Busy family needs to sync

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IbelongtoGodnoman

New member
I hope I explain this well enough to understand...

I want to be able to use our newly created Google account to keep our family of 4 - and a small business - in touch with the current scheduled events. I want to create 6 calendars - 1 for the business, 1 for the family, and 1 for each family member. I want to be able to sync each Android phone to the calendars with notifications of an update to the calendar, however I only want 1 phone to get the business calendar updates. There is no need for any of the other phones to see the business calendar.

Not having a full knowledge of Gmail capabilities I'm really not sure how to approach this. If keeping everything, family and business, in one account is the right choice, or if multiple accounts would be better - but then what are the difficulties with syncing multiple accounts to an Android phone...? How are tasks handles with multiple people accessing the same account?

I have not chosen a phone but will be using Sprint as a carrier.

Any advise is welcome.
Thank you.
Lee
 
Thank you for the quick reply constellanation.

I assumed that any android phone would be able to sync to the calendar - but can multiple phone sync, and only sync calendars that pertain to a specific user?

And can you notify multiple phones when a calendar that pertains to a specific person is updated by another user?
 
Google Calendar can absolutely do what you're asking. Wife and I both have G1's and our own calendars. 2 kids also have their own Google accounts with their own calendars which Mom & I use to keep track of who needs to be where, when. Mom & I both have at least one business calendar each also, syncing to Outlook on our work desktops. We both also have sport team's events calendars we subscribe to. You can color code different calendars so you can tell what's what at a glance. Just checked, I'm subscribed to 11 different calendars. Wow that's a lot, when I look at it!

You can create new Google users (like the kids), or just new calendars. You need to share those calendars (either publicly or explicitly with specific users). When you subscribe to those Google calendars from your account, they'll show up on the Calendar app on your Android phone. You can also toggle the view of a subscribed calendar on and off as needed.

I may be making it sound more complicated than it actually is. Very simple to set up from a computer browser.

Cloud computing rocks. Makes it all possible, and accessible from any browser as well as your Android phone.
 
Yes, you can modify other people's calendars. Just fixed a double entry on my wife's for tomorrow!

Notifications, as in "something is happening in 10 minutes"? Pretty sure that no matter who's calendar an event is in, if you set a notification, everyone subscribed to that calendar will get it. Though I could be wrong, I don't tend to use notifications all that often.

If you're looking for notification that someone modified your calendar, I think you're SOL if they do it directly in your calendar. They can do it through a computer based browser as an event invitation, then it works much like Outlook where you have to accept the invitation. You can set permission levels when you invite a subscriber, so I suppose you could allow someone to view, but not modify. Pretty sure you can't do invitations through the Android Calendar app though, just through a computer based browser, not even a mobile browser. Not something I've worried about yet. The kids are too young to be messing up my calender at this point!
 
Yes I was hoping that when my wife added an event to my daughters calender, she would get a notification of the new event - or if an event had been modified. No worries, I'm sure we can work around that via email and txt.

Thanks for the help!
 
I have to agree with what the posters are saying here. Gmail and Google Calendar works perfectly for what you are asking. I have a family of 4 with numerous calendars setup to include a business calendar we all keep track of. Like the previous had mention you can set it up so certain people in your family have editing capabilities. Notifications can come as emails, alerts, txt etc... I use a free app called CalWidget from the market so it loads up a nice little 4x3 visual calendar on my phone to bring them all together. Thus everyone sees exactly all the schedules that take place throughout the week.

Google does offer a free small business environment called Google Apps to which you can set all this up as well. It allows you to use all the same google products such as gmail, calendar, talk, docs, etc.. but with the added benefit of allowing you to set up a domain and company styling.

And it's going to even get better as Android based tablets start hitting the market where you have them kickstand up on your kitchen tables with calendar waiting at your disposal. One sitting on the coffee table with Google Reader ready for purging... and another with Picasa slideshow sliding away on the fireplace mantle.
 
There's probably a way to do it within the Google calendar somehow. Just start playing with it. I know you can set up text, email and pop-up event reminders. I bet there's a way to notify your daughter that a new event has been added. I'll look around too, as I could really use that to let my wife know about stuff.
 
From the computer based Google cal you can do this:
Create a new event, put it in your daughter's calender.Add her as a guest, then she gets an email about it.She should respond, by accepting the invitation, so you know she knows about it.Unfortunately, you can't currently do the invitations from the Android calendar app. You can do invitations as above through the mobile browser access via your phone though.
 
I've used Google Apps as an admin & user for a small business, and use the regular Google stuff for the family. The only difference really, is that you have to manually set up the calendar sharing and Google Talk, when not using GApps. Using GApps, everyone on the domain is automatically shared and connected with GTalk. On Apps you still have to allow edit permission for the appropriate co-workers. Functionality is identical once you share the calendars & permissions and GTalk.

Like the tablet idea! I remember the promise of cheap tablet PC's from a decade ago. Always wanted one. As I was sitting in "my thinking spot" checking email on my G1 recently, I realized that the phone was the first fulfillment of that promise. $150-$200 Android tablets are the next step.
 
RockHead:
Are all your phones, Android phone? I have not made the phone purchases yet, I wanted to make sure all this was doable first, one of my daughters prefers the Palm Pixi, and my wife would like a Blackberry. I only want everybody to have devices that makes this whole system work to the best of it's abilities.
 
Yes, wife and I both have Androids. Daughter has some basic Samsung, she doesn't do calendar stuff at all.

I set up a former business partner's blackberry to sync with our GApps for domains, contacts and calendars. Don't know if she would have the same capabilities on the Crackberry, or your daughter on a Palm...
 
Thank you everybody - you've been very helpful!

I'm looking forward to implementing this - and the Google tablet does sound awesome. We have a home messaging center that works pretty good but if it were part of the online Google calendar and could be pushed to everybody's phone - THAT WOULD THE GREAT!!

Again - thank you. I hope to be able to offer help in this forum in the future.
 
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