iSync / CalDAV functionality

[Meaulnes]

All,

I am relatively new to Zimbra, and up until this week I had loved everything that I had seen. I am the IT manager for a medium sized business, and I am looking at dumping our current Mail solution in favor of Zimbra. We have moved from using the Community Edition to using a Network Trial for our testing.

My organization has a large percentage of users that are Mac users, as am I. So one thing that is very important to me is that the functionality on the PC and on the Mac be equivalent (or reasonably close).

To that end, I decided to install the iSync connector and get everything set up, and it is this very connector that is prompting this question. I am using Leopard as my OS (10.5.5 to be specific), and I have the iSync connector version 5.0.2533 installed. (My sys admin assures me that the network trial that we are running is the newest one available).

From reading around on the forums, it would appear that CalDAV has been adopted as the primary method for iCal syncing in Leopard. However, I am not able to make changes to my calender using iCal. The calendars are available in iCal, and if I make a change in the Ajax UI, it will be available in iCal.

So, my question: Should I be able to make changes to my Zimbra Calendars in iCal? Also, as I have been researching this issue, I have seen several screen shots where it would appear that the end user is allowed to select exactly which calendars they would like to sync, but I am only getting an option to use CalDAV. There is no list of Calendars. Is this to be expected?

[dpmchris]

It is true that CalDAV is default for Leopard users.

In my tests, I can make changes to any events in my calendars except ones that were created by others inviting me to meetings. I can watch things get shifted around in Zimbra <-> iCal (though it helps to use the iCal 'Refresh' command) the only other limitation that I can see is that it really helps to have iCal open all the time, even if it is just lurking in the background. I am not entirely sure why you are having calendar editing problems as it simply works on our production system, so I am limited in my ability to help.

To answer your last issue, you can't really sync local calendars from iCal to Zimbra via CalDAV. HOWEVER, I have had great results using iCal's File > Export to create a .ics file of the local calendar, and then importing it into Zimbra via Preferences > Calendar > Import, and then sharing it back out through the Sync connector.


Good luck,
Chris @ DPM

[dpmchris]

I left out a final detail on the Local > Zimbra calendar tip: once you have put your ics file up to Zimbra and shared it back out via CalDAV, you will notice you have duplicate calendars. I delete the local ones and all is working well.

If you have any fears regarding the calendar integrity you can save backups of calendars in Zimbra using the export commands, and you can also backup your calendars in iCal using the Export command. (I believe iCal's 'Backup' command only backs up local calendars. I would need to test.)