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Level 1

4 points

iCal, Exchange2007 and shared calendars

Hi there,
as there's no dedicated iCal topic I thought I'd dare to post this here, it's the most appropriate.

Just installed my brandnew snow covered cat, connected Mail/Addressbook/iCal to our company's Exchange2007, so far, so good.

Now, I'd like to open shared calendars (that's what they're called in Outlook) in iCal. This is NOT the same thing as a delegation! Has anyone gotten this to work? What am I missing?

thanks a lot
simon

MacBook Rev.A, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 4:53 AM

29 replies

Sep 5, 2009 1:51 AM in response to zaxxon72

Hi,

I have tried the Delegation method and it works great.
I entered the name of my colleague. The permissions that it displayed were 'Calendar : Read en Create, Task : no access'. It downloaded the the calendar and sub-calendars of my colleague. Now I have them displayed in my iCal, which I couldn't Entourage.
Great .... I'm on my way to forget Entourage 2008 Web Service Edition !!!!

zaxxon72 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 28, 2009 6:42 AM in response to Laurent Petroque

Here's another discussion on the same topic, nobody seems to be able to solve this at the moment :

http://www.infrageeks.com/groups/infrageeks/weblog/4d553/

I wonder what the people in here did who say that its working for them????

Sep 28, 2009 10:14 AM in response to bglad

I also have this issue...

I cannot see or load calendars of colleagues and resources that have been shared with me. Big bummer, as this works with EntourageWS.

Second issue: ...nor does their "time available" show up in meeting creation. It just shows as greyed out and unavailable. Some people do show their events in this view tho.

Oct 9, 2009 7:00 AM in response to zaxxon72

I have the same problem.

I can see all calendars from colleagues in Outlook, and in Entourage. But I cannot see them in iCal - except for one person! The mystery is why I can see that one person, but not the others.

We have checked all settings on the client's side and could not find a reason. So I hope to get an answer soon from the IT colleagues at our university who will check on the server's side...

Message was edited by: johannesdg

zaxxon72 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 22, 2009 1:00 PM in response to zaxxon72

i've found this:
"
I figured out the delegation issue in iCal. iCal does permissions individually, while Entourage will share with a whole group at once. Thus, to share my calendar with others, I add individual permissions for each user. To view their shared calendars, they have to add me as an individual user in Entourage (as opposed to the single default entry for everyone.) I can work with this, I guess.
"

How can we get apple to behave like entourage, as that is much more workable in a large enterprise? asking 200+ people to add you personally is not really the apple-easy way that we know...

zaxxon72 Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2009 7:47 AM in response to zaxxon72

I asked one colleague to add me specifically as an Author in his Outlook. Lo and behold, I could add him as a delegate. He's now visible in my list in iCal, but his calendar is not superimposed over my own. Only when I ask to see it in it's own window, I see his entries (with mine thinly superimposed).

What am I doing wrong? And when will Apple observe group's permissions?

Jan 11, 2010 9:40 AM in response to zaxxon72

It depends on your Exchange/AD structure.

iCal can only view calendars of people who are in groups to which you have direct authorization on, it cannot traverse nested group permissions. I have unofficially confirmed this with our Apple Systems Engineer though no official work of it from Apple per se.

What this means is that if I am trying to access YOUR calendar whether or not I can actually access it depends on where YOU are in the AD/Exchange structure.

Example 1:
YOU are a member of the Marketing group. I have direct read access to that Marketing group. I am all set, I can view YOUR calendar just fine because you are a direct member of that group, which I have read permission to. Read: ME -> Marketing -> You

On the other hand, if the AD structure is such that I have read access to the Communications group, of which the Marketing group is a member, and YOU are a member of that Marketing group, I will NOT be able to read your calendar, because iCal cannot traverse permissions through a nested group. Read: ME -> Communications -> Marketing -> YOU.

In complex AD structures this is, unfortunately, a very common occurrence. We see this with our University's resources rooms which, being nested, are inaccessible to view through iCal. Meaning that Entourage will remain a necessary fall back for many until iCal updates or the issue is directly addressed by Apple.

Hope this helps.

Jan 12, 2010 7:57 AM in response to Clif Hirtle

We are having issues also. I can't connect to another user's calendar.

We tried adding my permissions via both iCal & Entourage on the other account. When trying to add their calendar under "Accounts I can access" in the "Delegation" tab, it just spins saying "Checking delegate privileges".

I have let it spin for 5 minutes - no change.

BigAir

Level 1

4 points

Jan 24, 2010 4:27 PM in response to justin.beek

Same problem here. It was working fine till about 2 months ago. I am personally set as a delegate on another users calendar. I get the same spinning icon at 'checking delegate privileges'. The console says this:
25/01/2010 00:18:11 mdworker[3367] Found source of class (null), but no such class was found.
25/01/2010 00:18:11 mdworker[3367] Could not initialize source from /Users/raj/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources/B57CCA6-093E-448F-90A0-126F917065

I'm not sure what else to do. I need to be able to see this calendar.

Mar 19, 2010 11:49 AM in response to BigAir

Bumping this to see if anyone has come up with a solution yet.

Having the same problem as other users have described -- iCal not able to access delegate's calendars from Exchange 2007. Gets stuck on "Checking delegate privileges". Works fine in Outlook.

TIA for any wisdom...

ivory056

Level 1

0 points

May 13, 2010 1:23 PM in response to bflaminio

We experienced similar behavior here at Duke after upgrading our Exchange 2007 SP1 RU7 environment to Exchange 2007 SP2 RU4. We have a large Mac community here at Duke and had found that iCal did not recognize the full set of Exchange folder level permissions in Exchange 2007 SP1. It only recognized reviewer and owner permissions. After updating to SP2 we noticed that we could not add shared calendars to any iCal profile that was working before the upgrade.
It turns out that if anyone has owner permissions set to an Exchange shared calendar, then iCal cannot read the permissions that are set for anyone and therefore, cannot add the calendar to the delegates profile. Changing that owner access to editor lets iCal read the permissions once again. The crazy thing is in SP1 iCal could not recognize editor level permissions on an Exchange object so we had to use owner in place of that. The Calendar permissions can be easily verified and or modified using the PFDAVAdmin tool.

Regards,
Ivan Wilson

ivory056

Level 1

0 points

May 13, 2010 1:30 PM in response to justin.beek

Using PFDAVAdmin, check the folder level permissions. If anyone has Owner access iCal can't read the delegate permissions. Anyone set to Owner can be set to Editor and you should be able to add the calendar to the iCal profile.
Regards,
Ivan Wilson

We experienced similar behavior here at Duke after upgrading our Exchange 2007 SP1 RU7 environment to Exchange 2007 SP2 RU4. We have a large Mac community here at Duke and had found that iCal did not recognize the full set of Exchange folder level permissions in Exchange 2007 SP1. It only recognized reviewer and owner permissions. After updating to SP2 we noticed that we could not add shared calendars to any iCal profile that was working before the upgrade.
It turns out that if anyone has owner permissions set to an Exchange shared calendar, then iCal cannot read the permissions that are set for anyone and therefore, cannot add the calendar to the delegates profile. Changing that owner access to editor lets iCal read the permissions once again. The crazy thing is in SP1 iCal could not recognize editor level permissions on an Exchange object so we had to use owner in place of that. The Calendar permissions can be easily verified and or modified using the PFDAVAdmin tool.

Regards,
Ivan Wilson

Jun 12, 2010 11:26 AM in response to ivory056

Tried setting the permissions for the user to "Editor" and now can add the calendar to iCal very easily. Shows up in Deligates as it's supposed to.

Finally free of Entourage! Thanks!

MattParr

Level 1

0 points

Jul 9, 2010 4:26 AM in response to ivory056

I just confirmed that my company upgraded to SP2 RU4, around the same time my delegate functionality stopped working. What should I request of my IT department to help fix it?

iCal, Exchange2007 and shared calendars