Total calendar noob has questions ...

[HW_Hack]

My apologies and thanks right up front - did some searching but could not find a post or info for my situation.

First off I'm very technical (making the mid-life career move from HW design to local IT support in a school system -- much less stress) but I'm still building my skills in networking etc. I have built many Linux boxes and a few servers. So once I can get the basic info / process down I can build on that in most technical areas. So hopefully with some guidance / pointers I can get this off the ground. But I am a total noob at group calendaring.

The environment is a large high school where I provide local IT support - we need a cheap ( i.e. open source) calendaring solution for about 40 staff members that would provide roughly the same level of functionality as MS Outlook. It only needs to be a local solution - not published to the world. And we're a mixed XP - OS X environment.

I can dedicate a P4 server to this so that is not an issue - the main issue for me is not wasting time on the wrong solution or chasing my tail. I'm already stretched thin so I need a well integrated snap together solution.

So I found this link in the Zimbra Wiki which looks very do-able and looks like it provides a local Web based solution.
Ubuntu 6.06 Server (Dapper Drake) Beginner's Install Guide - Zimbra :: Wiki

However I would also like to find a similar guide for the client based solution as that way some of our admin staff could see their calendars while off-line.
Does such a guide exist ?

I know I'm asking a lot here and I'm thankful for any guidance I can get

[soxfan]

I'm far from a calendar expert (or Zimbra expert for that matter), but I'll give you a little info since it seems a bit quiet on the forums today (probably due to the upcoming holidays.)

The environment is a large high school where I provide local IT support - we need a cheap ( i.e. open source) calendaring solution for about 40 staff members that would provide roughly the same level of functionality as MS Outlook. It only needs to be a local solution - not published to the world. And we're a mixed XP - OS X environment.

Zimbra is far more than a calendaring solution. Think of it more in terms of a collaboration suite, like Microsoft Exchange. You may be able to play "fool the system" and use it for just the calendar, but be prepared to do the full setup, including stuff like DNS servers and the like.

However I would also like to find a similar guide for the client based solution as that way some of our admin staff could see their calendars while off-line. Does such a guide exist ?

Your probably going to post some more details about the needs of your users and how they will be using Zimbra. Specifically a little more info of what you mean by "off-line". With open-source edition of Zimbra the easiest way to access the calendar and other parts (email, contacts, etc.) is through the Zimbra Web Client. However, there are other ways to do it. You can find details on this through the forums and wiki. With the web client you need some type of connection to the server, which is why I say we need more info about what you consider "off-line". There is also the Zimbra Desktop product, which does give you access to information when you don't have a connection to the Zimbra server, but understand that this software is only considered to be an alpha release at this time.

Hopefully this will get the ball rolling for more questions and answers.

[dwmtractor]

And just in case you mean what I would think is logical in a school setting--that you actually have the computers in the classrooms connected to the network but don't want to use a web client for the calendar, I've had reasonable success (though not perfect) with Thunderbird as an IMAP client and the Lightning extension for calendar. With WebDAV on the new 5.0 this should work even better, tho I haven't tried it yet.

If you really mean offline, like disconnected from the network, your best bet is the Zimbra Desktop, which basically replicates the web client even when you aren't plugged in.

If I'm missing my guess all over, try a few more questions and we'll see if we can come up with more intelligent answers!

[HW_Hack]

And just in case you mean what I would think is logical in a school setting--that you actually have the computers in the classrooms connected to the network but don't want to use a web client for the calendar, I've had reasonable success (though not perfect) with Thunderbird as an IMAP client and the Lightning extension for calendar. With WebDAV on the new 5.0 this should work even better, tho I haven't tried it yet.

If you really mean offline, like disconnected from the network, your best bet is the Zimbra Desktop, which basically replicates the web client even when you aren't plugged in.

If I'm missing my guess all over, try a few more questions and we'll see if we can come up with more intelligent answers!

Thanks for the replies !! - and based off of the first reply Zimbra may be too much (as far as capability) for our needs -- we already have district wide email and a very limited calendaring system. Hence our interest in setting up our own "group" calendaring solution. I was looking at Sunbird from Mozilla but frankly couldn't get much in the way of help from their forum or the website.

As to "off-line" I mean that some of the staff have laptops --- so it would be handy for them to at least retain a local copy of their calendar when they are off campus.

So it looks like I need to go back to looking at webDav and Sunbird. If anyone knows of any good reference sites for a webDav --- or a webDav/Sunbird solution I would be VERY appreciative

Thanks again and Happy Holidays to All

[mmorse]

Thanks for the replies !! - and based off of the first reply Zimbra may be too much (as far as capability) for our needs -- we already have district wide email and a very limited calendaring system. Hence our interest in setting up our own "group" calendaring solution. I was looking at Sunbird from Mozilla but frankly couldn't get much in the way of help from their forum or the website.

You could just disable lots of the other features, though people might find they like using it for tasks/docs/briefcase files as well

The main thing you're gonna want for the calendar is the share notices which let you 'accept/deny' via an email.
(Throw a vote on Bug 7473 - Share management and discovery but it might be a while.)
Depending on how much work you want to do on your end, you could disable mail all together, but then you'd need to do the zmmailbox createMountpoint's from the command line or setup a portal to run zmprov/soap commands for sharing.

But the goal is to create less work for you, so what I would do is setup a subdomain/DNS MX records just for use with this zimbra setup, so you'd have like user@calendaring.school.edu.

As to "off-line" I mean that some of the staff have laptops --- so it would be handy for them to at least retain a local copy of their calendar when they are off campus.

Alpha: /blog/archives/2007/07/zimbra_desktop_05.html
-Of course there's an iSync connector if you went NE