Allowing external users to view your calendar

[lchrist]

Hi all,

We've just installed Zimbra Enterprise Edition and right now we really love it.

We've got one requirement which i can't really figure out how to make it work.

How do i share a Calendar (or multiple) allowing external users to view it !

Preferably this would be with user authentication and a web browser or alternatively can it be done with outlook subscribing to an external calendar or something ?

Any hints is greatly appreciated !

Lasse,

[dkarp]

Right-click on the calendar in the overview at left, then select "Share Calendar" from the popup action menu.

[lchrist]

Hi,

I've got that part down.

But when someone from internet explorer clicks on the link that they've received what then ?

If they download the .ics file then it will be a snapshot of the calendar (right ?). So they will need to do that often ?

Or can they be redirected to a view only part of the calendar on the web ?

Or am i missing something here ?

Thanks in advance,

Lasse,

[jholder]

But when someone from internet explorer clicks on the link that they've received what then ?

Sure, if you create a link to the calendar.

If they download the .ics file then it will be a snapshot of the calendar (right ?). So they will need to do that often ?

It depends on which program you use to view the ics file. For example, Apple's ical should sync right with the calendar. I use phpical. When ever it render's the calendar, it pulls right from the zcs server ical url, so that the cal is always up to day.

Or can they be redirected to a view only part of the calendar on the web ?

Not quite sure what you mean.

[lchrist]

My old solution gave me the ability to designate people who, using a username and password would be allowed access to view my calendar.

External people from outside my own organization.

I've made it work with ical (on my own mac).

But if i want to give people running windows access to view my calendar. i guess that i share the calendar.

But then what. ? if i click on the link in windows i need to type in a username and password (which is fine). But then they only get an .ics file ?

How do a windows user handle that ? (import it into outlook. But is that not a snapshot of events and not automatically updated). Or what ?

Am i totally misunderstanding the "external share" feature ?

Lasse,

[dkarp]

Outlook doesn't do CalDAV and it doesn't auto-update .ics files and it doesn't speak the Zimbra calendar protocol, so as far as I know there's really nothing that you can do for an Outlook user who doesn't have the Zimbra plugin other than just share an .ics file and hope they update their snapshot regularly.

At some point Zimbra may expose an HTML view of the shared calendar to authorized external users, but that won't be happening in 4.5.

[lchrist]

That was actually the answer that i thought i would get after my initial trials (but most definitely not was i was hoping for). The HTML solution would have been exactly what we needed.

Thanks,

Lasse,

[bobby]

fyi this is Bug 7078 - publish shared calendar as html

[gersh]

I find Zimbra's method of viewing another person's calendar to be confusing. It seems that the calendar you want to view must "invite" you to view it, rather than you selecting it directly from an LDAP directory. Is that correct?

I have other calendar related questions, but will post them after I understand this basic Zimbra approach.


gersh

[vshah]

Correct. The user whose calendar it is must share the calendar with you -- which then generates an invite to you.