Big pictures for Outlook Calendar and SabreDAV

[Chinmay Patel]

Hello Friends,

We are working on an application where we will allow our users to connect their Outlook calendar with the system. With some research I have developed some understanding for WebDAV, CalDAV, and SabreDAV. 

So far, I have finished the "getting started" tutorial. and going to continue on the rest of the tutorials. My only concern is, I do not understand the big picture in terms of how everything comes together. Is there a resource I can tap into to understand the bigger picture for MS Outlook calendar + SabreDAV integration.

Thanks,

Chinmay Patel

[Evert Pot]

Outlook does not support CalDAV, unless you're using a plugin:

http://www.bynari.net/download/#WebDAV

If you got that, you should just be able to follow this tutorial:

http://code.google.com/p/sabredav/wiki/CalDAV

You can also find a lot of resources on https://fruux.com/, which is from my company and also runs sabredav. After logging in, there's a lot of setup instructions for various clients. May give you a better idea on how this comes together, before you have your own server running.

Hope that helps,
Evert

[Chinmay Patel]

Hey Evert,

Thanks for a quick response. 

I will go through all these resources you provided, and will get back to you.

Thanks,

Chinmay

Regards,

Chinmay Patel

IT Consultant | Software Developer | Website Designer

Phone: (647) 878 4217 | Email: chin...@gmail.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

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[Chinmay Patel]

Hi Evert,

I quickly looked at the resources, and trying to wrap my head around it. Here is my understanding:

- Bynari is installed on top of Outlook to allow CalDAV on outlook.

- CalDAV plugin is installed and configured on top of SabreDAV ( like a bundle or an extension ) 

- Fruux is very well designed. Loved the UX. In this case, Outlook subscribes to Fruux calender, but a user cannot push (read only) events to Fruux from Outlook.

Correct me, if I have misunderstood anything.

To give more understanding of my use case, here is some description.

- User signs up with our service. 

- User publishes his Outlook calendar to our service

- We can process the calendar and develop a user flow around it.

There is a service called "Prepwork" which access's the outlook calendar, just like we want to access the calendar (link to their setup procedure). Notice that it doesn't require users to install anything on their machines. They simply have to publish their calendar to Prepwork. How can I replicate the same user experience? How can I let my users just publish the calendar to our service, without installing anything.

Let me know, if I am going in a wrong direction or misunderstanding anything.

Thanks,

Chinmay

[Evert Pot]

On Sep 18, 2013, at 7:04 PM, Chinmay Patel <chin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Evert,
>
> I quickly looked at the resources, and trying to wrap my head around it. Here is my understanding:
>
> - Bynari is installed on top of Outlook to allow CalDAV on outlook.
> - CalDAV plugin is installed and configured on top of SabreDAV ( like a bundle or an extension )
> - Fruux is very well designed. Loved the UX. In this case, Outlook subscribes to Fruux calender, but a user cannot push (read only) events to Fruux from Outlook.
>
> Correct me, if I have misunderstood anything.
>
> To give more understanding of my use case, here is some description.
>
> - User signs up with our service.
> - User publishes his Outlook calendar to our service
> - We can process the calendar and develop a user flow around it.
>
> There is a service called "Prepwork" which access's the outlook calendar, just like we want to access the calendar (link to their setup procedure). Notice that it doesn't require users to install anything on their machines. They simply have to publish their calendar to Prepwork. How can I replicate the same user experience? How can I let my users just publish the calendar to our service, without installing anything.
>
> Let me know, if I am going in a wrong direction or misunderstanding anything.

Hey Chinmay, if you are just interested in the 'publish' + 'subscribe' workflow, you don't need CalDAV at all. You can install a standard WebDAV filesystem and just push there.

The publish feature has a number of drawbacks, most notably that you can only publish a calendar from 1 place.. So you cannot use multiple Outlook instances to modify the same calendar. If this is not a problem for you, a plain old sabredav filesystem is all you need. Fruux does not support this publish feature.

If you do want the benefits of CalDAV, which is true syncing, then you do need the bynari plugin.

Evert

[Chinmay Patel]

Hey Evert,

Thanks for another fast response.

Yes, you are right. We don't need back and forth syncing. We just need one way publish from Outlook/iCal and other calendar clients. As you said, I am going to give a standard WebDAV file system a try and take it from there. Is there any public code I can look it up for better understanding? Or something similar just for my reference?

Once again, thanks for the clarifications.

Regards,

Chinmay Patel

IT Consultant | Software Developer | Website Designer

Phone: (647) 878 4217 | Email: chin...@gmail.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

Evert

[Evert Pot]

On Sep 18, 2013, at 7:21 PM, Chinmay Patel <chin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Evert,
>
> Thanks for another fast response.
>
> Yes, you are right. We don't need back and forth syncing. We just need one way publish from Outlook/iCal and other calendar clients. As you said, I am going to give a standard WebDAV file system a try and take it from there. Is there any public code I can look it up for better understanding? Or something similar just for my reference?
>
> Once again, thanks for the clarifications.

Basically, you should be fine just using the 'fileserver.php' example, from the examples folder.

If you're having trouble with that, post here... but it should be relatively basic if you have some php background.

Evert

[Chinmay Patel]

Thanks for showing the direction, Evert. 

Regards,

Chinmay Patel

IT Consultant | Software Developer | Website Designer

Phone: (647) 878 4217 | Email: chin...@gmail.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

Evert

[Chinmay Patel]

Hi Evert

Your direction helped. I have some part of authentication working. 

Below are some of the things we have tried:

- Current folder structure http://pastebin.com/gdR3JQeY

- the virtual host links to the /public directory

- Current server file ( index.php ) http://pastebin.com/VKAezGpF

- Outlook error I get https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6pHkwL-BiRrTzd2NUxRZVRKenM/edit?usp=sharing

- PHP log while connecting through Outlook - http://pastebin.com/DRYKbnFw

- The database is setup correctly and working. If I try accessing it from the web for testing, it works with 'admin' username and 'admin' password. It shows me a page with the folder structure. 

Below are my questions/concenrs:

- How can I make a working connection from Outlook to SabreDAV using WebDAV? Are there any methods I have to implement to make it fully work?

- After the connection is working, I will require to intercept the add/update/delete event sync requests from Outlook and use it to trigger some things in the current application. Where should I add can I handle those requests? 

In addition, It would be great, if I can get on a quick 10-15 minute skype call with you. It will help in speeding up the process

Lastly, sorry for the long description. Just trying to give you as much details as possible.

Thanks, 

Chinmay

 

Regards,

Chinmay Patel

IT Consultant | Software Developer | Website Designer

Phone: (647) 878 4217 | Email: chin...@gmail.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

Regards,

Chinmay Patel

IT Consultant | Software Developer | Website Designer

Phone: (647) 878 4217 | Email: chin...@gmail.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

[Evert Pot]

On Sep 24, 2013, at 12:19 AM, Chinmay Patel <chin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Evert
>
> Your direction helped. I have some part of authentication working.
>
> Below are some of the things we have tried:
>
> - Current folder structure http://pastebin.com/gdR3JQeY
> - the virtual host links to the /public directory
> - Current server file ( index.php ) http://pastebin.com/VKAezGpF
> - Outlook error I get https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6pHkwL-BiRrTzd2NUxRZVRKenM/edit?usp=sharing
> - PHP log while connecting through Outlook - http://pastebin.com/DRYKbnFw
> - The database is setup correctly and working. If I try accessing it from the web for testing, it works with 'admin' username and 'admin' password. It shows me a page with the folder structure.
>

Did you also make sure you're using mod_rewrite to route everything to index.php? A common mistake is just making the index work, when no other url is actually handled by sabredav.

>
> In addition, It would be great, if I can get on a quick 10-15 minute skype call with you. It will help in speeding up the process

I'm going to be on irc throughout the workday today (in central european time). Find me in #sabredav on irc.freenode.net

> Lastly, sorry for the long description. Just trying to give you as much details as possible.

I <3 lots of details :)

Evert

[Chinmay Patel]

Yeah, that was it. I had to rewrite mod_rewrite to route everything to index.php. 

Thanks Evert.

Regards,

Chinmay Patel

IT Consultant | Software Developer | Website Designer

Phone: (647) 878 4217 | Email: chin...@gmail.com

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

Evert