Take Control of OS X Server, Chapter 7: Collaboration Services
Many of the services provided by OS X Server enable collaboration of one sort or another, but in this chapter of “Take Control of OS X Server,” Charles Edge focuses on three types of collaboration: contact sharing, calendar sharing, and instant messaging, which map to the Contacts, Calendar, and Messages services in OS X Server.
Hi Charles
I can see why you have included contacts within Collaboration services but as you pointed out you can't "share" contacts (apart from using a shared account) which is always a big failing of iCloud IMO. I had to read the first page a couple of time to understand this as from the 1st paragraph I thought you were saying that Server can facilitate contact sharing. Maybe in the first few paragraphs it could be written slightly more clearly that with Server you CAN share calendars but NOT contacts. I would also move the Tip about BusyCal to the calendar sharing section as currently this sits directs below a paragraph about contacts. The rest of the book has been very clear to me but for some reason this chapter was not (maybe I was just tired when reading it).
Good suggestions - thanks! I'll take a look the next time I delve into this chapter for more editing.
I'm excited to read Chapter 8 and Mail services. Coming soon?
Yes, it's in the works, although we're putting it off a week because we're too jet-lagged to edit coherently this week.
Thanks for the update. Rest up. I'll try to hold off my upgrade another week. :)
I will note that we really, really don't recommend that you run your own mail server. It's a constant battle against spammers (and if you've never run a mail server before, you wouldn't believe the insane volume of spam that will hammer your server) and the stress of keeping it up 24/7 so mail isn't bounced and so your users can retrieve mail is totally not worth it. Mail is best handled by specialists these days, whether it's a free service like Gmail or iCloud, or a paid one like FastMail.
Ok, you convinced me. Switched to an outside provider for email and web. My how hosting has changed from the last time I looked at it 15 years ago.... Thanks again for your great series.
Three questions:
1. Do you have any recommendations for setting up a calendar on the server that you want other users in an organization to have read-only access to? For instance, I want my employees to see the calendar that shows when people have days off, but I don't want them to be able to modify it and give themselves the day off.
2. Messages works great with mac clients. But for iOS devices apple has no client app. There is some 3rd party stuff out there, but it mostly sucks. I've looked at Monal and others. Giant turds of software. Any suggestions?
3. How would you suggest I create a contact list within an organization that is shared by all users?
Hey Arlo,
1. When you share a calendar you can define that the calendar is a Public Calendar. Anyone can subscribe to that calendar but you need the URL to do so. There's no authentication control but it's really the only option to do this kind of thing within OS X Server. Otherwise, I'd look at a 3rd party product for that.
2. Check out Trillian at https://www.trillian.im/guide/iphone/ I know there are plenty of other Jabber clients for iOS but I haven't used a lot of others.
3. I'd suggest something other than OS X Server for that. I've used utility accounts where you create an account and then install it on all clients (we'll go into the easy way to do that in the Profile Manager chapter); however, usually what happens is someone (or some app more than likely) deletes a contact card (or all the contacts) and there's no accountability for who did it. There's also no granularity with regards to permissions in contact sharing so it can be a bit of a bear. Anyway, hope that helps! Check out http://baikal-server.com and http://trac.calendarserver.org as options for a bit more granularity (which might also help with some of the calendar options you might want).
Hope this helps!