Elettra Collaboration Calendar OLD (SOGo)

Sharing a calendar among colleagues has become crucial.
Hence, a central Collaboration Calendar service is provided for all the "@elettra.eu" accounts at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste.
This service can be uses both through a modern web interface and via a client calendar applicationa (CalDAV) like Mozilla Thunderbird/Lighning or Apple Calendar.

Calendar Basics

Every person has an account on the Collaboration Calendar. Every account can have one or more calendars, and every calendar can be personal or shared with other accounts.
All the basic settings and operations (like creating a new calendar, sharing to others, etc.) can be done only through the web interface.
Adding and modifying events in a calendar can be done both via the web interface and via a CalDAV client.
Every event has a privacy level chosen among three predefined ones: Public, Confidential, Private. By default, in a shared calendar, Public events can be viewed and modified by people who can access it, Confidential ones only allow accepting or rejecting the invitation, Private ones share nothing.

Web Interface

The Collaboration Calendar can be accessed at the URL https://calendar.elettra.eu.
To login use your UniPass username (name.surname) and your usual password.


When logged in you can access the main screen of the web calendar as depicted here below.

calendar main interface

Several parts are here displayed:
Menu bar on the top (black): here you can access the three sub-areas of the tool (Calendar, Address Book, Preferences) and log out (disconnect).
Toolbar (just below the menu bar): principal, more used, actions are reachable here (new event/task, change view to day/multicolumn/week/month, etc.).
Calendars left panel: you can navigate through years, months and days, select which calendars to display (here only the default one can be seen, the "Personal Calendar"), create/modify/delete calendars.
Events/Tasks quickview panel (center of the screen): a list of events of tasks is quickly viewable here (can be hidden).
Calendar panel: here the selectable view (day/multicolumn/ween/month) is shown.


Common operations

Create a new event

To create a new event it is possible to:

  • click on the "New Event" button on the top-left of the screen;
  • double click on the Calendar panel;
  • drag on a day/time on the Calendar panel (the starting and ending times are automatically set this way).
Whatever the method, a "new event" window appears.

The usual options for an event are shown and their meaning should be almost straightforward.
When collaborating with other people it is very useful to invite them to events. To accomplish this task it is possible to use the function provided by the omonymous title. A new window hence appears.

In the picture above the autocompletion function is shown (all people in the Elettra Directory are available at any time).
By clicking on the icon that will appear leftmost to any name it is possible to switch that person's role in the event (among Participant, Optional Participant, Non Participant, Chair).

Create a new calendar


The first icon on the left from the calendars list allows to create a new calendar.
From there, it is necessary to give a name to the new creating calendar.

And, voilĂ , the new calendar appears in the calendars list:

Now it is possible to set some properties and eventually share the calendar with other people.
To access all these options, right-click on the calendar's name:

Note that with Export/Import you can do those operations to/from iCal files (interchangable to Google calendar and many other standard services).

Share a calendar

By using the contextual (right-click) menu it is possible to get to the sharing windows (here after clicking the plus icon in the first window).

Again, here it is possible to search for people in the directory to share the calendar with.
After adding one person, the collaborator appears in the list of people to which this calendar is shared:

The "Subscribe User" checkbox is important. If set, this calendar will automatically appear in that user's list of calendars. If not, he/she will need to search the directory for a calendar to subscribe to (see below).
By double-clicking on one person's name (including the special "Any Authenticated User") it is possible to modify the access rights for that user:

The default settings should be sufficient for most of the needs, so we don't recommend changing these settings. However, for special cases, it is possible to tune the access to any calendar.

Modify calendar properties

From the calendar contextual menu it is also possible to get to the calendar properties windows.

Apart from the usual settings (name, colour etc.) the Notifications panel could be of importance, in particular when a calendar is shared among many users.
The second tab, "Links to this Calendar" is needed to import a calendar to a client program like Thunderbird/Lightning or Apple Calendar/iCal, or to another web-based calendar (most notably, Google Calendar). The CalDAV is usually the best choice when wanting to do operations with a different tool (add, modify etc.).
The ICS or XML are useful to get read-only access to the calendar.
Maximum care must be taken when using these URLs to external services, in order to protect the privacy of the users' data.


Subscribe to a calendar (on this server)

It is possible to somewhat "import" a calendar of a different user to our list of calendars. This operation is called calendar subscription.
All the calendars in the system are reachable by any user, provided he or she has the necessary access rights for to a given calendar.

First, it is necessary to browse for a calendar: let's start by clicking on the third icon from the left on the calendars toolbar.

Then it is possible to enter one user's name and then get a list of this person's calendars.
 

To subscribe it is needed to click on a calendar and then press the "Add" button. When finished, the "Done" button brings back to the main screeen.
It is possible to subscribe to any but, without the necessary access rights, the events won't even be readable.

Subscribe to a calendar (on the Internet)

The second button from the left in the calendars button bar can "import" one standard calendar (usually ICS) into the Elettra Calendar. The web calendar URL is needed for this action. After subscribing to a calendar, this calendar events will appear in the central calendar panel.


Using an external calendar client (CalDAV)

Regardless of the particular calendar client to configure, the first step is to get a calendar's CalDAV URL. The process is explained in the  "share a calendar" section of this guide.

Mozilla Thunderbird/Lightning

Thunderbird is one of the most email clients (or Mail User Agents, MUA) available. It's free, Open Source, multiplatform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.).

Lightning is a Thunderbird Add-on that enables integration with a calendar server like the Elettra Calendar. Starting from Thunderbird version 38, this add-on is preinstalled, so it's not necessary to manually install it.

From the main Thunderbird screen it is possible to see the Lightning part (rightmost area, tasks and events, plus the two icons/buttons above it - new event/task).


To subscribe to a calendar of a user of the Elettra Collaboration Calendar it is necessary to start from the "Create a new calendar" feature, then choose the "On the Network" option.

On the next screen, the right option is "CalDAV"; the Location text box is where to paste the calendar's CalDAV URL (obtained from the  "share a calendar" section). The "Offline Support" comes in hand when wanting to keep the calendar data even when not connected to the Internet.

The next screen can be used to set the (local) calendar name (WorkingGroup in this example), its events colour, whether to show reminders from Thunderbird and which email address will be used when sending (manual) notifications to attendees.

By pressing "Next" and, then, "Finish", Lightning will configure the subscription to the calendar and ask for the credentials needed to access it.

After that, the calendar will appear in Lightning and can be used as the local ones.



Apple Calendar (iCal)
 

Within iCal, it is necessary to go into Preferences > Accounts and then click on the Add (+) button.


 

The picture above displays the needed information to be set for the subscription.

Account Type: must be CalDAV
User Name: your UniPass account (name.surname)
Password: your UniPass password
Server Address: this must be the first part of a calendar's CalDAV URL, up to the username:
https://calendar.elettra.eu/SOGo/dav/name.surname/
After pressing "Create", this calendar account will be visible in the Preferences window.

The URL used when creating this account has been split in several parts, viewable in the "Server Settings" tab. It is necessary that the "Use SSL" checkbox be set.

In different versions of OS X these screens can vary. It may be needed to selectively input the URL in its parts into different texboxes: the above screenshots, however, can be taken as a guide to correctly set the account.

After these steps all the calendars linked to one user's account will be usable from the Apple Calendar (iCal) calendars list.

Mobile Clients

Android

For Android-based devices, there are various options to sync the Android calendar to the Elettra Calendar, including:

However, all these programs are not free from the Google Play Store, even if some are Open Source.
Fortunately there are alternative download sites or markets like Fdroid (be sure to check the "Allow Unknown Sources" checkbox under the security settings to install the Fdroid apk):

Tests have been successfully performed with DAVdroid. To configure a DAVdroid account for your calendars, just use the UniPass credentials and the basic URL

https://calendar.elettra.eu/SOGo/dav/name.surname/

Another option is to directly use alternative Calendar apps like the egregious SolCalendar where you can directly configure a CalDAV calendar to sync with directly from the app.

Apple iOS Devices

Apple iOS devices (v4.0 and later) are supported natively by SOGo for calendars, tasks (reminders) and contacts.

BlackBerry

BlackBerry 10 devices can use the CalDAV and CardDAV protocols, well supported by the Elettra Calendar.


Address Book

The Elettra Collaboration Calendar not only manages centralised calendars: it also has an Address Book module that, similar to the Calendar one, can be used both via the web interface and via a Calendar Client (CardDAV).
The Address Book can be accessed by clicking on the "Address Book" tab on the top of the browser window (between Calendar and Preferences).

Multiple address books can be managed and shared, very similar to any calendar.

To include an address book into one CardDAV client (again, like Mozilla Thunderbird), it is necessary to use the Calendar's CardDAV URL (right-click on the address book, Properties, Links to this address book).

In Thunderbird, open the Address Book, then follow the File > New... > Remote Address Book menu path and input the URL above. This way the CardDAV client will synchronise with the Elettra Calendar Server: when using multiple computers or programs, this will result in having the same address book in every place, a guarantee of consistency.



Last Updated on Thursday, 07 March 2019 16:51