iCal & Group calendar access

Hallo Aaron,

i am in the same position like you. It seems to me that it is not allowed to change the group calendar. It is possible to edit it in the web interface. But not in iCal. You only can make this with the users calendar on the server. I really was unable to edit or configure the group calendar showing up in iCal. Only the Users calendars. That works perfect.

By the way. Did someone test it with Mozilla Sunbird to edit the calendars. I can not setup it up to run.
Any ideas.

Sorry for my bad english. I am from germany 😉

Thanx Mike

Unfortunately, according to pages 74 and 75 of the Web Technologies Admin guide:

"You can subscribe to a web calendar in iCal and configure your iCal calendar to retrieve
updates from the web calendar. In iCal, the web calendar is read-only, so you can't edit
it."

It looks like you will be unable to make edits using iCal.

I agree with you Aaron. I think this is a big oversight. The only work around I have come up with is to use the directory to make a common resource or location then delegate that calendar's access to a group (or group of everyone). you can't get to it through the wiki page, but everyone can edit it in ical.

Go to accounts in the preferences of iCal, add a new account, enter a description (your choice), enter a username and password (that has read/write access to the calendar), and enter http://my.server.com:8008/principals/groups/groupshortname/. I could then edit the primary calender from ical and add secondary calendars (though the secondary calendars were not viewable on the website).

For read only access just subscribe.

But.. you always have the chance that one user can create more than one icals! one for the workgroup, classrooms. Whatever. The Problem seems to me that the syncrhonisation between wik calendar and ical calendar gets corrupt.

So it makes a little bit sense to me.. 😉 My workflow is now based on the users calendar and calendars who means group..

To get it to work in Sunbird go to File > Subscribe to Remote Calendar > Choose on the Network > Choose CalDAV > In the location field enter http://my.server.com:8008/calendars/groups/groupshortname/calendar/ > Name your calendar > click done. (At least these are instructions for the mac version of sunbird).

Hallo Jonathan.

This was really perfect.. That works like a charm.

Thanx Jonathan for you help!!!


Mike

Hallo Jonathan.

Thanx for your help.
It works like a charm. Thanx for your help!!

Mike

The docs may say it's read only, but I just set it up on my test network and I can add/edit events in iCal, and the changes show up on the Web calendar. Perhaps they made some last minute changes after docs were finalized? Either way, I think it's good news.

This got me running but now more issues for me.

1. When I subscribe I get a calendar named calendar. I renamed it to mygroupcalendar and it broke the link. Renamed it back with no luck.

2. Another group cal is working but the changes I make on the wiki page to the calendar do not take. I get an error.

Error from server: Error processing calendar data (210)

I agree!! What he said! Would it be so hard to make a simple, group editable calendar? sheesh.

Thanks for that, Jonathan, but it appears to have a problem: you apparently can't use the Address Panel if you fill in the Account URL field, and all the attendees I fill in to events aren't "real" they have little exclams before their name, instead of check marks.

It seems that the Address Panel only works with accounts that have "Automatically discover server address" checked, and each account for which you have that checked must have a different Username -- you can't use a group name.

I suppose you could set up dummy user names so you could access the groups somehow, AND have the Address Panel working properly...

It's too bad this stuff doesn't work better. I'll bet it doesn't get better before the next "kitty" release, 18-24 months from now...

Thank you too, Jonathan - this solved exactly the same problem for me!