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TICKET ARCHIVE -> iCalServer & syncing Blackberry

Juliet - Mar 3, 2008 - 11:27 am

I support about 20 users - all MacBook Pro and Blackberry users.

Pre-Leopard, they subscribed to each others calendars, and sometimes synced other calendars to their Blackberries (like their boss's calendar.)

Now I've got them sharing calendars via iCal Server and PocketMac can't see the served calendars. Any ideas?

ScottW - Mar 5, 2008 - 6:49 am

Juliet,

I have been working with this same issue, but not with Blackberry, but with other Syncing applications, including even the iPhone. I have talked to the developer of one of the popular syncing applications and what was said is that Apple doesn't allow you to sync with iCal Server (CalDev) calendars. This includes Syncing it with Google Calendar, your iPhone or whatever the sync application is.

The scoop I got is that fixing the "bug" that makes the iCal Server calendars unsyncable, will break CalDev, thus they won't fix the "bug".

In my personal opinion, this is terribly odd for Apple to do this and not come up with some type of solution to make this all work.

I have had to research and come up for a different solution for my clients that allows them to sync with the iPhone and other phones using software like MissingSync or even Google Calendar.

BusySync and SyncTogether both allow you to have local Calendars on your computer that are not on iCal Server. You can then authorize read-write permissions, and Sync calendars between each other (like having access to Boss's calendar), etc.

Depending on how you use the iCal Server and the functionality it provides, you can also use the "publish" feature of iCal to publish a Calendar and then allow others to subscribe. You can even publish "place holder" calendars that don't show the information on the Calendar, just the time slots that already taken... which is a not-so-fancy way of finding a non-busy time to schedule a meeting, etc.

BusySync allows you to sync with Google as well, and does a "push/poll" method of Syncing and is what I am currently using and it works very well. What is nice is that I can sync my calendar with Google Calendar, allow me to go in on my iPhone when I am away from the office and add new events via the browser interface, and those, within a minute or so, come up on my iCal calendar, and then replicate to those I am sharing my calendar with all immediately.

But, sadly, I couldn't do any of this with iCal Server.

Scott

Juliet - Mar 5, 2008 - 12:30 pm

Yeesh. So much for Leopard addressing the concerns of businesses since that makes iCal Server fairly useless.

Thanks so much for your answer. Did you have any luck with MissingSync?

ScottW - Mar 5, 2008 - 2:43 pm

Juliet,

You are right, so much for business concerns. Perhaps we will learn something tomorrow with the iPhone SDK Roadmap event.

I have not used MissingSync in a long time, but my experience with anything that syncs with iCal Server calendars is that you may get an initial one way sync from computer to device, but subsequent syncs don't work and no info is passed from the device back to the computer.

Scott