I’m still looking for the perfect calendar solution for our company, open source preferred.
We tried Webcalendar, but it was disappointing and clunky. My colleagues quickly returned to Google Calendar, which is the best so far and a joy to use. But, well, it’s not open source and it’s almighty Google, I somehow prefer to have my business data on a server I own. I tested Zimbra a year ago and again today, it’s a hefty 200 megabytes download and tries to be everything including a mail server and client, but we already have a mail server and clients, thank you very much.
All we want to do is share some appointments, that’s all. All I want is a good shared calendar.
Here’s the basic wishlist:
- usable with a clean, straightforward web interface
- allows my colleagues to see my appointments
- allows my colleagues to invite me to their appointments
These things would be nice, but are not required:
- allows synching with desktop calendar software (such as Evolution, iCal, Outlook etc.)
- allows synching with mobile clients (such as PDAs, my N800 or cell phones)
- web interface works with my N800
Strange that there isn’t something like that out there. Every web calendar / calendar server solution I found so far is either clunky and incomplete or somehow mutated into a big mess of everything and a kitchen sink.
I did the same search a few weeks ago and my finding are not very optimistic.
My search was for a calendar server program plus but not necessarily to have a web interface. I also wanted to have remote access read-write by evolution/sunbird and from my N800.
So I tried Cosmo (http://www.osafoundation.org/) which I found to be the best one with web interface, bedework (http://www.bedework.org/) and webcalendar. Cosmo is the best by far but evolution has problems with it, with the caldav export. Of course this is Evolution’s problem since sunbird works fine and Evolution isn’t famous for its best caldav support. Webdav on Evolution is read only on the other hand so no luck there with any calendar server program.
I also tried http://rscds.sourceforge.net/ but it has not web interface.
Anyway the bottom line at the moment is that I couldn’t find any open source web calendar application that has good web interface and Evolution has no problem with it. I don’t care about Outlook so didn’t look that but since Outlook doesn’t support ical as far as I know you are probably out of luck with that also.
Give Cosmo a try though, might suit you .
Our office uses Scalix, which works quite well in a number of circumstances. Meets all the needs and 2 1/2 of your wants (the standard web interface does not work well on the N800, even with the new engine, but the mobile interface does for email).
http://www.scalix.com/
Group-Office as my PIM of choice. — and I’m pretty sure all of the code is open. It does a lot more than just Calendar stuff, but you can customize which modules are available to everyone.
http://www.group-office.com
I like 30boxes. It won’t be on your own server but if you want something that just works it is pretty nice. Last time I checked you could only publish ical files, not sync them, but I haven’t found this to be large restriction.
Good luck
Find an open-source project who has the most features you need and the less unnecessary features.
Pay a developper to add the missing features and remove the unnecessary, or do it yourself.
Submit your patch to mainstream, if not accepted publish it.
Release.
You may want to watch this space then:
https://garage.maemo.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=756&group_id=106&atid=460
We’re especially focusing on sharing features and usability on the tablet.
@Quix:
You are right. However, “Find an open source project” is already pretty difficult, with literally hundreds of projects out there. Hence the question here.
I tried and installed dozens of shared calendar projects, but most of them then turned out to be incomplete or abandoned projects.
We did look at the sources of Webcalendar. It was not a pretty sight. Oh, and yes, I began writing my own calendar server. Right now it’s incomplete and abandoned…
I can definitely feel for you here; in my office we have a hackneyed “Invite everyone in the office” trick which almost approaches a shared calendar.
Now, we’re a mac heavy shop, so this: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/ical.html looks like it will do the trick for us, however, you may be able to cross-compile this: http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/calendarserver, which is the Open Source version of the server.
I would also want to point to the apple calendarserver. However I tried to get it working on my Debian server and dropped the effort until I noticed that it won’t be a quick and easy task. That may have changed since then (shortly after wwdc where leopard has been announced)
So if you try and get it running please let us know
Actually im using Apache with webdav module. Also i have full ACL on the calendar, and i can create unlimited calendars on my local server.
Im using thunderbird with lighting extension, and it’s the best solution at all. Even i prefer it to M$ Exchange because it’s free and you have no licenses to buy. Also any device can work with the iCal file format (ICS), i successfully synchronized my Window$ CE palm and any Symbian PalmOS with my Calendar (including TaskLists)
We are thinking to use either XC Connect or OfficeCalendar. These are not open-source though. If you have already tested it or using it, can you please make any comments?
Also, Is there any open-source free solution availabe?
So who has the best solution for a web based shared calendar ? Hosted on own servers ?
[...] its variants. And we’re not the only folks having trouble finding solutions, as evidenced by this post on Hanno’s [...]
Atmail has a really slick Calendar interface and shared support.
Demo it online at: http://atmail.com/
Hi,
If you are still looking, here are some tips:
http://www.philb.com/iwantto/calendar.htm
Will try out one of these myself now.
Tina
I have found what I was looking for long months !!!
http://www.group-office.com/
OpenSource , Ajax, sexy, efficient !
Did you ever find what you where looking for?