Calendar folder through IMAP? (KDE Kontact)

[Rubble]

Although I like the Zimbra Web Client for some features, I'm still more comfortable using Kontact for email and calendaring. So I've been using Kontact via IMAP to our Zimbra server and that seems to work fine. I've got an LDAP connection to access the GAL that is also working nicely. In my IMAP folder list I can see Contacts, and can open them in kmail to list them out as "messages".

Kmail has a setting, Misc/Groupware, that allows you to "Enable IMAP resource functionality", and it appears to want to store contacts and appointments in IMAP folders. I checked it, and specified the Zimbra set of folders, but it errors trying to create a Calendar folder. It presumably has already been created by Zimbra, but kmail can't see it. Can the Calendar folder be set to show through IMAP? If so, would it be writeable and useable from kontact?

I went ahead and created an address book as "Addressbook on IMAP Server via KMail" and it almost sort of works. It will show a few of my contacts that I clicked on in the Contacts IMAP folder, but it doesn't show the whole list. It might be half baked because of the Calendar error though. It also appears to be read only.

If I could access contacts and appointments through IMAP Kontact would be much more useable for me, and no need for any kind of plugin. As it is, I keep the web client open to manage my calendar and use kontact mostly for email.

Thanks!

[fcash]

If you use Zimbra 5.0, you can use Kontact to access your mail (IMAP), contacts (LDAP), and your calendars (remote iCal).

To have read-write access to a Zimbra calendar, you need to login to the
web client, create a new calendar, give it a name (without spaces to make
the URL look nice), and share it as a public calendar (view only). Once
that is done:
- open the calendar section of Kontact
- click the Add button under Calendar resources on the left
- select "Calendar in Remote File" option
- give is a name like "Zimbra Calendar"
- enter the Download URL:
http://zimbra.sd73.bc.ca/home/<username>/<calendar name>/
- enter the Upload URL:
http://zimbra.sd73.bc.ca/home/<username>/<calendar name>/
- set the "Automatic Reload" options
- click OK

You now have the ability to create entries in the web client and view them
in Kontact, and to create entries in Kontact and view them in the web
client.

Be sure that your timezone settings in Kontact (use Settings -> Configure Calendar, not Settings -> Configure Kontact) are correct, or the entries will not appear in the right timeslots.

Cheers,
Freddie

[fcash]

UPDATE:
After further testing, it appears on can sync to the personal calendar. There is no need to create a new shared calendar. It's all in the options used for sharing the calendar.

If you use Zimbra 5.0, you can use Kontact to access your mail (IMAP), contacts (LDAP), and your calendars (remote iCal).

To have read-write access to a Zimbra calendar (this applies to any calendar, whether it be your personal calendar, or a shared calendar), you need to:

• login to the web client (AJAX interface)
• go to the Calendar tab
• right-click on the calendar you want to access and select Share
• select the second option, for external users (view only)

Then, in Kontact:

• open the calendar section of Kontact
• click the Add button under Calendar resources on the left
• select "Calendar in Remote File" option
• give is a name like "Zimbra Calendar"
• enter the Download URL:
  http://zimbra.sd73.bc.ca/home/<username>/<calendar name>/
• enter the Upload URL:
  http://zimbra.sd73.bc.ca/home/<username>/<calendar name>/
• set the "Automatic Reload" options
• click OK

You now have the ability to create entries in the web client and view them
in Kontact, and to create entries in Kontact and view them in the web
client.

Be sure that your timezone settings in Kontact (use Settings -> Configure Calendar, not Settings -> Configure Kontact) are correct, or the entries will not appear in the right timeslots.

Cheers,
Freddie

[mjfleck2000]

Originally Posted by fcash

If you use Zimbra 5.0, you can use Kontact to access your mail (IMAP), contacts (LDAP), and your calendars (remote iCal)...
Freddie

How did you set up contacts (LDAP) using Kontact in Zimbra 5.0.?

I did look in the wiki but did not see how to setup this up with Kontact. You may want to add it to the wiki for everyone's benefit.

Thanks for showing how you set up the calendar.

Mike

[fcash]

To be honest, I haven't configured Kontact to query the Zimbra LDAP server yet (we've had the server up for less than a week). But I have configured it to query other LDAP servers, and Zimbra comes with an LDAP server, so I assumed it could be done.

I'll see if I can get the query to work today, and post back if I do.

[mjfleck2000]

Originally Posted by fcash

If you use Zimbra 5.0,
To have read-write access to a Zimbra calendar (this applies to any calendar, whether it be your personal calendar, or a shared calendar), you need to:

• login to the web client (AJAX interface)
• go to the Calendar tab
• right-click on the calendar you want to access and select Share
• select the second option, for external users (view only)

Freddie

Hmmm, I tried this but without success. You are sharing a calendar within Zimbra but you are sharing it as "view only"?

I can set up the calendar as you described and I am able to view the calendar from Kontact. However, any attempt to add/edit the calendar from Kontact gives an access denied error.

So, can you verify that you have read AND write capabilities from Kontact Calendar?

Mike

[fcash]

Yes, I have read and write access. The exact steps I took are:

• login to Zimbra using the AJAX web client
• click on the Calendar tab
• right-click on my Calendar, select Share Calendar
• select the second option in the list (external users, view-only)
• enter my e-mail address
• enter a password that is different from my Zimbra password
• copy down the URL shown at the bottom of the dialog
• click OK
• start Kontact
• navigate to the calendar section
• in the lower-left corner, click the Add button to add a new calendar resource
• select Calendar in Remote File option and click OK
• give it a name like "Zimbra Calendar"
• paste the URL into the Download from: textbox. Be sure to add the / at the end, so it reads like http://<servername>/home/<username>/Calendar/
• paste the same URL into the Upload to: textbox.
• set the Automatic reload and Automatic save options
• click OK

To load your calendar items right away, right-click on the Zimbra Calendar entry in the list and select Reload.

The first time you do this, you should get a login box popup. Enter your Zimbra username and the password you set for the share, and you are in.

You now have read/write access to your calendar. If you open a browser and navigate to the Zimbra calendar, you can watch things appear as you add them to Kontact, and vice versa.

For those that think this may be a security issue (OMG, anyone with that URL can write to your calendar), if you don't know the password set on the share, you can't access the calendar. I had a couple co-workers try to access it, and they couldn't. Kept asking for a password and giving them "403 authorization failed" errors.

[storm]

Several years have passed, but finally there is a light ahead...

KDE and OpenSource: CalDAV/CardDAV/GroupDAV Support for Akonadi

KDE 4.5 will include the resources to sync Kontact with Zimbra.

They will be able to communication together via Carddav (which includes contacts) and Caldav (which theoretically includes calendars and tasks).

Email is already sync-able via Imap as described in this thread.

I'll post configuration details when they are available - probably a couple of months.

Cheers,
Störm

[gracedman]

Hello, all. Alas, we will be on KDE3 for quite a while longer but we almost have this working. I'm hoping if we share what we've done to get this far, someone can help us the rest of the way. We struggled like the rest of this thread and were disappointed that the Contacts via IMAP did not work. We did notice that they were available in the IMAP folders.

We changed from IMAP to Disconnect IMAP and set up local subscriptions for the address books. We then created a Contact List based upon directories and pointed it to the place where the Disconnected IMAP was caching the vcards. It worked just fine. We suddenly saw all our contacts appear and we could use them in autofilling and selecting recipients for email!! We thought we were home free. Alas not!

We also have set up synchronizing calendars and tasks using a Remote File and we have tried to setup Free Busy queries(https://zimbra.mycompany.com/home/%u@%d?fmt=freebusy). So here's the list of the little things that aren't working quite right.

Contacts come down perfectly fine. If I create a new one in the Zimbra web interface, I see it in Kontact. But edits, deletions and creations from Kontact do not propagate back up. We are told we cannot APPEND or other permissions related issues or at least we assume it is permissions. It does not matter if we manipulate them from the contact editor or the IMAP folder (in the case of delete). What do we need to change to allow changes to propagate back to Zimbra upon synchronization?

Calendar is closer. We have two problems. New appointments propagate down from Zimbra to Kontact but they are off by four hours (which is my and the server's offset from UTC right now). The time zones on both devices are correct.

The second calendar problem is when we propagate up to Zimbra. It works, but each save generates and Error while saving Calendar message. What have we done wrong?

Finally, the free busy time is not working at all.

I can post our procedure but this post is pretty long already. It is would be helpful, I'll gladly do so. We are supposed to go live with this this week coming so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks - John

[gracedman]

We picked up a partial solution in one of the Ubuntu documents. If we set the account to be disconnected IMAP and manually edited the kmailrc file by adding the TheIMAPResourceAccount= and setting it to the appropriate top level folder, all the address books and calendars popped right into place. But there are still problems.

The address books still display the same read only behavior. The calendar does not appear at all and appears to have a malformed URI. Has anyone gotten Kontact to work as a front end to Zimbra? Thanks - John