[CalendarServer-users] Users and groups, but no teams. Really? I don´t get it...

[Jörg Roßdeutscher]

Hello everybody,

I have CalendarServer up and running. I have replaced the demo users  
by two real accounts. I can configure groups and ressources and…
All is working fine.

However — how is this thing intended to be used in teams in a small  
business environment? I don´t get it.


Possibly I should describe what we are doing at the moment in iCal 
+WebDAV. We want to rebuild that features with DCS plus getting more  
flexible, because publishing ics files over webdav doesn´t allow  
multiple user writing into one calendar.


At them moment everyone here (30 people) has a local calendar. They  
publish via webdav on our webserver.
A little perl script I wrote samples those calendars every 5 minutes  
to team calendar files. People subscribe to that files.


So, if „Carl“ creates an event in his calendar, this event after 5  
minutes also appears in the created calendars "project managers" and  
"CEOs", prefixed with "Carl: ". Because Carl is member of those  
groups. Susan is member of "project managers", but not in "CEOs", so  
her events appear in the first calendar, but not in the second.

{To be exact, Carl publishes a second calendar which is semi-private.  
When sampled to the team-calender, the content is replaced by "Carl  
private", so others can see Carl is not inhouse, but not why. But I  
thing this is out of scope here atm.}

If I want to find a good time for a meeting of all project managers,  
in iCal I switch of all calendars except "project managers" and look  
for a gap.

That works great - but, unfortunately, in example our reception can  
SEE when the boss is not here, but she can make or change no entries  
for him. That´s why we want to use DCS.



I cannot find a way to create such "real" teams with iCal and  
CalendarServer.
I looks like the "groups" create nothing visual in iCal.


Here is my testing environment:

I have setup my account "Jörg" in iCal/Mac/Leo. Then I took an old  
Powerbook, same config, and created a second worker, my colleague "Mr.  
Laptop".

Good. Now our little company has two workers.
Both can create their own calendar events in their own calendar.

Now I want me and Mr. Laptop work in a team, the "IT Department". So I  
created a group "it_department", added us both as users and expected a  
folder "IT Department" appear magically somewhere in iCal, containing  
one or two calendars, Mr. Laptops and my events.

It didn´t.

Hm…

I played with proxies to find out a person cannot have a proxy, only a  
ressource can.

Then I played with ressources and locations. That allows us to share  
the same calendar, however, since we cannot see *who* made the event it 
´s useless as a team calendar. "At the customer". Who is at the  
customer? Me? Mr. Laptop?


I had expected that with one account I can see the calendars of every  
worker in the company in a separate calendar, r/w or r/o as I, the  
admin, configured it on the server, and I can switch on/off the people  
I am interested to see in iCal and can somehow (un-)mark the teams/ 
groups and find the same event in the calendar "Carl" and a different  
calendar "Project Managers". Groups. Teams. Units. Members. Find a  
time where all project managers are inhouse. Or the "Customer Miller  
Team".


For me it doesn´t look like a group calendar.
It looks like people can others have a look at their own and others  
calendar. And possibly change it. But it´s all about individuals, and  
the "group" feature is for giving access privileges, but not for real  
working groups. There are no working groups in DCS.

Am I missing something? Am I wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Jörg