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How To (Really) Share A Simple Calendar?
Lucas asks: "I run a small business as one of the people who 'knows something about computers', which now means, like many of you, I find myself having to solve IT problems. We have been trying to share maybe three simple, stupid calendars. Here's the catch -- we need to able to edit each other's calendars! This is where the problem comes in. We tried Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird with a WebDAV server (even though it deleted two calendars upon upload and barfed on a third, my office loves Sunbird's interface), OfficeZilla (too complicated for just one calendar), Calendars.net (too slow), ACT! (bolted on and expensive), and Yahoo (not designed for corporate stuff). Even iCal won't let you edit someone else's calendar. Is there any way to do this -reliably- without using MS Exchange and without spending a ton of money?"
Congratulations, you've found THE killer app for Outlook/Exchange. Seriously, it is probably the best out there right now. Also, unless your company is a startup with no venture capital, spend the money on a 2003 server and exchange. If your company won't spend money on it, I'd consider leaving/running away as soon as possible. As much as people on /. preach software religion, in the corporate environment, if you don't use the best tools you can get, you are a moron. I'll repeat that. IF YOU DON'T USE THE BEST TOOLS YOU CAN GET, YOU ARE A MORON! Outlook/Exchange happens to be the best tool right now. Software is not a religion, and Linux/OSS is not always the best solution (OMG!!) Just because you don't agree with MS's business practices doesn't mean everyone in your company (most importantly your boss) agrees with you.
Also, if you are even thinking about using something that's not from Red Hat or Novell, STOP. Don't trust anything that was just "written by some guy". No one else in the business world does, and neither should you.
In summary, just buy Exchange you cheap-ass!
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
Wikiwikiwiki!
:)
I'm not kidding, it would work well.
DYWYPI?
The "free data engine thingy" is also known as MSDE, and works pretty well, but is limited to databases of less than 2 GB. You didn't say why Exchange has been ruled out. If it's for stability reasons, you're barking up the wrong tree. Exchange is pretty solid and has gotten more reliable over the years. Same with Windows. If it's a cost issue, Windows 2003 small business server is $599, which includes Exchange and Outlook 2003 and 5 CALs. If you need the hardware, you can get a cheap http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=sc430r649&s=bsd>Dell server AND 2003SBS for under 700$. You'll probably want to spring for something more fault tolerant, which could cost you 1000$. Over 5 years, you're talking about an expenditure of $20 per month. That's less than the coffee fund.
You'll need to setup and maintain it, if you don't have a windows background that could prove tough for you. But there are reasons so many places stick with Exchange, shared calendars are high on the list.
I did want to bother with mod_dav so what I did was setup the PUT method on Apache, which involves uploading a script that saves files when PUT by a client. So that basically allows the KOrganized to put the calendars back on the server. Then I made it ask for a password so that only authorized users would be able to get the calendar in the first place.
/www/passwd/cal.pw
Require valid-user
AuthName "calendarios"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile
It works perfectly. I used to use Sunbird too and worked fine, but didn't like it much.
Interesting comment. We currently have a Windows infrastructure put in place before I arrived. It has 12 licenses and our company is about to use up the last of them. To add another user we will need to buy CALs for each of the three servers (win2003) we run, exchange, office etc etc. Surprising how this adds up. Anyway, since we intend to get bigger and we don't like having to dip into the pot every time we want to add one more user we are ditching the win2003 boxes in favour of linux servers (its OK, I've done this before so don't worry about TCO and retraining). We are moving away from Office to OpenOffice 2, I'll probably end up getting Crossover Office to allow us to retain the current 12 licenses for purposes of absolute compatibility but internally our docs will switch to OpenDocument and externally PDF. Outlook will be dropped in favour of standards complient and secure e-mail apps (Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Evolution and so on) and I have already been successfully running a test server with IMAP, OpenWebMail and WebDav along with SAMBA and it all works well. So, back to the question, why not exchange? Too expensive by far, really not crossplatform enough even though we can use Evolution from *nix it is better to have more choice and I simply don't want our Windows users running Outlook. Entourage is really nasty and like the rest of Office:mac it doesn't really sit well on the platform. Oh, and the licenses for our anti-virus and anti-spam software have a limitation on the number of users too, and the anti-spam doesn't even seem to work so that will all be replaced with clam-av and spamassassin or similar on the linux server. In the end, a switch like this is about taking control of the situation. With an MS infrastructure you have too little control and it might look cost effective at first but the expense just keeps growing.
I'm looking at eGroupware at the moment but it seems to be a bit over the top and we will probably just stick with WebDav. In the end, the solution will work for all platforms as it will be based on open standards and so my users will be able to choose the platform that best lets them get their jobs done but I won't have a particular application or desktop forcing the whole infrastructure to come from a single manufacturer as is currently the case.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Citadel + WebCit, Aethera or some other clients.
You can create a Calendar room accessible by everyone (or acl'ed as you wish) and people can edit as they wish, as a plus it can handle your mail, among other things. If you want to have a play with WebCit, log onto Uncensored BBS or one of the others.
Disclaimer: I'm to blame for the upcoming NNTP implementation in Citadel, along with a patch to use Bogofilter, and the token Australian node on the "IGnet".