Please select a calendar that supports tasks

[rmbrme]

Yahoo calendar still has the potential to work for syncing tasks. The two options are as explained above; either going back to lightning 1.0b1 or 0.9, or Postbox. As you will see above, both 'dlkp' and I have attempted to get some assistance with this from Yahoo and got nowhere. Most of us know that trying to work with Yahoo, Google or others (like MicroSoft) is a significant challenge. We need full calendaring capability within T-bird as this completes the functionality to be serious competition to programs such as Outlook and for small business applications, we simply cannot justify MS Exchange both from a cost standpoint and administration. We really hope that Mozilla is giving some thought to how close, and I mean close, we are to a complete email and calendaring solution

There may be another solution in SoGo with SoGo connector. Unfortunately, they are not quite there for T-bird 3 yet, but are working on it. I will be following this closely; www.sogo.nu. As pdcweb mentions, it just is not reliable to depend on the 'big guys', they can make changes completely un-announced with no thought of the effect on users like us. Stay tuned...

[dlkp]

Yahoo calendar still has the potential to work for syncing tasks. The two options are as explained above; either going back to lightning 1.0b1 or 0.9, or Postbox. As you will see above, both 'dlkp' and I have attempted to get some assistance with this from Yahoo and got nowhere.

One last update: I contacted Yahoo again to explain that their software already works and we just need their server to advertise that it does. That seemed to get through, and my request was added to the pile of enhancement requests. Cross your fingers.

[pdcweb]

I took ScheduleWorld (http://www.scheduleworld.com) for a test drive. It syncs calendars and advanced tasks nicely through it's own connector but it has a few drawbacks. If the developer will address these, it could be a decent solution too.

Advantages I noticed:
SW uses local calendars and syncs them to it's server so it has the advantage of having the calendar available when offline.
SW supports bi-di syncing with multiple clients at or near the same time.

Issues/Drawbacks:
SW only syncs once per hour automatically (you can sync it more often using their custom a toolbar button or menu item.)
SW is a paid service, but reasonable at about $25 per year.

I have asked them to add these features and the developer says he has increased their priority but no ETA yet.
- Feature Request: User selectable time period for sync in TB/Lightning.
- Feature Request: Background Sync of single tasks/events in TB/Lightning when items are created/edited.

I'd happily pay the $25 if these issues were resolved. Otherwise it seems to work very well.

[wintogreen]

can you explain using dropbox for this?

There may be other ways, but this is what I did:
1. On one computer: File -> New -> Calendar.
2. Select "On the network" and "iCalendar" (ics).
3. In the Location field, enter the path to your Dropbox folder and the name of the .ics file you want to use. For me on Windows 7/Vista, it looks like this:

Code: Select all

file:///C:/Users/[username]/My%20Dropbox/DropboxTasks.ics

4. Click through the rest until it says you're done.
5. Add a task. (For me, the new .ics file didn't show up in Dropbox until I made a task on the new calendar.)
6. On a second computer: Repeat steps 1-4 above. In step 3, point to the same .ics file in your Dropbox folder.

[ssitter]

My solution: Install Dropbox, sign in and select the folder to sync. In this folder create an empty text file and rename it from .txt to .ics. Open Thunderbird and switch to the calendar tab. Select menu File > Open > Calendar File. Browse to the .ics file in the synced folder and select it. You now have a new calendar that is linked to the file. Instead of creating a new file you can use a previously exported one too. Setup Dropbox and Lightning on the other systems in a similar way.

[mmecca]

+1 for Dropbox. You can create a file based ics calendar in your dropbox folder, and open the calendar from any other computer set up to access your dropbox account.

[rmbrme]

The Dropbox solution is working very well for accessing calendars from two computers and may have potential beyond that, like sharing an address book between two computers. We should be able to do this with Dropbox by creating a path to an abook.mab file stored in the My Dropbox folder and syncing it as we did the calendar.

I found this:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_addre ... file_share
But I do not find this line in the prefs.js file: user_pref("ldap_2.servers.pab.filename", "test\\abook.mab");

Is this handled differently in T-bird 3? Is there now another method of instructing T-bird to point address book to the Documents\My Dropbox folder for abook.mab?

[wintogreen]

Is there now another method of instructing T-bird to point address book to the Documents\My Dropbox folder for abook.mab?

It's not so easy with address books, unfortunately. See this old forum thread:
viewtopic.php?p=1911392

[helenwhite]

Why google, yahoo don't support tasks properly.
Yahoo appears to be using zimbra for it's "new" calendar.

______________________
Web Development

[tcit]

It appears you are all looking for a hosted solution, but, if any of you are up to setting up your own in-house server solution, I have been using DAViCal successfully in my company for ~1.5 years. I started with 9.6.2 back in April 2009 and just recently upgraded to 9.9.2. We've been using Thunderbird starting with 2.0.0.23 and Lightning 0.9. I later upgraded everyone to 2.0.0.24 but then stayed at that level with everyone until just this last month when I jumped us all to 3.1.4 - 3.1.6 and Lightning 1.0b2. Plenty of improvements came along with these latest upgrades. I have ~60 email users so it's not a very small environment now given it's all OpenSource solutions for email and calendaring. (I do have a handful of die-hard Outlook users, though (6-10)).

Anyway, long story short, if you're going to setup your own CalDAV server, DAViCal is your solution. It works great with Lightning and Sunbird AND it supports Tasks.

Enjoy!
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Manual code patches to be aware of for free/busy data:

The latest 9.9.x series does need a little patch in it to add a much needed tag (FBTYPE) to all the free/busy data that it returns to Lightning/Sunbird clients when inviting others to your events. Otherwise, the free/busy time reported is listed as "No Information" on the Mozilla clients. It's a minor problem as the time blocks still show up at least. It's a one-line code fix for DAViCal or Lightning. Technically, the problem is actually on the Mozilla side per CalDAV specs.

Here are the references to fix either product for free/busy data (adding FBTYPE tag) -

DAViCal (look at bottom of post) - Key line changed to... $extra = ';BUSY';

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/foru ... ds-general

Lightning 1.0.b2 (look at bottom of post) - Key line changed to... fbType = calIFreeBusyInterval.BUSY;

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=602875

[pdcweb]

is there a detaied description of how to set this up?
can it be setup in a windows environment?

[tcit]

I believe it can be hosted on a Windows system. It's requirements are Apache, PHP and Postgresql. I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS myself.

For Ubuntu, it's just a matter of making sure the appropriate packages are installed (the above listed), download the latest .deb file and install with GDebi. I don't remember if I had to create the virtual host definition in Apache or if the .deb file did that for me. Next, setup a postgresql database user account for DAViCal to use. Run a couple of scripts that create the database and tables. After that, it's all a web interface to administer it. The administration is a little strange, but it works.

Here's where to find the DAViCal project and links to all of its resources...

http://www.davical.org/

While it doesn't look like they cover a whole lot on this next link, they do cover a few Windows-specific details here...

http://wiki.davical.org/w/Windows_With_Apache

[pdcweb]

Thanks to another list member "et01267" who discovered a way to host tasks on yahoo.

Although this required setting up the task list in it's own calendar in Lightning, this works just fine to add remote hosted, syncable tasks.

Create a new task list in the yahoo interface.
Use caldav to lin to the task list as if it were a calendar.
Once you link to it, it will show in the calendar list but when adding new calendar items, it is not available.

Example URL: https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/u ... _list_name

Original info can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/dfaworks/e ... Tasks-in-Y

Cheers!

[scott.deagan]

This has got to be the best thread on this topic on the Internet! Very thorough explanation and investigation by the OP, detailed explanations and instructions, details about alternatives and work-arounds.

I have been searching for a Thunderbird tasks syncing solution for quite some time now, and this thread has given me options and the motivation to move forward. I think I'm going to try the DAViCAL option when I get home.

Thanks everyone!!!

[JuanPy]

Thanks to another list member "et01267" who discovered a way to host tasks on yahoo.

Although this required setting up the task list in it's own calendar in Lightning, this works just fine to add remote hosted, syncable tasks.

Create a new task list in the yahoo interface.
Use caldav to link to the task list as if it were a calendar. CHOOSING CalDAV, NOT iCalendar (ICS)
Once you link to it, it will show in the calendar list but when adding new calendar items, it is not available.

Example URL: https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/u ... _list_name

Original info can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/dfaworks/e ... Tasks-in-Y

Cheers!

Thank you all so much for all the investigations and explanations gathered here. This topic has been extremely useful to me.

Now, I've tried a few combinations and found out you actually can use the default Yahoo Calendar Layer to add Events AND Tasks on the same layer, provided that you defined your related Lightning Calendar as CalDAV, just like pdcweb said. But I can create Tasks only in Yahoo Calendar, not in Lightning (I can create Events in Lightning or Yahoo Calendar and sync them).

Problem is I can't create Tasks in Lightning and assign them to that calendar, Lightning won't list it in the Task dialog box's Calendar dropdown list . But I can assign Lightning created Tasks to another Lightning Calendar linked to a To Do List, and they sync correctly. So, true integration between both systems is just around the corner. I wonder if someone here could forward all this info to the people at Yahoo and try to make them fix it... Or, if someone explains me the steps, I would do it myself.