We get a lot of requests to integrate Carousel’s EDS (Event Display) plug-in with Microsoft Exchange Server. Customers want to be able to show their Exchange/Outlook calendars on their Digital Signage. We currently do not have a direct data link between Carousel and Exchange. We investigated doing this a while back but working with Exchange 2003 was a nightmare, we heard that SDK for 2007 was going to be better (and I think it is) however, in the meantime we developed an iCal data adapter. The iCal data adapter is a Carousel 5.2 feature.

iCal is becoming the Internet standard for sharing calendar information. Of course Apple uses it, but other companies are catching on, like Google. Hopefully someday Microsoft will have iCal support for Exchange. In this screen-cast I’m going to show you how to use a few free tools to get your Exchange/Outlook calendar into Carousel. There are other tool available, but I chose these because they are free.

Basic steps:

• Install SyncMyCal on your desktop machine: http://www.syncmycal.com
• Create a Google Calendar account
• Sync your Outlook Calendar to Google
• Subscribe Carousel to the iCal output of your Google Calendar

Click here to view the screencast

UPDATE: Google now provides a free utility to link Outlook called Google Calendar Sync, this would replace SyncMyCal.

UPDATE 2: I have been talking with customers that say there is a direct way to get iCal out of Exchange Server 2008. I’ll investigate this and make another screencast about it.