iCal Server - the first 90 days

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 21 2008 @ 09:34 pm MST

I wish I could, but

iPhone doesn't support it

ACLs must be set from the user -not server

No web interface for user cals.

These are just a few of the many problems.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 21 2008 @ 09:52 pm MST

Just started running it and will be testing it out for the next few weeks. My hope actually is that Google Apps supports CalDAV...still waiting for that.

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Authored by: Aaron on Thursday, February 21 2008 @ 10:06 pm MST

After testing for some weeks, we have switched ten power users from Now to iCal Server. (The majority remain on Now, since they are still on Tiger.) We needed a very clean 10.5 Open Directory & Kerberos installation to get it working. But once working it has been stable and quick for over two months. We are using a purchased SSL cert on its own domain (ical.tekserve.com).

iPhone syncing does work, and works well, but only through iTunes & USB. BlackBerry syncing works too, using Missing Sync. Over-the-air, Zimbra has a very nice AJAX CalDAV client for iPhone, but it is read-only. Nevertheless, I think it bodes well for the future, when Zimbra or other quality developers will produce CalDAV clients for the web, iPhone, and other platforms.

Aaron Freimark
Tekserve

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Authored by: JonThompson on Thursday, February 21 2008 @ 10:46 pm MST

I've tried running it on a test server...


There is no integration with the new directory application for contacts.
The server balks when I try and add a non-directory user to a meeting (say, a vendor.)
The web calendar delineation is a joke. Why are groups forced to do this through the web, and users cannot? Why not make it so that both are configurable from both places?
There really needs to be a decent Windows client, or a web client.

Despite really wanting to, I cannot migrate from our existing calendar (webex) to this. It is too much of a joke. Apple should have done what they did so well with launchd and other technologies, and not made a big deal feature wise, but included it for testing in 10.5, then come out with a real iCal server in 10.6.

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Authored by: kamil on Thursday, February 21 2008 @ 11:05 pm MST

It doesn't seem ready for prime time yet, there's just far too many integration issues such as those people here have already mentioned. Mobile device access (we use primarily Nokia phones) is a big issue. I haven't seen a good way to reply to and invite people to events via email from a mobile device. Including people from outside the organization on meeting requests also seems to be a problem.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 22 2008 @ 05:53 am MST

The documentation from Apple is ridiculous which makes it hard to get iCal Server to a useful state. Neither iCal Help, nor ServerAdmin Help, nor Apple's iCal Server PDFs give enough detail on how to actually make this work. We've tried for several days and now we are able to pubish a calendar via WebDAV. Nowhere near the advertised feature set of multiuser editing/synchronisation. It is by far the most unadministerable service that Leopard server offers to date. It's really is a pity, because sooo many users are urging to get this feature set. iPhone integration of iCal (ToDos, subscriptions, pubishing, etc.) is also lacking for no understanable reason.
Pepi

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 22 2008 @ 07:47 am MST

I agree with most posters here. It's a joke, It should have it's own full panel in Server Admin, and not have settings al scrambled in different settings like web services ,etc.

I also agree about the bad documentation, the not intuitive configuration, user and group configuration.

I think Apple has to do a better job if it wants to be taken seriously about mail services. I'm really in love with cyrus and how it works, but if Apple doesn't provide a real calendaring solution, it will never be taken as a real player.

Best.

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Authored by: dpaton on Friday, February 22 2008 @ 08:16 am MST

I really want to use iCal, but it's literally unadministerable with Apple's tools. The scattering of the setup panels to the four winds makes it imopssible for a Leopard neophyte like myself to make sense of it. If Apple wants to be taken seriously with their collaboration tools, they need to fix iCal, wikid, and Mail very, very quickly.

---
This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 22 2008 @ 10:39 am MST

iCal Server?

It is the LEAST of my 10.5 Server issues!
But, like everyone has said, its not really usable....buggy and bizarre to admin.

-j

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 22 2008 @ 11:42 am MST

Unfortunately I have to echo the sentiments of the other posters. iCal server is very difficult to administer as it is scattered throughout several locations. The bizarre differences between User and Group calendars, I've only been able to get it working using a very pristine OD server. The location I am in is also an Active Directory site and I haven't been able to get this working with AD users. The documentation is also a joke. Also, tried using the Mozilla Sunbird app to test the whole 'cross platform' thing, and while I could subscribe to my calendar and edit it, Sunbird doesn't know how to (a) pull the LDAP objects for users/resources and (b) doesn't find invites.

I can see where this *may* be useable in an all Mac, all Leopard shop with a very simple setup. As things stand, however, Exchange has nothing to worry about.

This is quite unfortunate as I really want to be able to offer this service to my clients, but as it stands this is not the right solution. I'm currently looking very seriously at Kerio and Zimbra.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 22 2008 @ 01:46 pm MST

We're working with Darwin Calendar Server on FreeBSD. There are some good things and some bad things.

Good things:
We were previously using a WebDAV service storing ICS files and we had a big problem with users importing instead of subscribing to calendars. Not a big deal on Tiger but disastrous on Leopard. If you deleted an event from somebody elses calendar in your iCal... it would be removed from the owners calendar as well. People have lost entire calendars. Our preliminary tests with DCS fix all the problems we were having with events and resource/location calendars have worked as advertized.

Bad things:
I won't fault the documentation so much because some exists and I know from experience that I hate doing documentation, but it only gets you so far. A basic troubleshooting FAQ in their wiki would save everybody a ton of grief but only the developers can edit the wiki and they have other things to do.

If you're not running Leopard Server with Open Directory backing the calendar server, you're basically screwed as far as access control on calendars and looking up/working with people. The xml directory service doesn't offer this stuff up and you either have to kluge together a chain of delegation (very time consuming) or use another caldav client like Mulberry to edit the ACL's (there's no functionality in the server or configs to edit a principal/calendars ACL's) and if your admin user isn't working like an admin (you have to do that in the conf files and it's not documented) then you basically have a useless process running on your box.

It really seems like this product was rushed to market and if you're not using it with the specific configuration they were targeting (iCal server on leopard server, open directory, iCal 3.0 deployed 100% on the clients) you're in for a bumpy ride.

Oh, if anybody here has fixed that admin actually being an admin problem here... PLEASE chime in.

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Authored by: fhals on Saturday, February 23 2008 @ 02:48 pm MST

When I set this up the apple way- some clicks and done- the result was nothing one can use. Even the simplest tries to login failed.
Watched at the documentation- fundamental wisdom like "To enable SSL mark 'Enable SSL'".
Ran through a lot of discussions and with the collected advice sometimes nearly moved it to work. But not on all accounts, not with all the features, not without a lot of bugs. Sometimes here, sometimes there.
I'm glad to have it on a test machine, so I can install from scratch and start over and over again.
My conclusion: Somebody sold me something new that is half broken and kept the manual. I can't imagine, that this product passed the beta testing, but they even sold it.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 23 2008 @ 04:32 pm MST

It's a steaming pile of crap. We had high hopes for this and would have seriously looked at this for our University if it had 1/10th the features as other calendaring software does. Alas, it doesn't even have THAT. Group calendars and scheduling is convoluted and a hassle. It doesn't support external contacts well. No protected calendars, no private events that can be blocked by view (but not time occupied!) on group calendars. The list goes on and on.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 24 2008 @ 08:20 pm MST

I tried for weeks to get this to work in our Golden Triangle (excuse me Golden Cylinder or whatever we're calling it now) setup with no luck. It couldn't:

1) Authenticate from an external Kerberos host (AD) either using augments or imported AD users.
2) Had no client for my PC users that was at all useable.
3) No web calendar interface for users. Why? This would be an acceptable band aid solution for the lack of cross platform clients.
4) Setting it up in an existing infrastructure is like doing a rubics cube blindfolded. You're basically just randomly doing stuff and praying.

Then we tried Zimbra, and never looked back. :)

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Authored by: deanmcg on Monday, February 25 2008 @ 10:02 am MST

I echo the comments of others in that iCal Server sort of sucks in the way it forces the CalDAV Users only and Web Calendaring for Groups only.

The open source CalDAV client for Outlook works acceptably well.

Apple needs to get it's arse in gear and integrate Users and Groups into both solutions to make it usable for all applications. Most of the clients I deal with would prefer to use iCal where they can. In that regard the combination of iCal and Open Directory is simple to use and administer.

Whilst one can "work around" adding Groups to iCal it does require that all members of the group have to be delegates of the Calendar to make changes and all delegated calendars cannot be synced to the iPhone.

I look forward to the evolution of the product which may take place in future updates.

Dean Mc

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Authored by: filipp on Wednesday, February 27 2008 @ 04:30 pm MST

iCal Server has been a bit of an "unconctrolled experiment" for us as well.

I still have faith in the product though, mostly due to the fact that I heard Apple developed this thing to also use themselves...

I think there's also another side to why these new services are causing so many problems. They're totally new (at least much more so than email, file etc) so people don't really know how to use them. Just setting these up is no longer enough, we should also all be doing training as well. :)

---
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." --William Gibson

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 27 2008 @ 11:51 pm MST

Ugh!

I can't even get the VPN working on 10.5 so I'm back at 10.4

When 10.5 was running, the iCal server did seem to work ok... but, I was hoping for a replacement for my Dot Mac account...I use iCal and Dot Mac to post my work/schedule on my website... BUT

With Dot Mac, you can choose to only publish the day and time and length of an event, not any details.. this wasn't possible with iCal Server.... color me very disappointed in 10.5.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 28 2008 @ 08:08 pm MST

Yes and yes!

We have a development server hosting calendars for approx 10 people and we are really happy with the reliability and performance of the calendaring system. Our future plans include moving the service to a new Intel Xserve (dedicated) in the next 90 days and migrating our entire enterprise over to the new system (a few hundred users).

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Authored by: crank on Friday, February 29 2008 @ 09:46 am MST

We have been using iCal server in a 60 person ad agency now for 2 weeks in full production mode. So far the user feedback is that while there are some bugs and hiccups they have come across, it is really an amazing solution. A few holes that need to be fixed, outside invites (being able to put a client or vendor in a meeting and have iCal send an email invite without freaking out), better error checking on room and equipment reservations (the user feedback of the grayed out question mark, check or slash is a little too hard to read) and having to hit return after adding attendees to get the link for checking availability. Most of these are minor interface issues. I would say that the overall experience has been a positive one. As for the iPhone etc. Please, simply use the iPhone calendar, and then click on the appointment, copy, and then click back on the shared and copy it back. How many iPhone appointments to people really make when out and about...really...is it something that would be nice to be fixed? Yeah of course is it a deal breaker for my execs? No.

About the documentation, yes, it is thin, but then again, Apple expects that everyone already has a wonderfully working Leopard OD server that all the workstations are attached to for their accounts, no luckily for me (well not luckily it was part of my evil plan) I set all this up ahead of time. The iCal rollout was then really trivial. Hit a few switches, change the user accounts and bam, shared calendar for all. If someone would like me to write up my experiences in depth, I would be happy to do so, since for the last month all I have done for IT projects has been to get Shared iCal up and running.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 03 2008 @ 05:26 am MST

So far, loving it.

We are a 65 person company that has had to deal with organizing meetings without an electronic calendar of any kind.

The key for us was the fact invitations are invitations only and that we can now agree on a meeting time and be informed of free/busy status without phone calls and e-mails.

Invites outside our organization are not an issue as you just type in the e-mail address of the person you want to invite. Federated calendaring is on the horizon and I'm hoping that recent events wrt Microsoft will have them opening up their APi to external folks as well.

iCal Server is lacking in documentation department as well as document detail - e.g. what do the entries in the Error log mean?

An opportunity for some Symbian Developer / iPhone developer will be to create an iCal Server client for mobile phones, as syncing to a Mac is nice and covers 80% of our users but the remaining 20% really do want to access their calendar on the move.

It will be very interesting to hear Apple's experiences of rolling out iCal server to thousand+ audiences come the WWDC. From our perspective as a small company, iCal Server is just what the doctor ordered.

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Authored by: priglmeier on Wednesday, March 05 2008 @ 12:33 pm MST

I have this running. I'm still not sure that it is a consumer friendly product yet. I'd like to see some nice examples or utilities from Apple that would let users create webpages integrated with iCal, Wiki, Blogs, etc. It just doesn't seem like a cohesive design yet except for engineers and developers.

What would you like to see in iCal? Do you have examples of a good iCal implementation? Share please.

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Authored by: kevsmith on Thursday, March 06 2008 @ 05:42 pm MST

We've had an iCal server in place for a couple of months now. It works well in small groups (e.g. Mr. Account Director sharing his calendar with his assistant and another colleague). It's very kludgy for large groups.

My biggest problems were these:

1. Connecting to an existing Open Directory system -- we didn't want to upgrade our Tiger (10.4.10) OD system to Leopard. Without having to duplicate account information in a separate Leopard directory, we had to use augmented records in a Basic server configuration. Augmentation allows the Leopard server to pull user records from the Tiger OD and add the information it needs for calendars, wikis, etc. Unfortunately, there is a soft limit of 50 imported users. (No idea what the hard limit is but we're up to mid-60s currently). I can send or post basic steps for those interested.
   The biggest drawback is having to use the simple Server Preferences utility and loosing the features and flexibility available through Server Admin and Workgroup Manager apps.
2. Managing group calendars -- as stated above, standard group calendars are limited to a single web-based calendar per group and can only be added to iCal clients as read-only subscriptions. This doesn't do us much good. We got around this by creating a master calendar user on the Leopard/iCal server and creating calendars in iCal (client) as that master user. Then each (appropriate) user must be added as a delegate in iCal's preferences. This means adding 20 plus people to a group calendar is a drag. It would be nice if you could add a group as a delegate.

One thing our users complain about is the inability to add external email addresses (non-group members) as invitees to shared calendar events.

And, yes, iCal server settings are spread out all over the place in a Workgroup or Advanced server set up. Not good.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some other glitch or "feature." All things considered, iCal server holds great promise but is not nearly ready for a medium to large group environment.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 02 2008 @ 03:50 am MDT

I got my iCal server running decently for a few hours. During that time, I continued to configure services. Suddenly (after a reboot), iCal server stopped working and asked me for a lacking virtual host. The DNS is setup correctly and the server is running as a FQDN OD master. It is also impossible to select a web site to enable wiki for a group. However, my web sites are running, so are webmail, AFP and mail. I have posted on apple discussions, but no answer so far. Maybe here ;-) ?

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Authored by: priglmeier on Wednesday, April 02 2008 @ 03:09 pm MDT

I am looking for resources out there related to iCAL. Specifically if there is a workaround for the authentication problems... Users and Groups seem to disappear from the calendaring, wiki and blog services. The server will report suer / group does not exist. thanks

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Authored by: pglock on Tuesday, April 29 2008 @ 05:22 am MDT

Like many others have commented, iCal server is not ready for prime time. I have one server supporting a small business (10 users) but found iCal server too flakey to trust, especially for the authentication and 201 error problems. For the moment we are using eGroupware hosted on a public server fo shared calendars.

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Authored by: Bytesmiths on Monday, August 25 2008 @ 01:47 am MDT

I wish I could paint a better picture than others have, but this product stinks.

The worst part of it is that I trusted Apple to have a decent product, and I switched lots of people over to it, with much pain and suffering.

Security is totally a joke. It will let you do anything, and it makes the changes, and then every fifteen minutes, takes your account offline and pops up a "Request Error... 403 Forbidden... CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation." And yet it made the change, and everyone can see it! SHEESH! This and the wiki are the big reasons I shelled out for Leopard Server. The wiki is a mess, as well. I should have saved $500 and stuck with simply using Leopard Client as a server. I've been had.