Shared calendars in a mixed Mac/PC environment

April 24, 2008 1:08 PM

We'd like to be able to share calendars in a mixed Windows/Mac shop. Difficulties: delegating calendars to be writable by multiple individuals, offline access, avoiding upgrading Exchange and Entourage.

We have a number of Mac and Windows users in-house -- around a 50/50 distribution. Currently, we run an Exchange 2003 server where the Windows folks connect to it with Outlook for both e-mail and calendaring, and the Mac folks either run Entourage for both mail and calendaring or connect via IMAP with Mail.app and use Outlook Web Access for calendaring. While this works, and generally fits everyone's needs, Entourage and Outlook Web Access are generally considered to be awkward to use or slow compared with iCal or Google Calendar for the Mac users. The Windows users seem generally pleased with how things are currently working in Outlook.

We've been considering moving to Exchange 2007 to at least improve the Outlook Web Access experience for the Mac users, but as the balance of laptops shifts to Mac OS versus Windows, it seems increasingly silly to spend money for Exchange 2007. While I feel confident in migrating e-mail from Exchange to an open-source solution, calendaring seems like a dead zone in terms of alternatives in a mixed Mac/PC environment.

I'm looking for a solution that will allow employees to work with shared calendars offline, as they can do currently do in Outlook or Entourage in offline mode -- management has indicated that it's a "must have." Folks should be able to delegate read/write permissions in a manner similar to they can using Exchange currently.

I've looked at iCal Server in OS X Server, but it doesn't look like there are any production-ready Windows clients out there. Like with GCal, if that's changed recently, I'd love to hear about it.

I've looked at Google Calendar, but there doesn't seem to be reliable offline support. I'm aware of the sync connectors out there, but it looks like Spanning Sync isn't fully compatible with Leopard, and gcaldaemon appears to be designed for syncing a single calendar, not a series of shared calendars that have multiple people writing to them. If I'm wrong about this, please let me know.

Thanks!

posted by I EAT TAPAS to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Google Calendar works with Gears for offline access. The directory tools are not as strong as Exchange though. But the offline functions are great and it works with both PC and Mac. It syncs multiple calendars as well I believe but I will have to try that out later on.
posted by GuyZero at 1:23 PM on April 24, 2008

I'm not the email administrator here but I work at a university using Exchange 2007 (we made the switch just a few months ago I believe) and it's a mixed environment (I use both Mac and PC). If you're counting on 2007 to bring better OWA support in Safari forget it. They will still have the "Light" client which is worlds away from the actual OWA client which only supports Internet Explorer.

A better solution might be to invest in having your Mac users run virtual environments for the Outlook stuff. Entourage is great for many things and I use it for our Exchange mail and love it, but truth be told it will always pale in comparison to the integrated functionality that Outlook holds with Exchange Servers. Distribution lists will never be on the server or sync.

I don't do much with offline access since I only have a desktop so I can't speak much to that (and we don't allow IMAP access to Exchange so Entourage is the only client users are allowed to use so it's definitely a different environment) but I do use shared calendaring and delegated permissions with no issues on 2007 (I want to say we had this functionality in 2003 as well with no issues as long as Entourage was completely up to date with software updates).
posted by genial at 1:46 PM on April 24, 2008

Yea, you can sync gcal with outlook/just about anything. So...you update from the web or the client and share/not share to your hearts desire.

I also like the gsuite because it's somewhat infinitely backed up, so theoretically you could lose every computer at your place and still have the infoz.
posted by TomMelee at 1:51 PM on April 24, 2008

Actually Spanning Sync has been 100% compatible with Leopard ever since v1.1, which was released the day Leopard was released.

You may have seen a notice we posted to our site about a bug in Leopard that affect iCal's sync agent, but that affects iCal syncing in general, not Spanning Sync specifically.

Please let us know if you have any questions by emailing [e-mail].

Thanks,
Charlie
posted by cwood at 2:19 PM on April 24, 2008

GuyZero, how do you access Google Calendar offline through Gears? I have gears installed, and no go. Google's own help indicates that it's not possible, too:

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61527

TomMelee, my understanding of the sync tools is that most don't do any sort of locking or conflict resolutions -- ie, if two individuals with write access make changes offline and then sync to the shared calendar, data will be lost or corrupted. Or is that not the case?
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 2:21 PM on April 24, 2008

a) that page may be outdated
b) it may be a 'coming soon' thing. I see it on my personal gmail account calendar but I am not 100% sure if it is available to everyone.
posted by GuyZero at 6:36 PM on April 24, 2008

Hmmm...you know, I don't know the answer. I'm still in the middle of getting our small NPO all synced together w/ outlook/google apps for the domain. I don't know the answer, but I bet I'll find out soon. Sorry!
posted by TomMelee at 8:37 PM on April 24, 2008

Something that you might want to look at is Cemaphore:

"MailShadowG allows you to synchronize your Outlook client with web-based email service providers like Google’s Gmail"

I have no idea the cost but I doubt it's any more than Exchange costs. I'm sure if you called them they'd be happy to give you their pitch. They don't mention calendars though, pity.
posted by GuyZero at 8:44 PM on April 24, 2008