http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/howto-syncing-multiple-calendars-between-android-and-zarafa
Syncing multiple calendards between Zarafa (or any other
groupware) and Android over ActiveSync is not possible due to limitation
in Android. However, Zarafa can export calendars via CalDav, and there
is an Android apps which adds CalDav calendars to the native calendar
system.
Background: ActiveSync and CalDav
ActiveSync is the Microsoft way of syncing data, and is well
established in the business ecosystems and thus also in groupware sync
solutions like
z-push. However, sharing multiple calendars via ActiveSync is
not possible
with Android without any special hacks. Additionally, ActiveSync is
patented and copyrighted and as as result for each device which is able
to sync via ActiveSync a fee is payed to Microsoft.
CalDav on the other
hand is an open standard for syncing data, available to everyone for
free. Unfortunately, it is not natively supported by Android although
many groupware solutions provide support for it. But there are 3rd party
apps to add CalDav support to Android.
Zarafa
The zarafa support for CalDav is quickly added by installing the
zarafa-ical package. Here is for example the package description on a CentOS/Fedora system:
3 | The zarafa-ical package includes the Zarafa iCal/CalDAV gateway service |
4 | to enable users to access their calendar using iCalendar (RFC 2445/5545) |
5 | or CalDAV (RFC 4791) compliant clients. The iCal/CalDAV gateway service |
6 | can be configured to listen for HTTP and HTTPS requests. |
The configuration is done in
/etc/zarafa/ical.cfg. The
only really interesting part is if you want to enable ical over TLS or
not. After everything is set up, try to reach the calendars of your
system via web browser, the address should look similar to
https://www.example.net:8443/caldav/testuser/Calendar. Afterwards, create some more calendars to verify later on that everything worked.
Many other groupware solutions offer CalDav support as well, the
setup should be equal similar. The beauty in CalDav is that it does not
contain any special magic.
Android
Once Zarafa is set up, you can configure the Android client. As
mentioned before, Android does not provide native CalDav support, thus a
3rd party app is required. I made quite good experiences with the app
CalDav sync beta. While the app does cost 2,55 €, the author does promise to open source the app once it has matured enough.
After the app was installed, you just enter user credentials and server URL and are ready to go:
The synced calendars show up in the Android calendar overview
natively, and can be re-used in any calendar app out there which
accesses the default Android calendar store:
That’s it, you can now sync all calendars you want, even carious task
lists, to your Android mobile phone. It works pretty well for my own
Zarafa setup, but we’ve also tested it at
credativ with dedicated calendar server in a productive environment.
Conclusion
As a result, the sync between multiple calendars in Zarafa and
Android does work now flawlessly. An additional bonus is that you are
free to choose the colors of the calendars, in contrast to the
ActiveSync implementation where you are stuck with a random color.
Besides, CalDav is also implemented in groupware fat clients like
Thunderbird, KDE’s Kmail and Gnome’s Evolution, and you can now access
all data via the same interface.
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