Check it out! How To Keep Your Family Activities In Sync With A Shared Google Calendar

For the most up-to-date information, see my iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide!

This post is part of my series focused on integrating the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync:

• iPhone OS 3.0 information:
  1. First Look: iPhone 3.0 And Exchange ActiveSync Integration
  2. How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0
  3. How To Access LDAP Directories In iPhone OS 3.0
  4. iPhone 3.0 Exchange ActiveSync: Better But Not Perfect
• How To Set Up iPhone Exchange ActiveSync
1. A Few iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Gotchas
2. Can the iPhone Sync With Multiple Exchange Servers?

This is really a major advancement for the iPhone platform. With 3.0, you have many different calendar synchronization options and can mix and match, using all or none as you see fit:

How to Subscribe to a CalDAV Server (Like Google Calendar)

CalDAV is a powerful open protocol for calendar event synchronization. Lots of services support it, including Google’s free Calendar application, which is part of gmail and Google Apps. It’s a mash-up of WebDAV and ICS and supports two-way synchronization, notes, alerts, and such. iPhone OS 3.0 includes CalDAV as a supported protocol for over-the-air subscription and synchronization, so it can seamlessly synchronize your Google calendar with your phone calendar. Unlike ICS, however, you can create and edit CalDAV entries on the phone and the changes will quickly show up in your Google calendar.

iPhone 3.0 includes direct over-the-air use of CalDAV, ICS, and LDAP servers

Setting up CalDAV, though hidden, is pretty slick. Follow these steps:

1. On the iPhone, select “Settings”
2. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
3. Select”Add Account…” under “Accounts”
4. Select “Other” at the bottom
5. Select “Add CalDAV Account”
6. Enter “www.google.com” for “Server” – the iPhone will automatically identify this as a google CalDAV server!
7. Enter your gmail user name (e.g. “sfoskett”) or full google apps username and domain (e.g. “stephen@fosketts.net”) for “User”
8. Enter your password for “Password”
9. Optionally modify the description
10. Select “Next” and you’re done!

The iPhone recognizes Google Calendar – it’s smart enough to “know” that when you enter “www.google.com” as the CalDAV server it needs to correctly format the URL for Google. Other CalDAV server types might need some tweaking, which you can do in the Advanced tab of the CalDAV’s account in Settings.

All CalDAV calendars are bi-directional, meaning you can create or edit entries and they will (eventually) synchronize on both the phone and calendar server. In my tests, items modified on the iPhone showed up almost immediately, while changes made on Google’s calendar server took a few minutes to show up.

Two notes on CalDAV:

1. Although the documentation says it’s read-only, my Google Calendar absolutely, definitely, is read/write: I can create and modify appointments in the Google Calendar on the iPhone and it shows up online.
2. The “Sync events x weeks back” limit in settings does not apply to CalDAV or ICS! Large numbers of events will cause Calendar to be very, very slow. Beware!

Other popular apps also support CalDAV, including Apple Leopard Server’s iCal Server, Yahoo Calendar, and Zimbra.

I use this capability as a shared family activities calendar. What ideas do you have?

How to Subscribe to an iCalendar Server/.ICS feed

iCalendar is an older calendar subscription format, and many servers offer .ICS feeds of calendar entries. I particularly love TripIt‘s free travel itinerary service, which is available as an ICS feed. iPhone OS 3.0 also includes iCal as a supported protocol for over-the-air subscription, so you can view your ICS feeds right in your phone calendar. Note that iCalendar is read-only, like an RSS feed, so you cannot create or edit items on the phone.

Tap a link to a .ics file and the iPhone will ask to subscribe

The simplest way to subscribe to an ICS feed is simply to email the link to yourself. The iPhone interprets any URL ending in “.ics” as a iCalendar feed and asks if you want to subscribe. This ensures that the link is typed correctly.

Note: This no longer works in iOS 4.2! Now you have to add it in Settings. See Apple Breaks ICS Calendar Auto-Subscription In iOS 4.2.

If you need to manually set up an iCalendar feed, it’s very similar to CalDAV. Follow these steps:

1. Locate the calendar feed you want to use and copy it using OS 3.0′s new copy and paste features
   1. If you use TripIt, log into your account in the iPhone Safari browser
   2. Select the “iCal Feed” icon in your main page
   3. In the popup, select “Subscribe to calendar feed”
   4. Tap and hold the resulting URL (which begins with “webcal://”) until the “Copy” box appears
   5. Tap “Copy”
2. Go back to the hope screen and select “Settings”
3. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
4. Select”Add Account…” under “Accounts”
5. Select “Other” at the bottom
6. Select “Add Subscribed Calendar”
7. Select the “Server” box and tap “Paste”
8. Select “Next”
9. Optionally modify the description

Updates to the iCalendar feed will now show up in your calendar. These are read only, of course, but it’s awfully nice to be able to subscribe to a TripIt or Dopplr feed or the Red Sox schedule on your phone!

One more time: The “Sync events x weeks back” limit in settings does not apply to CalDAV or ICS! Large numbers of events will cause Calendar to be very, very slow. Beware!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Sun is getting into the cloud services business, but which market is their target?

While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.

Sun is leveraging the assets they acquired from Q-layer earlier this year on top of OpenSolaris, MySQL, ZFS, and just about everything else in their arsenal to offer their own virtual data center (VDC) strategy. The Sun Cloud will be a private (inside the firewall) environment offering mobility of virtual machines. Q-layer had partnerships with both VMware and Microsoft and functioned with Windows, OpenSolaris, and Linux, suggesting that this will be quite a full-featured offering. Suddenly Sun’s free OpenSolaris offering on Amazon EC2 makes a lot more sense – it provides a gateway to take virtual computing business from the Bezos team!

One very nifty angle Sun is taking is enabling VirtualBox system images to be saved to (and presumably run in) their cloud. I wonder about monetization, since VirtualBox is more of a desktop virtualization system than VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, but the prospect of clicking “Upload to Cloud” is intriguing! OpenOffice will also allow cloud storage, a foil to Google Apps.

The Sun Cloud also includes a managed storage service. Sun apparently has three storage protocols: A proprietary Sun Cloud Storage API, WebDAV, and an object API likely leveraging Amazon’s AWS. The company claims that they are API-compatible with AWS, allowing applications written with Amazon in mind to be easily ported to their cloud storage service.

One key point to consider with all of this cloud talk, however, is how prepared each company is to support enterprise computing needs. Long-term viability depends on paying customers, and only the largest systems can attract enough end-user nickels and dimes to survive. Enterprise solutions are where the real money is, and questions remain about how prepared companies like Amazon, Google, and Rackspace are to support the needs of corporate users.

There are really three cloud markets: Shared clouds for small developers and enterprise customers and private cloud systems. Amazon was strong from the start with the little guys, Web 2.0 startups and end-user services like Jungle Disk, and Rackspace/Mosso and Google are challenging them in this space. Sun’s focus on AWS compatibility and VirtualBox suggests that they plan to play in this sandbox.

But the enterprise cloud is another matter entirely. Nirvanix stands strong in shared managed storage services, racking up win after win with big customers. EMC, VMware, Microsoft and others are positioning themselves as private alternatives in this space. Will Sun try to compete here, too? They are certainly talking about private clouds and the virtual data center, but there is a serious risk that they will lose focus trying to take on too many roles, and enterprise users won’t tolerate poor pre- and post-sales support! 

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This blog post is probably out of date. If you want to set up Exchange ActiveSync, you should instead consult one my guides:
	iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Setup		iPad Exchange ActiveSync Setup
	iPhone ActiveSync Troubleshooting		iPad ActiveSync Troubleshooting

I’ve been trying to work out how to sync my various data sources into a cohesive whole for a while now, and using the Mac has made it somewhat easier, since it supports a variety of data sources. For users of Microsoft Exchange, one of the most valuable sources for sync data is Outlook Web Access (OWA), because it uses the open(ish) WebDAV standard rather than the (closed) MAPI.

One thing that’s been getting in the way is the URL: You need to enter a correct, canonical URL to access OWA, and it can be tougher than expected to figure this out, since it has changed with newer versions of Exchange. But I’ve discovered some breadcrumbs that helped locate mine, and thought others might like to see these, too.

Logging In

Note that, for all of these services, you must first determine your OWA server name and login credentials.

• As I noted in another post, the server name can vary but often is “owa.example.com”
• You will probably use “https” instead of “http” to specify an SSL connection
• Your login name for OWA should be the same as the one you use in Outlook, and often includes your Active Directory group with a slash, as in “adgroup\yourname”
• Your password should also be the same as the one you use in Outlook

Once you figure out your correct URL (below), test it by logging in from Internet Explorer (if available). You may be able to get in from Firefox or Safari, but it probably won’t work perfectly. Whatever method you use, make sure you can log in correctly from a browser before trying to use the URL in OS X Address Book, iCal, or iSync.

The URL Problem

Exchange can contain many users, and people often have similar or duplicate names. For these people, accessing OWA can be tricky, since the server will just give up when presented with potentially ambiguous names. So you have to use a special canonical name formally known as the “Mailbox Name” but informally called the “Exchange Alias“ to tell the server who you are, or automated services won’t be able to access your data.

You can discover your canonical Mailbox Name by looking at your Active Directory entry.

In Outlook:

1. Click “Tools->Address Book”
2. Locate your entry in the “Global Address List”
3. Open your card – your Mailbox Name is listed in the box marked, “Alias”

The canonical Mailbox Name or Exchange Alias is listed in your Exchange Global Address List card under Alias

Entourage will actually show you the exact URL to use. If you already have it configured, look here:

1. Select the Address Book view
2. Right-click on “Contacts” and select “Folder Properties”
3. Look at the bottom of the window that pops up – there’s your URL!

Note that iSync refuses to work with this URL on my Mac, however. I had to use “http” instead of “https” for some crazy reason!

Entourage will show you the URL to use - just right-click on Contacts and select Folder Properties

Exchange 2003 and Earlier

Those stuck with the earliest versions of OWA must use their canonical Mailbox Name (see above) in the URL. The format is as follows:

https://server.example.com/exchange/mailboxname/inbox/

Put your Mailbox Name in place of “mailboxname”. You can substitute calendar and contacts for inbox, or omit it altogether.

Exchange 2003 SP2

In Exchange 2003 SP2, Microsoft added the option to use your canonical email address instead of the Mailbox Name for the OWA URL. If you have this version, use the same format but use your email address instead like so:

https://server.example.com/exchange/user@example.com/inbox/

Exchange 2007

If you’re using the newest version of Exchange, the old URLs have been replaced by a new format, and the email address is the best option. Now, the format looks like this:

https://server.example.com/owa/user@example.com/?cmd=contents&module=inbox

This should take you right to your inbox, and will not be fooled by multiple users with the same name, aliases, or any other nonsense. You can also specify “contacts” and “calendar” for the module to go right there.

What To Do Next

Now, you should be able to enter this URL into any third-party application that supports retrieving information from Exchange WebDAV servers, including Mac OS X 10.3 or greater Address Book. Enter this in the Address Book Exchange Server panel along with your username and password and it should work. More on this another time.

This article contains much more detailed information on locating a user’s correct OWA credentials.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Determine Your Outlook Web Access URL
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.