[Kroupware] kolab & outlook connectors (synchronization vs. "live updates")

[Henning Holtschneider]

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- --On Sonntag, 21. März 2004 16:03 +0100 Frederik Himpe <fhimpe at pandora.be> 
wrote:

> Now on the client side, we tested Outlook 2000 with the Toltec connector.
> We encountered a few problems:
>
> - When marking an appointment in a calendar as "private", other
> people to which the calendar folder was shared, could still see the
> appointment and read all its details.

This is the correct behaviour. There is no way for the IMAP server to hide 
messages inside a shared folder for certain users. Currently, the only way 
to avoid exposing private entries is to use two seperate calendar folders.

> - When a user adds an appointment for another user via its shared
> calendar, the free/busy information of this other user, did not seem to
> get updated.

The free/busy information can only be updated by the owner of the calendar. 
Outlook will always only update your own free/busy information based on 
your own calendar (i.e. the standard folder "calendar"), unless you are 
using a MS Exchange server.

> I'm planning to test the Bynari connector soon, but as far as I see, it
> also seems to work with regular synchronization intervals instead of live
> server updates.

That's correct.

> Why is it so these connectors don't store the data directly on the server?

As far as I know, Outlook doesn't notify the connector when an item is 
being created or changed. Thus, the folders inside the PST files have to be 
polled for changes. Apart from that, some elements are being read, saved, 
changed and saved again by Outlook. This may result in duplicates or update 
loops on the IMAP server.

> Technically, it should be possible that clients update the calendar and
> free/busy information immediately when a change is made, while clients
> could receive immediately change notificiations via the IMAP IDLE
> extension, no?

This sounds like an interesting idea but doesn't the IDLE extension only 
work on the currently selected folder?

Regards,

     <-gninneH<-
- --
   __                 _  __    __   Henning Holtschneider
  / /  ___  _______ _/ |/ /__ / /_  <henning at loca.net>
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/____/\___/\__/\_,_/_/|_/\__/\__/  ...net happens!
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