iPhone, all the events in my Outlook calendar will be synchronized to my iPhone. It’s easier said that done.

This is how i exported Outlook 2003 calendar:

In Outlook, click on File and select “Import and Export…”.
Choose “Export to a file” and click on “Next”.
Choose “Comma Separated Values (Windows)” and click on “Next”.
Choose “Calendar” and click on “Next”.
Enter an appropriate name for the CSV file and finally, click on “Finish”.

This is how i imported the CSV file into Google Calendar:

Click on “Settings”.
Click on “Calendars”.
Click on “Import calendar” and select the CSV file.

The Outlook calendar events showed up correctly in my Google Calendar. However, when i enabled the Google CalDAV calendar on my iPhone, the events from Outlook calendar were 7 hours late. For most, if not all, of the Outlook events, the end date/time were completely messed up. For example, i had an event that was supposed to start at 1500 and end at 1530 on Google Calendar. The same event on iPhone started at 2200 and ended at 0530 the next day. So i exported just that event from Google Calendar into a ICS file. Opening the ICS file with any text editor, i could see the following two relevant properties:

DTSTART:20090327T220000Z DTEND:20090327T223000Z

This iCalendar date/time format is apparently in UTC, as indicated by the “Z” at the end of the date/time. The DTSTART property has a start date/time of March 27 2009 2200 UTC and that kind of explains why it showed up on iPhone’s calendar with a start time of 2200. However, the DTEND property shows an end date/time of March 27 2009 2230. The end date/time for this event on my iPhone was March 28 2009 0530!

For some reason, iPhone’s calendar is not able to recognize the UTC date/time. For events that i created in Google Calendar, they show up correctly on iPhone’s calendar. The really weird thing is when i exported those events and re-imported them back into Google Calendar, those same events would show up with incorrect date/time! Originally, i thought i could fix the Outlook events by exporting them from Google Calendar and editing the ICS file with a script to change all the UTC date/time to local date/time. However, it is now apparent to me that iPhone’s calendar will have a problem with any non-native Google calendar event. That is, any calendar event that is imported into Google calendar will have a problem with date/time being off on iPhone’s calendar.

You may be wondering why i did not use the native Google’s Calendar Sync tool for Windows to synchronize my Outlook calendar with Google’s. I did. I gave up after playing with it for several hours. Only a small fraction of my Outlook calendar showed up on Google Calendar and i could not figure out why the rest of my Outlook calendar refused to show up.

iPhone 3.0 beta 1: CalDAV observations

ktula — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:04:26 +0000

I can’t seem to determine how the Calendar app in iPhone pulls the information from Google’s CalDAV server. There were times when events i created in Google calendar showed up on my iPhone just seconds later. And there were times when the events took forever to appear. There is no setting on iPhone 3.0 beta to configure the pull interval. I am not sure if Google CalDAV is push-enabled.
For some of the events that were deleted on Google Calendar but still remained on iPhone’s Calendar for several days, the only way that i have found so far to get rid of them is to disable Google CalDAV calendar on iPhone and then re-enable it. Disabling and re-enabling Google CalDAV calendar on iPhone forces its calendar to sync up with Google’s CalDAV server.
Similarly, events created on iPhone’s Calendar appear almost immediately on Google Calendar at times but on other occasions, it could take ages.
Events created in Google Calendar appear as read-only on the iPhone. There is no way to edit or delete the events.
Screenshot of an event being created in iPhone’s calendar. To specify the event be a Google CalDAV event, just select the Google Calendar in the “Calendar” field:
Events created on iPhone’s Calendar as a Google Calendar event remain modifiable until several minutes after the events appear on Google Calendar, as evident by the “Edit” button. Moments after the iPhone-created event appears in Google Calendar, the event will become read-only on iPhone’s calendar, with the disappearance of the “Edit” button and the appearance of a “Invitation from” field.
While the events are still modifiable, deleting the event on iPhone calendar will remove the event from Google Calendar. Strangely enough, the event that i deleted from iPhone’s Calendar showed up even when the event was removed from Google Calendar.
If events created on iPhone as Google Calendar have not been synchronized with Google Calendar, when Google CalDAV is disabled and re-enabled, these events are removed from iPhone’s calendar.
As of now in the first version of 3.0 beta, iPhone’s Calendar appears to support only the main Google Calendar. If you have several Google Calendars, only the default one will show up.
Google Calendar color does not carry over to iPhone’s Calendar.
A Invitation button on the bottom right of iPhone’s Calendar is available upon successful configuration of CalDAV.

iPhone 3.0 beta 1: Configure Google Calendar CalDAV

ktula — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:47:36 +0000

Update:
The instructions listed below are obsoleted. They are meant for iPhone 3.0 beta 1. For instructions on configuring Google Calendar CalDAV on iPhone 3.0 (released on 6/17/2009), please refer to this.

One of the many newly added features in iPhone 3.0 beta is support for CalDAV. In theory, configuring CalDAV on my iPhone should allow me to sync up my Google Calendar over the air. However, i had not been able to get it working until today. In order to configure CalDAV on the iPhone, you will need some information about the CalDAV server. Since there was setup information for configuring CalDAV on the iPhone on Google, i found instructions on configuring CalDAV on Mozilla Sunbird. The account information i supplied to my iPhone seemed to be correct as i went through the account validation with no error. However, i was not able to get events in my Google Calendar to show up.

Justingb, a commenter at the macrumors.com forum, pointed out the correct server address.

Here are the steps to configure Google CalDAV on iPhone 3.0 beta (7A238j):

Go to “Settings”. Then select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”. Next, select “Add Account…”
Select “Other”
Select “Add CalDAV Account”
Enter information as shown below. When you hit the “Save”, it will fail. Just ignore it and go to the next step.
The error message that you will see initially.
Use SSL: ON
Port: 443
Account URL: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[full_google_email_address]/user
If everything is configured correctly, you should see a section for Google Calendar (CalDAV) on the main Calendar screen and your Google Calendar events should show up.