O365 to Google calendar sync template

[jeffparker]

There is a template called "Sync Office 365 Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar and Excel (Business)" at https://australia.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/galleries/public/templates/7cf04fa1ca524da88c16d4099be8fd..., which I am trying to make work.

The template library says it is "By Microsoft Flow Community" and is described as:

When an event is added, updated or deleted in Office 365 Outlook Calendar, update the Google Calendar and the Excel Online(Business) spreadsheet as per the action selected. The Excel Online(Business) spreadsheet must have the following columns: OutlookCalendarId, GoogleCalendarId.

The trouble is that there is no documentation about how to set up the Excel spreadsheet, and I've spent hours trying different things but am getting no where.

Does anyone know anything about this template?

[Pstork1]

Create a blank spreadsheet in OneDrive for Business with a blank table containing two columns.  The columns are 'Outlook CalendarId' and 'Google CalendarId'.  Then point the Flow at that Table in that spreadsheet.  

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @jeffparker,

If you use the template Sync Office 365 Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar and Excel (Business), you might create a table in an empty Excel file with columns OutlookCalendarId, GoogleCalendarId, others columns according to your requirements. 

Do you want to find a way to get previous events in the Outlook calendar and corresponding Google calendar events for store them in the Excel file?

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[StéphaneC]

Hi,

Microsoft models do not work.
Use Geoff Hudik's here instead: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Flow-Discussion/Office-365-Calendar-sync-to-Google-Calen...

Just import it, modify the Google and Office calendar ids and it works !

Stéphane

[mordy111]

@v-litu-msft Yes! I want to find a way to get previous events in the Outlook calendar and corresponding Google calendar events for store them in the Excel file.

I can get this template working fine for new event but it fails on previously added events as they don't exist on the spreadsheet.

How can I sync the existing one?

Thanks!

[Pstork1]

To sync the existing ones you would need a different Trigger and action.  This one fires when a new event is created.  You need to find all the events within a specific range and save those IDs to the list. For that you probably need a manual trigger and the Get Events action.

[mordy111]

@Pstork1  - once i add the outlook IDs to the list will the other flow add the events to google?

[Pstork1]

You could redesign the existing Flow to do that yes, but its not going to do it automatically.  YOu need to have something happen to make it do the actions in the NEW branch of the switch statement.  That's where the Google calendar entries are created.

[jeffparker]

Thanks, but is there a space or not in the names? Both alternatives appear in different places. I've tried both in the spreadsheet, but without success.

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @jeffparker,

Does every corresponding event have a unique name?

If yes, you can use get list events of Google events first, then store them into Google events of the Excel file with columns Google events ID and Outlook event ID. After that, get the list of Outlook events, then use the filter or apply to each action to find the corresponding event, get its Event ID and store it into the Excel file.

Maybe you have to create a column named Event name in the excel file.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Pstork1]

Check the usage in the template.  When I looked it appeared that the majority of them had spaces.  I did end up changing one, I think it was in the Deleted branch.  The point is that it doesn't matter as long as the header in the table in Excel matches the name of the dynamic content used in the App.

[jeffparker]

Many thanks. I've managed to get the Flow template working now. It needed the Column Name in the Deleted path to be corrected (it was just "outlook") - perhaps the master version should be updated?

Now, as others have posted about, I need to find a way to get all the current O365 Calendar items to be copied into Google, but I'd like this done in such a way so that if I change or delete an existing O365 item, that the Flow will sync that also to Google.

I see that it is possible to "Save Calendar" in Outlook on my desktop and this can be imported to Google, but does anyone know if updates and deletes would be syncd doing this? I suspect not, but wanted to ask.

[edit: the import to Google keeps failing, so this looks like a non-starter. I found that in OWA you can save the "publish calendar" ICS file, and this does import into Google, but update/delete sync does not happen]

Or is there an existing Flow template that could be used, or easily modified to do this?

[Pstork1]

Not sure there is an existing template to sync them up and keep them synced.  Also the save functionality you are looking at will not keep them synced going forward.  Its just a snapshot in time.

[Anonymous]

This flow "Sync Office 365 Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar and Excel (Business) is very poorly documented. Nothing I try works. I created a blank spreadsheet containing the correct two columns.

But pointing the Flow at that Table in the spreadsheet is easier said than done.

The steps (in add, update, and delete event) include Excel manipulations that ask for File, Table, and Key Column (for deleting). I have no idea what to put in these. The File is clearly the Excel file name, but it also asks to add dynamic content from a drop-down list. The Table also asks me to choose from a drop-down list of items that seem to have nothing to do with my Excel file. Same for Key Column. What do I put here? Is there any step-by-step tutorial for this flow?

[Pstork1]

Its poorly documented because its old and has been removed from service, mostly because there have been changes to the underlying APIs that make it no longer effective.  Its no longer available in the Flow site and although someone has made a copy of the old template available as a .Zip its no longer supported.  So its not a surprise that it doesn't work and nothing you do fixes it. There is no template available that will do this anymore.  Nor do I know of anyone who has gotten it to work reliably.

[Anonymous]

OK, wait, let me make something clear.

The flow does work for creating an event in my Google calendar when I create an event in my Outlook calendar.

What doesn't work has nothing to do with calendars, it's the manipulation of the Excel file. By the time the flow gets to that point, it already has data for the event IDs on both calendars. All it needs to do is record them in Excel, so that the two IDs can be correlated for updates and deletions later.

This part of the flow involves solely interaction between O365 products; Google isn't even involved at this point. THAT feature is something I expect to work. But how to make it work isn't documented as far as I can tell. I cannot find any tutorial on how to add a row in a two-column Excel file to record a key-value pair that's already available, how to update one column given a key value in another column, and how to delete a row for a key value in one column.

Those are pretty basic operations. Is there a tutorial for that?

It is trivial to create a flow that adds an event to a Google calendar when an event appears on the Outlook calendar. Updates and deletions, however, would require that the IDs for each calendar be maintained somewhere. Is there a better way to do this than in an Excel file?

[Pstork1]

Here's a tutorial on how to add a row to an Excel table.

https://sharepains.com/2018/09/13/microsoft-flow-excel-add-a-row-into-a-table-without-failure/

But the point is that the template was written on old APIs.  The APIs have changed for both Google and the Microsoft products involved.  So I wouldn't expect the template to work as it is.  You may be able to get it working, but it will take re-writing a good bit of it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! That did help, a lot.

I managed to re-create the flow under discussion from scratch, using the default features available now. It sort of works.

When an Office event is created, it adds it to my Google calendar and updates Office and Google event IDs in a spreadsheet. To do this, I had to add a "convert time zone" step so that Google Calendar wouldn't return an error and stop the flow.

Updating a calendar entry seems to work OK.

I haven't gotten the 'delete' feature to work yet, though. Still testing. Tests take an unpredictable amount of time to run.

[jeffparker]

I'm very keen to see how you go with this. Please keep us posted.

[Anonymous]

So I'm totally new at this. My company just switched over from Google to O365 this week.

I think I have this new flow I made from scratch working. It's similar to the one described in the beginning of this thread, although I added an error-handling path in the 'update' part, as well as time zone conversions for Google calendar compatibility.

Is there any way to share it without including my own personal connection settings, or do I need to make a bunch of screenshots? I don't know what the "Submit as Template" option does, exactly.

Also, when I go to My Flows and click on this new flow, I see a list of 10 runs at the bottom of the page in various states, most of them "running". I don't remember running that many tests. Is there a way to remove them? Should they all be running?