iSync - where is feature set description / documentation?

[glawrie]

I am sure I am missing something obvious - but I've not been able to find any sensible documentation on the iSync / Mac OS X client support in Zimbra. I have found out that whatever the support is, it is only available in the Professional Edition, but I've not found any description of what this support provides.

Where can I find such information?

[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by glawrie

I am sure I am missing something obvious - but I've not been able to find any sensible documentation on the iSync / Mac OS X client support in Zimbra. I have found out that whatever the support is, it is only available in the Professional Edition, but I've not found any description of what this support provides.

Where can I find such information?

Essentially you can sync Calendars (iCal) and Contacts (Addressbook) from and to your Zimbra account. It can also utilize Sync services with the newest revisions of Entourage, but in a somewhat limited form (one calendar if I remember correctly) It is very easy to setup and syncing can be done in the background. The tool becomes a System Preference and is point and click to setup. I use it every day and love it.

Greg

[Michael_S]

I'm using a Zimbra 4.0 server and the iSync Connector v0914 on Mac OS 10.4.7/10.4.8.

Two issues have come up:

Contact syncing:
- There seems to be a limit of 3 email addresses.
- Pictures are not supported.
- "My Card" is not supported (distinction between public/private items)

iCal events:
- timezones/DST are not handled correctly

I sent an event from a Mac, in TZ "America/Chicago". The iCal file contained a VTIMEZONE definition with thee DST switch events (most recent past, upcoming, and next). Zimbra lost the most recent past, and hence the event's TZ offset was undefined. It seemed to just make up an offset, variously for EDT and PDT. The Zimbra server is set to the old CST/CDT definition, rather than the "zoneinfo" style "Region/City" version.

Both the sync and the iCal did not produce any error messages, which makes it dangerous.


Regards, Michael

[KevinH]

We will be releasing an updated beta in a few weeks that will improve many things. It's much faster for both initial sync and delta sync. Better support for shared and mounted (.ics) calendars. Timezone fixes and better status messages during sync.

Zimbra itself only supports 3 email addresses per contact and we don't support picture so the iSync support is only what Zimbra supports. Not sure what you mean by public/private. Can you give me a use case here?

[Michael_S]

We will be releasing an updated beta in a few weeks that will improve many things. It's much faster for both initial sync and delta sync. Better support for shared and mounted (.ics) calendars. Timezone fixes and better status messages during sync.

That's good news. My organization is testing the Zimbra Pro version, and we are interested in good cross-platform support to provide a viable alternative to the incumbent system[s].

Zimbra itself only supports 3 email addresses per contact and we don't support picture so the iSync support is only what Zimbra supports.

Hmm - the "3 emails" looks like an arbitrary design decision, fairly hardwired down to field names. What happened to the Zero-One-Infinity rule?

Not sure what you mean by public/private. Can you give me a use case here?

Apple AddressBook 4.0 supports a "My Card" feature, whereby:

You can select which information on your card you want to share with your contacts when you send them your vCard.
(AddressBook 4.0 Help, apple.com)

I attach a "normal" and a "restricted" version of the same card, as vcf.txt, and screenshots of the matching edit views. Obviously, in the exported card, there is no trace of the private information, but the Apple Sync framework clearly supports syncing this information -- I understand both Apple's .mac (which I don't use), and thirdparty software (which I do and where I know for sure) support syncing this feature.


Regards, Michael