[Erik T]

Hi,

A disclaimer first: I am not really a Zimbra user yet... We currently only have one(1) test account at a "Zimbra service provider" to verify that it may meet our demands. :-)

As the company's only Mac user (so far), I have had to do my own testing using our test account, and for the most part it seems to be working really nice (including iCal two-way sync, the alpha version of the Desktop AJAX client etc.).

However, I'm having one problem that we have only been able to get our service provider to say "should be working", and that is to get the attendee availability lookup to work in iCal 3.0 (Leopard). Let me describe what I have done, and what does and does not work:

• I have added the account in iCal for the Zimbra calender server - works great
• I have added the Zimbra server in Directory Utility (had to do it manually), and this makes it possible to search and find any user in the Global Address List (GAL) on "our" instance of the Zimbra server, using the Apple Address Book (when in the Directories group, at least)
• It seems that outside the Address Book, searching for - or autocompleting - a user in the GAL, does not work however. E.g. when composing an email, it doesn't search (or at least it doesn't find any results) in the GAL. This applies to Mail.app, and iCal.
• However, if I also add the Zimbra server to the LDAP tab of the Preferences for the Address Book (even with an empty search base!), the email recipient auto-completion works perfectly.
• Still, in iCal the following actions don't work satisfactory:
  1. Click on the Zimbra calendar in the calendar list, to make it the active calendar
  2. Double click on a day/time to add a new appointment, and name it
  3. Click on the appointment and click Edit.
  4. Click on "Add attendees...".
  5. Select Window -> Address Panel to open the address panel
  6. Select Window -> Availability Panel to open the availability panel
  7. Search for a known user in the address panel, or start writing a Zimbra user's name in the Attendees: field.

The result of these actions is this:

• In my experience, "0 users" is the permanent message in the Availability Panel, and searching for known users doesn't return any records either.
• Similarily, none of the known user addresses on "our" test Zimbra server will resolve/auto-complete in the Attendees: field.
• If I enter a complete, known-to-be-valid email address for a user in the GAL, iCal thinks it's ok (just as with any other email address), but in the availability panel (where both our test account and the other attendee is now listed) no availability information is seen (it seems that both users' calendars are completely blank).

And what I expected was this:

• That, at least when searching in the Address Panel, but possibly also just upon opening it, all the users in the GAL are available.
• That when a valid user account that is in the GAL is entered as an attendee (at least when dragged-and-dropped from the Address Panel, but possibly also when just written/auto-completed in the Attendees field), the user's availability information is seen in the Availability Panel.
• Optionally, that when writing an address that is in the GAL into the Attendees field, it auto-completes, just like in Mail.app.

One final note: The same thing (scheduling a meeting by searching for attendees' availability) works in Outlook using the Outlook Connector, and in the web interface, so I believe that the other users' calendars are "suffienctly public" for this to be working.

So, my questions are:

• Did I miss any settings or preferences?
• Is this a known bug (didn't find anything directly related in my bugzilla search), a known not-to-be-implemented feature or otherwise something known?
• Are there any other workarounds beside the obvious, "just use the web client and/or Desktop AJAX client"?

Oh, and the server is Zimbra 5.0.1, while I'm on Mac OS X 10.5.1.

Thanks for your help, and sorry for the long first post... :-)

- Erik