Some of the Enterprise Integration options -- in the iPhone 2.0 software -- look pretty appealing to those of us who work in a Microsoft Exchange environment. And though Apple's new software has arrived, it will no doubt take many companies some time before they obtain the initiative to select and implement an Exchange deployment.

So I began to explore ways to simulate at least some of that kind of integration, using software that I already had available to me.

In particular, I wanted to keep track of all of my meetings and appointments for work (managed in Exchange) using iPhone's Calendar application. But, of course, I didn't want to have to enter them manually, either directly into my phone, or into iCal on my Mac and then sync to iPhone.

The solution I came up with takes advantage of some of the features in MS Outlook, Gmail, and also a very handy third-party iPhone application called NemusSync, written by Sangwook Han.

The overall strategy is as follows: when a new meeting request arrives in my Outlook inbox, forward it to my Gmail account, import it into Google Calendar, and then, finally, use NemusSync to synchronize iPhone with Google Calendar.

I know, I know: it sounds like a terrible kluge and an awful lot of steps. However, after setting it up, only one piece requires any manual intervention.

Setup Step 1:
Starting in MS Outlook, create a rule that forwards all meeting requests to your Gmail account.

From the Tools menu, select Rules and Alerts...

Create a new, blank rule, and follow the Rules Wizard steps to create a rule for arriving messages that are meeting invitations/updates. Enter your Gmail account as the address to forward to.

Setup Step 2:
There's (almost) no Step 2.

If the Gmail account entered in Step 1 is linked to a Google Calendar, Gmail is smart enough to recognize the text inside the forwarded Outlook message as a calendar event, and it will automatically create a fully populated entry in the linked Google Calendar.

The only reason I included a Step 2 at all is to point out a couple problems I encountered when trying this for the first time.
- If Outlook appends a complicated enough or long enough signature file to forwarded messages, Gmail gets confused and fails to recognize appointments as potential calendar events.
- I got tired of receiving notifications in two inboxes for every meeting request (Outlook *and* Gmail), and so I created a filter in Gmail to automatically archive the duplicate. It was a bit tricky, but I eventually found some common text which the filter could use to identify just these types of Outlook messages.

Setup Step 3:
Configure NemusSync.

With NemusSync installed on iPhone, it is perfectly straightforward to link it with a Gmail account and configure it to download and/or upload events to and from iPhone's Calendar application.

After these setup steps are completed, it is here, in NemusSync, where the only manual action is required. You'll have to launch NemusSync and tap the [Sync Calendars] button whenever you want updates from Outlook/Google Calendar to show up on iPhone.

(Note: Because NemusSync can be run from the command line, even this step can be automated. See the NemusSync website for instructions.)

Granted, this limited type of synchronization is no replacement for ActiveSync, and, indeed, some data is lost in translation (for instance, neither Google Calendar nor NemusSync retain any alerts that may have been on the original message); however, this little kluge has helped me -- once or twice, when I've missed my train -- to decide just how much groveling I'd have to do when I finally got to the office...