Question

Does anyone know how to synchronize SalesForce calendar with Google Calendar without using 3rd party apps or services like Appirio?

Any guidance or links to websites would be appreciated, preferably using .Net as a language and using API’s of both Google and Salesforce. I have seen both of the API’s reference (so dont give me the links of Google and Sales force API) and what I need is some sort of example how this is done, in a domain level and not on a user level.

Answer 1

Not sure what you mean by domain level since all events must have an owner but if you mean all events regardless of the owner then yes, you can do it.

I had a requirement for a one-way sync of SF events to blackberry users on the field. What I did was:

1. I created a web service handler for Event salesforce object
2. I made a workflow in the salesforce to send an outbound message when event is created/updated
3. The web service handler (done in c# and hosted on corporate network) receives a call from SF servers, reads Event data
4. Handler generates an ICS attachment (iCalendar, see RFC 2445 and 5545) and sends it to BB user via BB server.

In your case you would probably replace 3/4 with creatioon of google calendar entry as per GoogleAPI doc and using .NET client lib. If a bidirectional sync is required make sure you keep a unique ID of the event on both sides to avoid duplication. You will probably have to create a periodic pull from Google calendar to see if anything new came along, I don’t think there is a way to receive notifications similar to SF outbound messages.