How do I sync Baïkal Server with Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2019?

Outlook with CardDAV sync Baïkal? with CalDAV sync Baïkal?

In this year of 2020, more and more jobs require people to work from home due to COVID-19 pandamic. Syncing calendar, contact and task remotely from home in order to cope with colleagues has become an issue for those who have not done this before.

A German dude from my company was chatting about discontinued Google Calendar Synchronization service. He then migrated to a open-source Baikal CardDAV/CalDAV server (now this project is maintained by sabre.io). He is doing fine on his iPhone but he worried more about what to use for his Outlook?

It sounds interesting that everyone is searching for an alternative to Google Calendar Synchronization service. The following is a testdrive to see if EVO Collaborator for Outlook can handle Baïkal Server?

1. Within ECO, I simply input the following Baikal CardDAV url or Baikal CalDAV url and it went through Baikal autodiscovery.
   https://<domain or ip>:<port>/baikal/
   
2. After entering username and password, I can now access Baikal CardDAV/CalDAV services.

I then passed this URL to my colleague and told him to try it with his own hand. The result came out fine as expected! That is really cool!

ownCloud Clients

ownCloud Clients for Windows

Self-hosting services merging out

As cost for storage and Internet access get lower and lower, end-users prefer installing their own NAS or small server at home or office. One of the major reasons is security and confidentiality. Files are no longer scattered around inside those cloud storages such as Dropbox, which we don’t even know where files are actually physically stored. Also, cost per MB is lower if we do-it-ourselves.
ownCloud comes in the play

In speaking of servers or NAS, Windows- or Linux- based ownCloud has been one of the popular choices since the beginning of 2010. You may find more resources on http://www.ownCloud.org/ or http://www.ownCloud.com/ .

Accessible resource sharing

What ownCloud WebDAV services can fulfil your daily running tasks? In case you are not yet familiar, here are reminders:

1. Files storage,
2. Calendar,
3. Task,
4. Address book,
5. Music streaming,
6. Sharing of content across groups or public,
7. Bookmarking,,
8. URL shortening,
9. Photo gallery,
10. Video viewer,
11. PDF and ODF viewer,
12. Connecting external storages

In other words, ownCloud basically provides information sharing of any sort.

ownCloud WebUI is powerful for your collaboration tasks

With ownCloud v7.0, lots of improvements have been made. You can sort large number of files more efficiently while users from other ownCloud server can virtually share files with you. You can edit documents with your local document editing applications such as Microsoft Word through a transparent layer while your colleagues are working on the same document at the same time. Resource sharing we mentioned above can all be done with ownCloud WebUI.

ownCloud clients

If you would like to have your local files to stay synced with files on your ownCloud server, you can download and install ownCloud Desktop Client software for your operating system from https://ownCloud.com/products/desktop-clients/. Any copy/delete/modify to files will reflect almost in real-time so that other people with proper privileges can access the most updated version of files on server. Among all platform versions of ownCloud Desktop Client software, ownCloud Windows 7 Client is perhaps more popular. 

Example: ownCloud’s file sharing feature

With ownCloud Desktop Client software, it is easy to achieve file sharing through ownCloud’s network folder mapping. You can follow the steps in the Youtube tutorial link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwF6vUyRe9Y

For more detailed usage, please refer to the on-line manual (http://doc.owncloud.org/desktop/1.7/).

Any other 3rd party Apps I can use to access ownCloud services?

There are hundreds of 3rd party vendor writing both Desktop and Mobile Apps for ownCloud and they range from Multimedia, PIM, Productivity, Games to Tools as we mentioned above. You can visit ownCloud’s Apps webpage that top 10 Apps are generally related to file sharing/management, calendar, task, and media streaming.

How do I retrieve ownCloud data on my mobile devices?

Accessing ownCloud address book, calendar and task from your mobiles devices can be handy if your are not in front of your desktop and laptop. Here are tips on each of mobile platforms on the market:

1. iOS – iPhone and iPAD both natively support ownCloud server through CardDAV and CalDAV.
2. Android – Try Contact-Sync and Calendar-Sync. For more detail, visit http://www.dmfs.org/
3. Windows Phone – There is an App called ownCloudSync. For more detail, visit http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/owncloudsync/2fdb96e1-7472-4be7-accf-835785f5dd91
4. Blackberry – Use BB’s built-in CardDAV and CalDAV support and read the following thread from ownCloud forum: https://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9187

ownCloud services being Integrated into 3rd party e-mail client software

Other than existing Mobile Apps, imagine how convenient it would be that users access their ownCloud personal contact, agenda and to-do list within e-mail software applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird in your desktop PCs with no hassle? 

How Outlook and Thunderbird retrieve data from ownCloud?

For the past few years, plug-ins or add-ins have been available for Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2019 and Thunderbird. Such integrations turn out to evolve into alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Server or IBM Domino Server.

1. For Thunderbird, plug-ins of soGO connector and Lightning can do the job but they require much more work configuring initially.
2. For Microsoft Outlook, there is barely an add-in specifically written for Microsoft Outlook. iCAL4OL, Bynari and EVO Collaborator for Outlook are perhaps the ones that can do the job. I tried them all, but, as an end-user, Bynari and iCAL4OL are a bit too complicated to figure out how to configure. On the other hand, I installed, configured and used  EVO Collaborator for Outlook with no hassle.

When NAS and ownCloud work together…

Occasionally, when people buy a NAS appliance, they also would like to stuff in an ownCloud server at no extra cost. This is when a NAS with ownCloud-capability comes in.  There are NAS brands that come with built-in ownCloud features such as Thecus, Synology, and IONAS-server. There are also several NAS brands that require DIY implementation, such as D-Link, QNAP, and NETGEAR. You may google this solution for more detail. 

Why ownCloud cannot send e-mails?

So far, e-mail messaging is still occupying a large percentage of how people communicate each other across Internet. However, e-mail messaging is missing from ownCloud even though ownCloud  team has been working on its own mail server solution with no official release yet. For those of you who need an  e-mail server alternative, you may try EVO Mail Server along with EVO Collaborator for Outlook that sync your contacts, calendars and tasks between ownCloud and Outlook .


How to setup mail server Windows

How to sync Zimbra contacts and calendar with Outlook?

How do I import Zimbra calendar and contacts to outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019?

In this year of 2020, more and more jobs require people to work from home due to COVID-19 pandamic. Syncing calendar, contact and task remotely from home in order to cope with colleagues has become an issue for those who have not done this before.

Some of my friends are using Zimbra Network Edition and often compalin that the Zimbra Connector for Outlook ZCO only works with MAPI. I tried Zimbra Network Edition along with some connector softwares on the market. Amazingly, I found that EVO Collaborator for Outlook works! (not the ZCO which only works with paid version of zimbra) All I need to do is to correctly enter the server URL below Hostname (CardDAV/CalDAV) or webcal:// URL within ECO as the following:

https://<servername_or_server_ip>:443/

After fields within the profile have been properly filled out, calendar sync is a breeze. Not only Zimbra platform supports CardDAV and CalDAV, but also EVO Mail Server has native support on ECO smoothly.

How to sync Google Calendar with Outlook 2016 & 2019?

How to synchronize Google calendar to Outlook 2016 & 2019?

In this year of 2020, more and more jobs require people to work from home due to COVID-19 pandamic. Syncing calendar, contact and task remotely from home in order to cope with colleagues has become an issue for those who have not done this before.

On July 29 of 2015, the long awaited Windows 10 was released. Two months following that, Microsoft Outlook 2016 was released on Sept. 22 of 2015. Many of us are looking for good synchronization compatibility between Google Calendar (or shall I say CardDAV and CalDAV) and Outlook. Well, apparently, Microsoft let us down.

Microsoft may have its own reason not to blend in CardDAV and CalDAV. However, I think lots of users around the globe are looking for a solution of synchronizing their contact, calendar, and task items on Google, iCloud, Yahoo, Outlook.com and many more service of the kind with Outlook 2016.

Developers such as gSyncit and EVO Collaborator for Outlook have well prepared for the launch of Outlook 2016 in a Windows 10 environment. While gSyncit released its v4.0 last August, EVO Collaborator for Outlook took a whole year to consolidate itself with compatibility vs. various cloud and on-premises platforms. Yet, EVO has announced the official release of v2.0 to welcome Outlook 2016 with the same ease of use and simplicity of configuring profiles.

If you have not used ECO before, you may refer to my old posts of how to configure contacts, calendars and tasks from various source with Outlook since steps are basically the same and simple.

2018.01.05

Outlook.com contacts not syncing with Outlook 2016 & 2019

Outlook.com contacts not syncing with Outlook 2016 & 2019

outlook.com, formerly known as hotmail

Today I was asked about this question, "Outlook.com contacts not syncing with Outlook 2016", I knew that Outlook should automatically sync with outlook.com contacts once the account is added.

However in real world, this kind of problems happened a lot in Microsoft products, don't try to call Microsoft support, You may end up with spending several hours with some dude, explaining your issue with the software again and again. I know, been there, done that! 

Resolving Outlook 2016 contacts not syncing with Outlook.com issue quickly

Since we don't have the time to explain with some dudes who don't have access to their R&D resources, why wasting time on that, just use something helpful instead.

We'd like to introduce you EVO Collaborator for Outlook. with this handy plugin, your outlook.com is just few minutes away from your Outlook 2016.

The setup is simple, I have written a tutorial for that before, please read sync outlook.com contacts and calendars with outlook here

How to sync Bitrix24 calendars, contacts and tasks with Outlook?

How to sync Bitrix24 calendars, contacts and tasks with Outlook?

My friend opened a small company and he was looking for a decent collaboration platform that comes with CRM. He found Bitrix24 is a nice solution for a starter like him since it has its own cross-platform applications or APPs for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. 

Now, he is looking for a way to sync his contacts, calendars and tasks with his newly installed Outlook 2016 on his Windows 10 machines as well as other computers installing Outlook 2007, 2010 2013 or 2019 under Windows 7 or Windows 8 in company. I suggested him to try some CardDAV & CalDAV compatible Outlook connector software plug-ins on the market because Bitrix24 is compatible with both CardDAV and CalDAV protocols. 

He found and installed several add-ins. However, he realized it is tough in finding server’s CardDAV URL and CalDAV URL. Not until he tried EVO Collaborator for Outlook, life was a lot easier because ECO is able to auto-detect the address book URL and calendar URL with a single mouse click. 

He said it is quite easy. What he did is downloading ECO from its official website, installing the outlook add-in, entering the following information and clicking on TEST button to verify configuration. That is all:

1. Server URL:
   According to Bitrix24’s support document, the URL should look like the URL in step 4.
   
   
   
   
   With ECO’s server auto-detect feature, all you need to enter is:
   
   <servername>.bitrix24.com
   
   
2. Your username and password

After the phone call, I actually tried out but I found that Bitrix24 only implements one-way synchronization from server to outlook for both address book and task.  I did some research on Bitrix24’s forum and found that Bitrix24 made this one-way sync limitation https://www.bitrix24.de/support/forum/forum5/topic435/ on purpose for their own concern. So, this one-way sync situation is normal and not an issue.

2018.01.05