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Which Shared Calendar Package Would You Use?
Bob McCown asks: "I manage several websites, both internally and externally accessible. Many of them have event calendars or schedulers. We'd like the ability to have these calendars shared, with the ability to modify them by both a web interface, and at the application level (via Sunbird, an Outlook plugin, or something similar). The web side of our system uses an Enterprise Linux distribution that runs Apache. Ideally, the web side would be written in PHP to minimize time to integrate with the rest of the sites. What's out there that can do this? What have you used before?"
Zimbra is a nice collaboration server with (web-based) email and calendaring. It's written in Java and has AJAX. I'm not sure how important it is to you to modify the calendar at the application level, but I'm sure you can at least export a (read-only) iCal feed from Zimbra.
Sunbird's goal is to support reading and writing of iCal via CalDAV, but Sunbird is very immature and highly unstable.
I haven't used these, but with Exchange server clones like Open-Xchange, you should be able to use Outlook. Not sure what Web interfaces they export, or what Web-based Exchange calendaring clients exist.
Of course, make sure you didn't dismiss Google Calendar prematurely. This should suffice if you don't need too many bells/whistles, and it relieves you of many burdens. If you really want an application to use, you can use CalGoo, but this (very early-in-development) program has always been excrutiatingly slow for me (and I tried their latest beta draft).
The question you should be asking is - which shared calendar protocol should we choose?
Then you don't need to worry about choosing a package, as long as it can manage the correct protocol. The decision will depend upon your environment, budget and beliefs; but as a general rule, going for an open standard isn't such a bad idea. RFC 2445 (aka iCalendar - based on the earlier vCalendar standard) should be a safe bet. You will be able to engineer solutions - not just for desktops, but also for some handhelds.
RFC 2445 is implemented/supported by a large number of products, including 30 Boxes, Apple's iCal application, Darwin Calendar Server, Contactizer and iPod, Chandler, Drupal with its event module, Citadel, Facebook, FirstClass, Google Calendar, Jalios JCMS, KOrganizer, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Entourage, Mozilla Calendar (including Mozilla Sunbird), Mulberry, Novell Evolution, Novell GroupWise, Nuvvo, Simple Groupware, Upcoming.org, Windows Calendar, Webical, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and Microsoft Outlook (see below). Notably missing from this list is the Palm Desktop and Palm (PDA). Blackberry, Internet edition, does not recognize iCalendar, although in concert with the Blackberry Server, iCalendar invites can be sent and received.
Our company chose this route for a similar issue, using a WebDav server as a backend.
So.. unless you have wild environment, budget or beliefs - there isn't much choice!
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The open source solution is phpicalendar. It truly is the poor man's calendaring system. It runs on php (duh) and apache no problem. It requires a small amount of configuration (mostly getting the permissions correct) and it provides a web interface (whihch looks nice and allows searching/themeing/filters, but doesn't allow direct editing) and allows sunbird / thunderbird+lightening / outlook2007 to connect in without problems. Our small business uses it for around 20 users daily and it works reliably. I would suggest really understanding its workings to ensure the security is correctly set up. http://phpicalendar.net/