#freebusy

I'm a busy fellow at home and at work. To keep it all straight, I have multiple calendars from multiple clients and a separate 'home' calendar. It has been a long-standing annoyance that client A looks at my calendar on their mail system and sends me a meeting request, only to have it rejected by me later because I was already committed to client B at that time. I can see all of these calendars roll-up in iCal, but my various clients can't see my full, combined free/busy status. Also, it's a real drag to have to duplicate out-of-office placeholders for my dentist appointment on every one of my calendars just in case someone decides to send me a must-appear-in-person meeting for before 8AM. Seriously, it happens.

What I would really want is a way to publish all of my appointments from all of my various calendars as private events to a single master calendar, and then from within each of those various calendars, subscribe to the master feed. That way, all of my calendars would show accurate free/busy status, but the details wouldn't appear for client B, for example, to snoop on my assignments for client A.

As I said, this has been mostly an annoyance--little more than an academic question until now. But the academic problem must now be solved because Mrs. Well Known Fact joins the digital generation this week as she hits the ground running with an iPod Touch and its integrated calendar. As the kids get older and their schedules become more complicated, some technology was in order.  I want to publish my combined free/busy status for Mrs. Well Known Fact to easily see if I'm available to take her call or instead stuck midway through a marathon client meeting. But I can't share with her the actual details of the events in the calendars because that would be a client confidentiality breach, a violation of Federal law, or both.

Anyone dealing with this problem successfully?

While you're putting on your thinking cap, keep in mind that I am dealing with multiple Microsoft Exchange instances, a few MobileMe-based calendars, several Gmail accounts, and there's a LotusNotes calendar in the mix, too. I've tried several permutations that *almost* work, but I can't seem to avoid a key stumbling block: I can create a published calendar from Google or Exchange that provides only free/busy information, but the iOS Calendar ignores appointments with a duration and no details--exactly what I'm trying to achieve. The online version of these calendars look great, but the version in the iOS App is useless.

Maybe time for an alternative calendar app? I'm open to the possibilities.

Your suggestions are invited--even if they are only partial solutions. Thanks, everyone.