Calendar:QA CalDAV Support

This is an overview of CalDAV support in Sunbird & Lightning, i.e. supported CalDAV features and CalDAV servers. Please add your experiences, and refine the matrix if needed. If you add notes, please include the version numbers tested in each note.

CalDAV Support Matrix

				Mozilla Calendar Client
				0.8		0.9
CalDAV Server		Features		Access		Access		Sched.
Name	Version	Access	Sched.	Events	Tasks	Events	Tasks	Events	Notes	Help
Bedework	3.4.1.1									Quickstart Client configuration
DAViCal	0.9.7									DAViCal docs Mozilla on DAViCal Wiki
	0.8.0
Kerio MailServer	6.7								here	KB Article
	6.5									KB Article
SOGo	1.0 RC?								here	SOGo (@Inverse) Demo Server Accounts
Oracle Beehive	Release 1 (1.4)									End User Notes
Zimbra	5.0.8								here	Client configuration
	5.0.5								here	Demo Server Accounts (see notes)
Darwin Calendar Server	...
Scalix	11.4									Client configuration
IceWarp CalDAV Server	9
Chandler Server (Cosmo)	1.1.0								here	Using Lightning With Chandler Hub and Chandler Server Hub Server Accounts
	1.0.0
Google Calendar									here	Instructions (in German)
Yahoo Calendar Beta	5.0 - 20090105 - 1552							FB	here	Switch to beta, subscribe

'Access' refers to CalDAV-access (rfc4791), which permits creating, reading, editing, and deleting events and tasks (todos) in calendars.

'Scheduling' refers to CalDAV-sched (draft), which permits retrieving participants' free-busy info, proposing a meeting time to participants, and gathering the participants' accepts and declines.

Server Legend: SUPPORTED: | UNSUPPORTED:

Client Legend: server+client works: | server+client fails: | not implemented by server:

Diagnosis hints

To narrow possible causes of CalDAV problems in small calendars, (1) set both preferences calendar.debug.log and calendar.debug.log.verbose to true, and (2) click right on calendar in the Calendars pane to reload it. (Set pref via Options / General / Config editor, right click New / Boolean to add it.)

The xml CalDAV messages will be shown in the error console (and in the startup command line shell) with verbose logging.

The kind of scheduling a server claims to support can also be found with verbose logging.

 Look for something like
   CalDAV: Error getting DAV header, status 404
   CalDAV: Server does not support CalDAV scheduling.
 Or
   CalDAV: DAV header: 1, 2, access-control, calendar-access, calendar-schedule
   CalDAV: Server generally supports calendar-schedule
 Or
   CalDAV: DAV header: 1, 2, access-control, calendar-access, calendar-auto-schedule
   CalDAV: Server supports calendar-auto-schedule

SOGo Notes

Reminders/alarms set by Sunbird/Lightning are not recognized nor editable by SOGo.

Weekly bydays: The SOGo webUI has a problem producing rule for weekly recurrences on multiple days of the week (erronously escapes comma, SOGo bug 2003).

Repeat without start: The demo account sogo1 has many repeating tasks with no start or due date, triggering bug 435166.

Chandler Server (Cosmo) Notes

The Web interface to Chandler Server offers a limited view of data that may be stored by CalDAV and other clients. Using this limited UI for edition of events or notes should have no adverse effect on underlying/background data.

Zimbra Notes

Password does not have to be supplied in URL. For example:
  http://zimbrahost.example.com/dav/USERNAME/Calendar

To find version of server from Zimbra Web UI:

• In 5.0.5: go to help, search for 'version'. (In later versions this only shows the date, not the version number.)
• In 5.0.11: go to the Zimbra search field (not web search), paste "$set:get version", and click the 'Search' button. A small dialog box will pop up with the version information, something like "Client version: 5.0.11_GA_2695.RHEL4_64"

Sunbird/Lightning 0.9 more correctly handles result codes when asking for VEVENTS and VTODOS from a CalDAV URL. Zimbra version 5.0.8 or later is required to fix Zimbra bug 28048 as described in bug 438642, though there is a patch at bug 438642 to workaround the problem that is easy to apply by hand (the file is in the installed /js/ directory). As of this writing, the testzimbra demo server is only running ZCS 5.0.5, so it is broken and requires the workaround.

Zimbra tasks: As of Zimbra 5.0.5, the .../Calendar url does not include tasks, and the .../Tasks url does not work for CalDAV (there is a corresponding url for ics/WebDAV -- in the Tasks tab, in the left column Tasks folder, right click and click the 'sharing' menu item to display it).

Zimbra v 5.0.14

Caldav is available on Tasks (http://server/dav/username/tasks), if you specify the tasks calendar when saving a task, it will show in the zimbra web gui as well.

Google Calendar Notes

CalDAV vs. GDATA: Most of Google Calendar's features can be accessed via the CalDAV protocol, for which Lightning has built-in support, making GDATA optional. In the past, CalDAV access was bugged, causing alarms (reminders) to sync improperly, but this has been fixed (Google CalDAV issue 25, Sunbird/Lightning bug 451821). Reminders set in Lightning now sync properly via CalDAV and will appear as pop-ups in the web interface and as notifications in the Android calendar app. Only the ability to set up SMS or email reminders is missing.

Location URL: As described in the instructions (in German), the CalDAV URL is of the form
  https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/CALENDAR_ID/events
where CALENDAR_ID for your initial calendar is your full email@address. The calendar URLs end with /events, not /user (/user identifies the user account, not the calendar, and is used in Apple iCal). This URL only works when you have enabled access for less secure apps in your Google account settings. You can also use the newer API using the following URL, which also works when you haven't enabled access for less secure apps:
  https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/CALENDAR_ID/events
For other calendars, extract the calendar id from the URLs in the calendar settings page of the webUI.

No Tasks: Neither CalDAV nor the GDATA provider support tasks.

Yahoo Calendar Beta Notes

For Yahoo, as of Jan 2009, CalDAV is only available with the new Yahoo Calendar Beta, not the default Yahoo Calendar. First, switch.

The Yahoo Calendar Beta version number is in the lower left corner of the beta calendar web interface, formatted like "5.0 - 20090105-1552".

Once you have switched, you can find the calendar name in the left column of the new web interface, it defaults to the account owner's name. You may click to toggle the visibility checkmark as in Sunbird or Lightning. Then subscribe in Lightning or Sunbird with a CalDAV URL of the form:
  https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/YOUR_USERNAME/Calendar/YOUR_CALENDAR_NAME

For Yahoo Calendar version "5.0 - 20090105-1552", when Sunbird asked for username and password, the server was identified as Zimbra.

In Yahoo Calendar version "5.0 - 20090105-1552", creating a task from either the web interface or Sunbird 0.9 shows up in the other side, and edits made from Sunbird show up in the web interface. Interestingly, there is no way to set a task alarm from the web interface, but an alarm is shown if it a dated task is created from Sunbird. [However, editing an existing to-do from the Yahoo web interface fails to save, so changes are lost when you refresh the web interface by changing the view date (independent of Sunbird). Now works in Yahoo Calendar version "5.0 - 20090206-1323 production" Gekacheka 22:52, 21 February 2009 (UTC)]

In Yahoo Calendar version "5.0 - 20090105-1552", Free-Busy time detection from the Sunbird 0.9 invitation dialog seemed to work. Sending an invitation from the web interface sent a text email (with wrong time, probably a timezone error) with an http link to the server for the recipient to RSVP via a web browser, not an iTIP/iMIP request for the recipient's calendar and email iTIP/iMIP reply. (When the recipient visits the link and clicks a button, the server sends a text email with short reply corresponding to the button.)

Kerio Notes

CalDAV calendars and tasks work fine. Free/busy support doesn't currently work (see bug 456380)).

Xandikos Notes

CalDAV calendars and tasks work. Scheduling isn't currently implemented.

When running Xandikos behind an Apache server, make sure to disable HTTP/2 either in Thunderbird or in Apache. This is because of bug 1106727.