I was very excited that iOS 4 would include support for multiple exchange accounts. Previously, I had my phone syncing with google mobile sync as an exchange service and my work exchange account synced as an imap service. This allowed me to sync email, calendar, and contacts from google and email from work. However, when someone invited me to a meeting at work, I could not open the invite b/c of the limitations of the iPhone’s mail app when hooked into an imap account.
To sync my work and personal calendars and contacts, I purchased gsyncit, which is cheap, regularly updated, and works well.
I thought that by upgrading to iOS 4, I could get rid of gsyncit. However, that’s not the case. The iPhone stores the data for each of the apps in a separate store and does not merge / sync them. So, my phone now had double contacts and calendar entries, which was a bummer. I was getting two alerts for every meeting. I want my contacts and calendar to be the same on google and exchange, so having my personal items on my personal calendar and work items on work calendar is undesireable to me. Additionally, there are some other calendars that I display on my google calendar (like the Red Sox schedule, holidays, etc) that I would like to have on my phone. If you have other calendars displayed in your gcal, you can go to http://m.google.com/sync and choose which ones you want to display on your mobile device.
So, here is what I did:
- I continue to use gsyncit.
- In the calendar app, I disable the display of my personal calendar but display the other calendars that I want to view.
- In the settings app, I disable the contacts from my work account.
Now things are happy. My calendar and contacts sync and I get only one set of them on my phone. I also now get meeting invites correctly.