Travel tech for the Mac user
 

So I have been working for my current employer for ~6 months and it has required a lot more travel than I am used to in the past. All the employees schedule their own trips, book their hotels, book their car rentals, which is great because it adds a lot of flexibility, but it costs a lot of time. So I have been trying to examine all my options to save some time.

It seems to be a bit more difficult to integrate cost saving techniques because I use a Mac laptop, Outlook 2011 to manage my calendar and emails, and I am using an Andriod phone for now (waiting for the iPhone 5 and SMIME encryption).

I tried TripIt and it's nice that it auto feeds into the app and you can subscribe to iCal. But it seems that TripIt, along with others only have iCal options and nothing is really supported in Outlook 2011.

I have been considering taking the drastic step and just migrate over to iMail and iCal, but I haven't quite make that step yet and I am not sure if it's just my familiarity with Outlook (I've used some iteration of it since 1997) or just an uneasiness of combining personal use applications for corporate work.

Anyone facing the same dilemmas as I am?

Welcome to Flyertalk!

I am in almost exactly the same situation. The difference is that I have an assistant who copies stuff manually to my Outlook calendar. But it is a time sink I would like to eliminate. I actually spent a couple hours last night trying to get my Trip It or Worldate accounts to do this. I can get the TripIt feed to show up on my iPhone but it doesn't make it to Outlook. I also have an Android phone but can't get any sync there either. My Blackberry would sync with Worldmate and put it in Outlook but since I replaced it with the Android phone that isn't an option.

Does anyone know how to sync iCal with Outlook? Or iCal with an Exchange server? Thanks.

Well you can add an Exchange calendar "feed" into iCal by just adding another account, and designating it as an Exchange source. It will ask for your credentials.

It seems that iMail / iCal / Address Book are all very capable apps that can all sync with exchange. It also seems to make sense if you are using something like TripIt that something as simple as another feed into your iCal can be a one source as least on the Mac.

Getting that all to your mobile source seems to be a little more tricky. It looks like you need to run a combo of apps, like TripIt, and your regular suite of apps. In my case I run Touchdown on my Andriod since I need SMIME since most of our emails are encrypted. I'll be glad when it iOS 5 comes out.

WORST comes to WORST...

You can set up Bootcamp and install Windows on your Macbook...

:td::td::td:

What about using gMail and gCal? They both have offline options now, and will push to your Android phone.

Well I have a VM Fusion Win7 instance just in case, but I am not going to do that since these are everyday apps and it's just not an efficient work flow to have.

I already use gMail and Google Calendar for my personal items, but this is not a feasible solution for my corporate calendar and mail needs. However that does work if I switch over to iCal+iMail+Address Book.

I am experimenting right now with that very option, try to do it for a couple weeks and see how I feel about it.

How would Windows help? I have a PC in my office I could use and mY assistant uses a PC so I could set something up on one of those if need be. Thanks.

You can subscribe to ical calendars in outlook.

http://www.tripit.com/uhp/calendarInfo

You won't get 2-way sync for this, but for the tripit feed, you should be making any changes via tripit anyway. As long as you subscribe to it properly in outlook, you will see all the changes in outlook also. (just as you can subscribe to tripit's ical feed in google calendar, ical, etc.)

The instructions on tripit's page are for outlook 2007. Here's the instructions for Outlook 2010 (scroll down to the "Add an Internet Calendar Subscription to Outlook") http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ou...443.aspx?CTT=1

If you want it all in your personal calendar then you would have to use import. I think the separate calendar is better since any changes to your trip made at tripit.com would be reflected automatically in outlook. But that's up to you of course.

-David

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Thanks. But is doesn't seem to work in Outlook 2011 or transfer the Tripit info to Exchange.

I don't know what you mean by "doesn't work". It worked fine for me in outlook 2007, and I seriously doubt that uSoft would drop that support. Also, did I miss where you wanted/needed to sync the tripit calendar to your exchange server? I thought the request was to be able to see the tripit calendar (and changes to it) in outlook.

It's not going to transfer anything to your exchange server. If you want to do that, you would need to statically import the tripit calendar entries into your personal calendar in outlook, and I suppose that would get synced to your exchange server. They have instructions for that also, but I don't think it's a good way to do it because you won't pick up changes to your trip. (plus I can't help you with that as I don't have an exchange server).

Anywhere you view your calendar you can subscribe to both calendars. Take a look at using multiple calendars. You can view them together, and use both for scheduling etc. You just subscribe once, anywhere you use outlook, and you are done. Your assistant would also need to do that for his/her view of your calendars.

I do the same thing with google calendar as my personal calendar + my tripit feed anywhere I view my calendar. tripit's entries are never really imported into my personal calendar either. But I have one view with everything, no matter where I view my calendar.

-David

Unfortunately, Outlook 2011 (Outlook for Mac) doesn't have native iCal sync support built in.

Back in April/May Microsoft released an update for Office 2011 that provided "Sync Services". What this allows is for Outlook to sync with native Apple Mail, iCal, and Contacts on the Mac.

What I've done is setup my TripIt iCal feed in Apple iCal. Then I setup Sync Services in Outlook (Preferences, Sync Services) auto sync the TripIt iCal feed into Outlook. It's a pain, but it works.

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Are you able to tell if it propagates from Outlook to Exchange? Thanks.

No, it doesn't propagate into Exchange, only Outlook itself.

Thanks for the correction. I should have realized that the mac version is different from the version I've used.

It kind of sucks that you can't just import an ical feed with a url like you can in the windows version.

-David

Isn't it odd that the BlackBerry "just works?" ;)

Well, in fact it doesn't work over WiFi for some odd reason. Even odder that the only sync platform Worldmate made was Blackberry. Not a very forward looking decision.