Subscribe to CalDAV Calendars Using Older Versions of iCal

OK, I’ll admit that this may not be the most popular post (of the 3 so far…) but I did the research so I thought I’d share my results.

Lets say that your have iCal Server running and have users happily using iCal on Leopard to do the group calendar thing. What happens if you have a user on Tiger (or earlier – or another calendar client that doesn’t support CalDAV) who wants to see a user’s calendar? Naturally this calendar subscription will be read/only, but at least the user will be able to see the calendar.

The trick is that the iCal Server requires that only authorized users be able to read a user’s calendar. This is a Good Thing as it keeps your calendars safe from prying eyes.

To allow a user to have subscribe access to your iCal Server calendar just delegate them permission to at least read the calendar.

Using iCal on a Leopard system that is connected to your iCal Server go to the Preferences item under the iCal menu. Go to the Accounts tab and choose the account that you want to access. Click the Delegation tab and press Edit… beside Manage access to my account. Click the + button and type in the username of a calendar server user. That user will now have read/only access to your calendar. If you want them to have read/write access check the Allow Write checkbox.

You’re done there. The user you just entered will be able to read (write) your iCal Server calendar. The next thing it to subscribe to this calendar.

Here is the generic URL format for iCal:

http://server:8008/calendars/users/user/calendar
https://server:8443/calendars/users/user/calendar

To subscribe, just put the proper URL into the Subscribe sheet in iCal.

BTW- this works with iCal in Leopard as well.