#94 Mapping Outlook Free/Busy/Tentative/etc. to GoogleCalendar Free/Busy

[Antony Upward]

1) Windows Version: Windows 10 Pro version 1709 OS Build 16299.125
2) Outlook Version: 2016 MSO (16.0.8730.2175) 32-bit
3) CalDavSynchronizer Version 3.0.0.0
4) CalDav/Cardav Server and Version: GoogleCalendar
5) The logfile with DEBUG logs: not included at this time
6) Synchronization Report:not included at this time

Google Calendar only support two "types" of appointments "free" and "busy". Outlook as at least 5 types "free" "busy" "tentative" "out of office" "working elsewhere"

Currently Outlook CalDavSync maps Outlook Busy, Out of Office, and Working Elsewhere types to Google "Busy" type, and Outlook Free and Tenative to "Free" type.

This creates problems because "tentative" means "likely to be busy" - but yet shows up as "free". in Google and services that use Google like Doodle Meet Me

Google's own GSync connector maps all Outlook Statuses to "Busy" except for Free. See: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/156466?hl=en

This is sort of related to this earlier feature request: https://sourceforge.net/p/outlookcaldavsynchronizer/features/75/

[Antony Upward]

Sorry to be clear: would be good to provide the option of mapping Outlook "Tentative" to Google "Busy", or even make this the default with an option for the current default behaviour.

Perhaps there is a similar mis-match of appointment "types" with other CalDav Servers which also needs to be handled - not just Google?

[Alexander Nimmervoll]

You are right, tentative should be mapped to busy (exactly it is TRANSP:OPAQUE) and we also export the X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:TENTATIVE anyway so that the tentative flag doesn't get lost when syncing back to Outlook. Outlook itself exports it also this way when using the ics export.

This is just a mapping error nobody complained about yet, so no need to add a new mapping option, we will just change the default for the next release.