Me and Justine both use Google Apps for mail and calendars, it’s free (yes it’s free, but they would really like you to pay £30 month or something, follow that link and signup) you get loads of space and frankly I’d rarther not worry about mailservers, IMAP and dealing with spam. It’s pretty easy to setup too, upload a HTML file and set some MX records. Done.

One of the really nice features is it supports all kind of syncing options on mobile and desktop, iPhone syncs events and mail just like MobileMe. 

Today I was trying to share our calendars between the two Google Apps Domains. Not easy. First when you try to add a calendar you punch in the other email address and the sharing instantly switches to ‘free/busy’ only. Apparently this is some kind of privacy default, (the UI allows you to pick ‘Share everything’ but then reverts back). This setting lives in the adminstration panel and the option won’t change straight away, you have to do the login/logout wait around for 10 minutes dance. 

So both calendars show up in Google Apps Calendar on the web, great. How do I get that on the both iPhone, add another account? try to add the iCal URL? Nope.

Next you go to http://m.google.com on your phone. Add your Google Apps Domain in the popup, choose Google Sync, then select your device, then calendar, then finally you can select the shared calendar.

(Note if you can’t use Sync, then you’ll need to do the setup instructions a task in itself)

I know this is a complex and not everyday setup, but gosh this was difficult, and not helped by the fact that Google Calendar and Google Apps Calendar are very similar, but don’t quite work in exactly the same way.