Slashdot Mirror
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?"
I use (and love)webcalendar.
- tom -
there are many ways of doing what you want
you can use webserver with a web calendar or various custom applications depending on how you work
Or
You could use Kerio Mail server this allows multiple people access to a calendar i.e. a shared calendar for the web and Microsoft Outlook
see Kerio MailServer
regards
John Jones
discalimer I work for Kerio
I expect it's hard even when you get to use human intelligence.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
The best simple solution is Horde and its Kronolith calendaring application. Lets you set up shared calendars and set editing permissions. Doesn't automatically figure out when meeting times will work for everyone, but it's easy and it will do your email, tasks, and time-tracking as well. If you need any help setting it up, check the mailing lists or just email me (I worked on Horde for my Summer of Code project).
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
Well, it seems you have a windows environment, but don't want to purchase exchange. There is another tool, Windows SharePoint Services. It can be configure to have a calendar for each member. It is free, but it requires IIS 6, Win2k3, and SQL Server or the free data engine thingy.
There is a catch, you have to use the web interface to edit the calendars. You can always set that up to open in outlook.
We use it for an office calendar, useful!
My inner self is ineffable, so don't eff with me.
You can set up permissions so that you can create your own appointments, create others, or suggest others which are put into a "pending" approval queue. It's all web-based and sexy as hell.
I'm not sure how much it costs, but you can probably get just the features you want. I can vouch that pretty much every aspect of it is great.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
The requirements for one job I've done was that the calendar had to work with Outlook and had to basically look just like Exchange to the people in the office. I went with InsightServer running on a RedHat Linux server. it cost a lot less than Exchange and it works great. It's been running for about two years now without any problems. The only issue we've had so far is Blackberry support. Feel free to ask me any questions if you decide to go with it.
Anyway, you were on track with the WebDAV server. I use Apache 2's built-in mod_dav to host several calendars, and view/edit them with Sunbird (Windows) and Korganizer (Unix). I think your time would be better served debugging your first attempt than starting over from scratch.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
dotProject is pretty good. Allows you to filter the display of entries, and if you'd combine that with a few user accounts that have access to each other's stuff it'd probably do the trick.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Also look into the fledgling CalDAV implementations & projects like Hula (server) and Chandler (client). Very recent binaries of Sunbird also sport CalDAV support.
open-xchange is ok. It isn't Exchange but then again what is? I would really, really like to find a replacement for it.
There is a free version and a pay version.
When you have a WebDAV server setup and have Sunbird/Mozilla Calander setup - it will delete calendars that have zero items. Delete the last item in your calendar, and POOF, you have a zero byte
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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.
I must be a MORON!!! I use OpenBSD and Linux exclusively and I can't use Outlook/Exchange. I'm not prepared to run my Internet-facing mail server on Exchange (you need mail abilities to use the calendar to its full potential). Putting a M$ product on the greater Internet says more about how moronic you are than not using the best tool for the job.
There are dozens of great tools for simple calendaring. Did you look at Hoarde (http://www.hoarde.org? I bet you didn't. Hoarde have a whole suite of PHP-based groupware applications from Webmail to calendaring to practically anything else you can think of.
Why would you want a bloated, arbitrarily limited, buggy Exchange program running on a fundamentally flawed OS when you can have a PHP-based application running in any webserver you can make PHP work in (usually Apache, but others exist) on any OS that can run the webserver (OpenBSD is my choice for server OS, Linux might float your boat). Sure, there's no client-side application and it's all web based, but the Outlook program leaves a lot to be desired anyway. If it wasn't mandated here by some manager to use Outlook I'd be using a real client without even thinking about it.
Think twice before you start calling people morons. OSS might not be the answer to everything, but if you're using other OSS tools the suggesting that a MS tool is the way to go is just being stupid. How do you propose that I get Outlook clients running in a Linux-only shop? The web client for Exchange hides most of the functions that make the groupware in Exchange so "great".
I drink to make other people interesting!
M-x calendar serves all of my team's calendaring needs. Check the plain text file into and out of CVS and you have distributed calendaring with revision control.
Oh, but that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or have a shiny GUI. Boo fucking hoo. Fuck Windows, and fuck Microsoft.
My other car is first.
why not just use exchange?
what you're describing isn't exactly that simple, and calendaring is perhaps exchange's most touted feature among those who use it.
and it's popular enough that it's available in some form on every platform (Evolution for *nix, Outlook for Win32, Entourage for OSX)
I'm not a very big microsoft advocate, but it seems like you're passing up a perfectly good product based upon your bias against microsoft.
If Sunbird was stable, or came close to matching the ease-of-use or maturity of outlook, I'd reccommend it even if outlook had the edge because of price and the fact that it's not microsoft. But the fact is that nothing comes close.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
In order of preference:
1. horde-kronolith http://www.horde.org/kronolith/ (horde suite is quite comprehensive and easy to set up)
2. webcalendar http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php
3. MediaWiki with calendar plugin (a little bit tricky to set up, and not as great to use as previous two)
Basically the shared feature of horde is pretty powerfull with a good rights-system. They also alow calendars to be exported etc.
Check them out.
Really edit, or do you wish to be able to invite people?
My first response to that actual ability for you to edit someone else's calendar is acceptance and actually being able to make it.
If someone edits your schedule without you knowing, you may not kow the scheduled item is in place. Likewise, if someone decides you need to be at their power-point meeting instead of picking up someone at the airport, that's bad.
I'm of the firm opinion that people need to be able to accept invitations instead of simply being informed they'll be showing up at a certain time. It's my time to manage, not yours.
Then again, I'm not a fan of having schedules imposed on me by other people. So the idea of somsone else editing the final version of my schedule would make me rather irate.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.