Developed by Apple Computer, Apple iCal is an application allowing management of calendars on Mac OS X. The application enables to manage events of multiple calendars in a single schedule and thus quickly identify conflicts in the time schedule.
Calendars may be either stored on the disk or, with read rights, it is possible to subscribe for calendars stored at the web server. It is also possible to publish calendars on the web server.
Kerio MailServer supports publishing of calendars in user email accounts on the server and subscription of calendars stored in the mailbox from the Apple iCal. In addition to subscription to their own calendars, users can also subscribe to calendars shared by other users.
In Apple iCal, subscribed calendars are available only in the read-only mode. Published calendars are available on the server for reading only (this implies that it is not edit published calendars when accessed by Kerio WebMail, for example).
Since Apple iCal for Mac OS X Tiger, it is possible to synchronize locally stored calendars with calendars on Kerio MailServer. The Kerio Sync Connector (see chapter 40 Kerio Sync Connector for Mac ) is required for this purpose.
Subscription and publishing of calendars are performed by HTTP (in this case, it is not possible to use HTTPS). Therefore, the HTTP service must be running in Kerio MailServer. In addition to this, it is also necessary to map the corresponding port on the firewall protecting the server. Otherwise, the service will not be available from the Internet (for details, see section 2.3 Firewall configuration).
As suggested by the name, the iCalendar (also known as iCal) format is applied to calendar management. iCal is a standard format used for exchange of calendar data. The iCalendar built in Kerio MailServer enables Kerio MailServer to support cooperation with Apple iCal.
Note: If calendars published as subfolders of the main calendar called Calendar, all events will also be displayed in the Free/Busy calendar.
Specific options and settings in Apple iCal are focused in the Kerio MailServer 6, User's Guide).
To create a public calendar in Kerio MailServer, user needs corresponding access rights. These rights can be assigned only by the Kerio MailServer administrator.
Once you have appropriate rights, you can create a public iCal calendar following the instructions provided below:
Log in the Kerio WebMail interface.
In Public folders, create a new calendar folder.
Note: To avoid complications with URL, It is recommended not to use special national characters in calendar names. Use, for example, the name Calendar
, to keep it easy.
Read access rights are set automatically for all users under the particular domain and all Kerio MailServer users. These rights can be changed through the context menu of the new folder ( ).
Once a new calendar folder is created, run Apple iCal.
Create a new calendar that will be set as public.
Publish this calendar to the folder created in Kerio MailServer. For publishing, use the following URL pattern:
http://server_name/ical/public/folder_name
the URL may be, for example, as follows:
http://mail.company.com/ical/public/Calendar
Use your browser to run Kerio WebMail and check whether the publishing has been completed successfully.