CalDAV with Leopard iCal

Revision as of 23:28, 26 March 2008 by Jrobb (talk | contribs)

Introduction

Zimbra 5.0 Supports the CalDAV standard. CalDAV is a protocol allowing calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in iCal format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections.

This allows users to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them collaboratively, synchronize between multiple users and synchronize between multiple devices. The CalDAV standard is an implementation of iCal on a WebDAV server.

When using CalDAV, all of the user's calendars are added to iCal.

Requirements

  1. Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0 RC2 or Higher
  2. MacOS 10.5 or Higher

Older MacOS

iCal on Tiger and older release only support ics import and export, not the full CalDAV. The ics import mode is not compatible with CalDAV at all, and the usage is completely different.

In order to use ics import mode, first the user needs to export the calendar folder as ics, save to a file, then import the file into the target calendar application. Using ics import mode, the changes made to the 3rd party calendar is saved as a local copy, and does not automatically synchronize with Zimbra server.

When using CalDAV client, the changes are immediately saved to the server, unless the client is run in the offline mode. There is no manual file based synchronization needed as with ics import mode.

Zimbra Connector for iSync

The Zimbra Connector for iSync syncs Zimbra calendars to iCal for Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5). However, the sync is done using SOAP and not CalDAV.

Configuration

iCal supports CalDAV principal concept, and the URL to use is simply

http(s)://<server>

Note: You must not append anything after the servername when using iCal. There is an iCal bug that will cause it to fail; ie: http://host.server.com

Using the supplied username and password it can discover the user's calendar.

For other clients, users may need to add "Calendar" at the end of the URL to point to the calendar folder. e.g.

http(s)://<server>/dav/<username>/Calendar
  1. On Leopard (10.5), open iCal.
  2. From the Menubar, choose "iCal"(Next to the Apple menu)
  3. Choose "Preferences"
  4. Choose "Accounts"
  5. Click the + (plus sign) to add an acocunt
  6. Give the account a Description
  7. Enter your Zimbra username
  8. Enter your Zimbra password
  9. Click the arrow to expand server settings
  10. Enter the Account URL in the syntax above select "add" and the Zimbra server will return the complete URL required - do not edit the URL and select "add" again if required
  1. Click Add

Resources

http://www.zimbra.com/forums

http://ietf.osafoundation.org/caldav/

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