We are a Macintosh Computer Consulting and Support Company with multiple techs and schedulers. We use FM-iCal-Connector to connect FileMaker to our Kerio Mailserver via iCal.

With FM-iCal we have been able to provide realtime appointment updates to our techs via their iphones and laptops.

Whenever a scheduler adds an appointment in FileMaker a corresponding event is immediately created for the tech in his calendar in iCal using the FM-iCal-Connector. iCal sends the event to the Kerio Server which in turn pushes the event out to the techs iPhone together with a link to Google Maps for the location.

We use alarms on events to notify techs of last minute appointments or changes to appointments. This eliminates the need for us to have to call or send an email and ask them to respond back so we know they got the message. Now when we make a last minute change an alarm goes off on their phone they pull up the appointment and see changes or see that a last minute appointment has just been added.

Techs can also make changes to how much time they actually spend onsite right on their phones in iCal. These changes are then sent back to the Kerio server. When the tech logs into the database at the end of the day FM-iCal Connector queries for changed events and updates the appointments in the database with the changed times / additional notes / etc…