How I Integrated my Fastmail Calendar with Evernote

[mackid1993 730]

As a Fastmail user, I felt a little left out with the calendar integration being limited to Google Calendar. I found that you can mirror your non-Google calendar to Google Calendar using an .ics subscription but simply adding an .ics subscription doesn't work very well as it only updates every 24 hours, so changes take a while to reflect in Evernote. I found a pretty well supported Google Apps script that copies an .ics subscription on an interval (by default every 15 minutes) over to a calendar in Google Calendar. The Google Apps Script is located at this GitHub repository.

To use the script, click on "If you want to use this, please copy the script from here". This will direct you to the script.google.com interface, where you can copy the script to your account.

Follow the script's instructions to make a copy and authorize it with your Google account. Edit the options to include the link to your .ics subscription (Fastmail can generate this) and specify the Google Calendar where events will be copied.

Since Evernote doesn't write to the calendar the Google Calendar side being read only doesn't really matter. Any changes made to the calendar should appear in Evernote quickly depending on the sync interval set. This approach is compatible with any provider that allows calendar sharing as an .ics file, including Outlook I believe.

The only downside the calendar link is accessible to anyone with the link. If your calendar contains sensitive information, this may not be the best option but .ics subscriptions are read-only, so even if someone gets the link, they can't compromise your account or alter any details. In most cases the obscurity of the link should be enough to ensure privacy.

I hope this helps someone else!

 

[mackid1993 730]

Fastmail is popular amongst those who use a custom domain with their email and value privacy. They aren't an extremely common email provider for those not in technical circles. This is applicable for any non Google Calendar/GMail user who many want to integrate their calendar with Evernote, this could even work with Outlook email. As I use a custom domain and have a general distrust of big tech I prefer to host my email with a smaller provider that doesn't sell my data to advertisers.

[Jon/t 1,293]

On 9/20/2023 at 12:49 AM, mackid1993 said:

I hope this helps someone else!

 

It will. Nice tip. I do something similar with my Zoho calendar where I use Zoho Flow to push events to Google Calendar and then Evernote picks up on them.

I would love CALDAV to be incorporated but I think that's probably one feature too far😂 A lot of folks I've seen try to integrate calendars via CALDAV have had a nightmare!

[mackid1993 730]

9 minutes ago, Jon/t said:

It will. Nice tip. I do something similar with my Zoho calendar where I use Zoho Flow to push events to Google Calendar and then Evernote picks up on them.

I would love CALDAV to be incorporated but I think that's probably one feature too far😂 A lot of folks I've seen try to integrate calendars via CALDAV have had a nightmare!

Fastmail is great because they use open standards for everything. They are even active with the IETF and have developed a new open standard called JMAP, RFC8620. 

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8620

There is no need for Evernote to support Fastmail, just for them to support Caldav or even adding an ics subscription. I'm not surprised @PinkElephant has never heard of them as they are not a household name, but in the IT circles I'm in they are a major player. I know many tech savvy people that use their services. 

For now this GApps script works really great for those of us who don't want Google to have full control of their lives.

 

[PinkElephant 8,119]

Unfortunately the „tech savvy circles“ don’t pay your rent, and put no food on the table.

Most of this niche players are important to move technology ahead, but themselves fail in reaching a relevant market position.

[mackid1993 730]

35 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Unfortunately the „tech savvy circles“ don’t pay your rent, and put no food on the table.

Most of this niche players are important to move technology ahead, but themselves fail in reaching a relevant market position.

As someone who makes a good living in Information Technology I completely disagree with this statement. Moreover, Fastmail has been around for more than 20 years doing email and they are quite good at it. They aren't a niche player. Thank you for your input but I think we are straying from the spirit of this post which is to give those who don't use Google calendar a way of integrating their provider of choice with Evernote. My intention was to only share my experience with the community in the interest of helping others. I personally use Fastmail but this will work with any provider that uses the very popular ics standard for publishing calendars.

Moreover, I also don't really appreciate the overall tone of your posts. I'm simply trying to help other users. If this isn't helpful to you personally you don't necessarily need to make that known. It may help someone else down the line.

[PinkElephant 8,119]

Being around for 20 years and having a market share below 0.05% is the commercial description of a plain failure - even if the fan base may see it differently.

But OK, we really stray a little OT.

[mackid1993 730]

4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Being around for 20 years and having a market share below 0.05% is the commercial description of a plain failure - even if the fan base may see it differently.

But OK, we really stray a little OT.

I don't appreciate your tone. It comes across to me as slightly rude. If this isn't helpful to you, I'm sorry. I just am looking to help other users and share my findings with the community. Fastmail's market share simply isn't relevant to point out. They certainly are not a commercial failure, you simply haven't heard of them.