Import iCal from Outlook into Drupal Calendar

Submitted by miyamoto on Tue, 11/30/2010 - 18:29

If you can’t get your Outlook calendar to publish to a place online that you can get your Drupal site to access, you can still sync Drupal to your Outlook via this manual upload method. This procedure presumes you have already made a node-based events calendar using some of KarenS’s magic. You need an event or date node type with a date field already configured and working properly. If you can add event nodes and have them populate your Calendar View, then you’re ready for this next part. For my project, I needed to be able to assign a single event to multiple spaces (rooms), so I made a taxonomy vocabulary called Spaces and set the legend colors for each term in the Calendar View. In order to import the terms and have them parse into multiple taxonomy terms rather than concatenate into one, I needed the Feeds Tamper module.  In your Outlook calendar, right-click on the desired calendar and choose ‘Save as..’ from the context menu. Save it somewhere memorable, like your desktop. 

  1. Install and configure Date API and Calendar following KarenS’s instructions on d.o
  2. Install Feeds and enable
    1. Feeds
    2. Feeds Admin UI
    3. Feeds Import
    4. Feeds News
  3. Install and enable Feeds Tamper
  4. Install and enable iCal Parser version 6.x-2.0 or greater
  5. Make sure you have permissions to work with Feed Importers
  6. Go to admin/build/feeds
  7. Edit Feeds importer by clicking Override
  8. Use the following settings:
    1. Basic Settings > Settings
      • Edit the name to something useful, like the name of the node type you’re going to be making
      • Edit the description to something useful
      • Set ‘Attach to content type’ to Use standalone form
      • Tick ‘Import on submission’
      • Click ‘Save’
    2. Fetcher > Change
      • Select File Upload
    3. Parser > Change
      • Select iCal dateapi parser
    4. Processor > Change
      • Select Node processor
    5. Node processor > Settings
      • Set the Content type you want to create (e.g. - Date or Event)
      • Set Input format & author fields as desired.
      • Set Expiration as desired.
      • I set ‘Update existing nodes’ to Replace existing nodes
      • Click ‘Save’
    6. Node processor > Mapping
      • Use the ‘Select a source’ and ‘Select a target’ drop-downs, map your iCal fields to the local Target fields, clicking Add after each association.
      • I mapped iCal location string to Taxonomy:Spaces
  9. Go to /admin/build/feeds_tamper/add
    • Choose a name for this tamper setting. I chose ‘taxonomy explode’
    • Choose the plugin to add: Explode
    • Set the String separator to ,%s  to allow for comma-space (, ) separation
    • Click Save
  10. Go to /import
    • Choose the desired importer, click on its name
    • Click on Feeds Tamper under the Import button
    • Make sure explode is turned on for your location taxonomy field.
    • Click ‘Choose File’ and browse to the file you saved from Outlook.
    • Click ‘Import’
  11. Voila!
  12. Go take a look at your calendar View and make sure it all came in fine.