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I'm working with Google Calendar(GC) and Outlook Calendar(OC) APIs.

Let's say a GC user invites an OC user to an event created in GC. When creating a new event in the OC user's calendar, the OC API creates a new event ID instead of using the existing GC event's ID. What this means is that there's no unique identifier for the two events and they might as well be different events. My application needs to connect the two events.

Currently the OC calendar API says the Id field is not writable. The GC API allows a writable event id but not for cross-calendar invites (since the event creation is happening inside the guts, is not directly called by my app).

Any ideas / suggestions? Many thanks!

Suparna Gharpure
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  • Have you checked this [SO post](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37886302/2-way-syncing-with-google-calendar-outlook)? – MαπμQμαπkγVπ.0 Jun 08 '18 at 09:49
  • Thanks for sharing! However this post does not answer my question - that of different event ids being created for the same event in different calendar providers. – Suparna Gharpure Jun 08 '18 at 11:25
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    It's normal that the IDs cannot be writable. If you tried to pass an ID, the application receiving that ID cannot guarantee that the same ID has not already been used in its application for some other event. You'll have to match on some other fields instead - e.g. same date, time, location and description, maybe same recipients, would indicate a pretty good match. You might have to indicate a level of confidence in the match depending on how many fields match. Maybe some human intervention will be needed to deal with borderline cases. – ADyson Jun 11 '18 at 14:35
  • It's not clear exactly what the use case is, so those things might not apply. Why exactly do you need to match these events to each other? Are you trying to create a sync between the two calendar applications? – ADyson Jun 11 '18 at 14:37
  • @ADyson, yes - my application integrates with both Google & Outlook calendars, so G-Calendar users of my app might send invites to users of Outlook Calendar. My application needs a single ID to identify this event. – Suparna Gharpure Jun 13 '18 at 07:16
  • I don't think it's possible, unless you force your app users to send the invite to your app (instead of directly to the other calendar user), which will then forward it on, and you can record a unifying ID in your application tie them together – ADyson Jun 13 '18 at 08:03
  • Yup, that's the alternate scenario I wanted to avoid :) I was hoping (probably foolishly) that there was something I was missing. – Suparna Gharpure Jun 13 '18 at 13:45

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