Sync Kolab
SyncKolab was written to add kolab functionality to thunderbird. It reads a selected Imap folder and synchronizes it with the local address book and calendar.
It has been tested under Thunderbird for Windows (XP and Vista), MacOSX and Linux.
Version 1.0 had 61 prereleases and 83 nightly releases with over 100 bugs fixed and
is known to work nicely with Thunderbird 2 and Lightning 0.8.
Even with this extensive testing, there might still occur problems in combination with
other extensions, operating systems, thunderbird versions and/or special characters in your contacts/tasks/calendar entries .
Because of this, you should make a backup of all your relevant data (server side or your profile directory) before doing your first sync. If seomthing happens because of a bug you can then easily restore your data afterward.
If you find any bugs please check the synckolab bugzilla on: http://synckolab.mozdev.org/bugs.html
What is Kolab?
What it does is, that it loads all your contacts (from a selected address book) as well as events and todos (from the selected calendar), and synchronizes them with a selected imap folder. Where every contact is stored as an vcard and every event,todo as iCalendar. For more information http://kolab.org/
The idea behind this is, that you can now have your contacts+calendar entries stored on the imap server. so you can actually have the same addresses on more than one computer. The kolab project has a groupware server that uses imap to exchange calendar entries and vcards. But you can also setup simple sharing in your office if you have f.e. cyrus by symlinking shared folders.
STATUS
To V 1.5.0
- Rewrite code to be more pluggable
- Allow Sync with filesystem
- Add support to new thunderbird adress book features (ie. mac adress book support)
- Better support of lightning features (free/busy)
To V 2.0.0
Installation
Step 1: Download the lightning plugin then the
extension (use "rightclick/save as" otherwise firefox will try to install it)
Step 2: Open Thunderbird and use Tools/Extensions then install the downloaded calendar and the synckolab xpi
Step 3: Restart Thunderbird
Step 4: Configure the plugin
(1) will open the configuration wizard
Optional Step 5: get the icon
rightclick on the icon bar (2) (next to Stop) go to customize and drag the "Sync Kolab" Icon (3) to the
bar (4)
Step 6: click the icon or menu entry and the sync will start
Optional: Since you cant drag the button into lightning, try the Custom Toolbar extension and create a new toolbar there.
MAKE SURE YOU READ THE RELEASE NOTES OF THE VERSION!!!
Configuration Wizard
(2) Choose a configuration display name. Make sure you do not use any special characters (including "-,.+# ) as name. If you entered a non-existant valid name, the next button will become clickable.
(3) Select an imap account. If you do not see anything in the account box, you probably do not have an imap account. Ask your Internet Provider or System Administrator for an IMAP Account.
Select which kind of data you want to sync. Calendar and Tasks will only be selectable if you installed the lightning extension.
For each data-type (Contacts, Calendar, Tasks) you will see a similar wizardpage.
(4) select the adress book/calendar you want to use for syncing
(5) select if you want the (prefered) xml/kolab format or the vcard/ical format. It is recommended to use the xml format because the vcard/ical format is very outdated and not as clearly specified.
(6) select the folder that should be used for sync. Make sure you specify a different folder for calendar/adress book and tasks, otherwise the sync may fail
(7) The checkbox is only important for shared folders where you have read-only access. This makes sure synckolab does not try to write any data into the imap folder
Once you configured all of this the next Button will become clickable and take you to the next page.
Configuration
(1) will open the configuration wizard (if its the first time you use synckolab) or the configuration dialog if you already have a configuration.
- Here you see all your defined configurations. Under each configuration your find your sync-datapoints (clicking on an item will open one of the ocnfiguration screens as shown in the images)
- This dropdown box lets you select the calendar/adressbook used for syncing
- In the list of folders, select an imap folder to sync with
- Contact Format: Select the (prefered) xml/kolab format or the vcard/ical format. It is recommended to use the xml format because the vcard/ical format is very outdated and not as clearly specified.
- Save to Imap Folde: The checkbox is only important for shared folders where you have read-only access. This makes sure synckolab does not try to write any data into the imap folder uncheck this box. This will overwrite the local data on each sync.
- Sync: Unchecking this box means that you do not want to sync the data at all.
- Close Sync Window when done: unchecking this will keep the sync window open after a successfull sync
- Account: Select the imap account which should be used for sync. Make sure that you configure the folder correctly after changing this or there will be errors
- Sync Interval: The sync interval is 0 per default (do not sync automatically). You can change this to the number of minutes between each sync. If you want auto-sync use 5-10 Minutes for autosync in a workgroup. Depending on the internet connection and imap server you can decrease this number.
- Add: Click here to open the configuration wizard for a new configuration
- Delete: this will remove the currently selected configuration
Known Issues
If you find any bugs please check the synckolab bugzilla on: http://synckolab.mozdev.org/bugs.html Make sure to include your thunderbird/lightning/synckolab version and operating system. Also check out the error console for any errors.
For most problems check out the: FAQ section
Planned features
- Sync-with file-system folder option
- better conflict resolution for tasks/calendar entries
- mailing list support
- support for new thunderird address book feature (sync with mac adress book)
prerelease notes of cvs version
For Thunderbird 3/Seamonkey 2 users:
Because of the new "Secure Update" Resitrictions the install of the nightly will fail.
In order to still use the most recent synckolab add following to your prefs.js:
user_pref("extensions.checkUpdateSecurity", false);
You can get a cvs built version from here.
Beware that this may break all you contacts/calender entries, altough we try to create stable nighlies..
Nightly builds now show their date in the option and install file
Changelog:
* adapted version to allow thunderbird 3.0b3 and seamonkey 2.0b1
* contact sync works with tbird3/seamonkey2 (#20914)
* fixed bugs:
- #20876 handling of the organizer field
- #20877 fixed race conditions
- #20879 changes to sync time interval will not be updated on the fly
- #20936 fixed handling in xml parser
- #20046 fixed exception handling in calendar
- #21124 autosync does not start
- #21125 preferences-dialog does not show current value of autoSync
- #21126 task-file written to imap-folder is not a valid iCal-file
- #21127 header+configuration-list of saved configuration file is wrong
- #21128 some typos in localization for de
- #21129 english confirm dialog on german system
- #21130 potentially risky permissions of temp-files
- #21131 allow integer configuration values (stored as integers)
- #21132 log exceptions to error-console
- #21133 some code refactoring
Release Notes
* changed it to use pretty Name instead of basemessageuri (REQUIRED RECONFIGURATION OF ALL CONFIGS!!! backup before use!)
* finished sync of allowremotecontent field
* updated messages
* fixed bugs:
- #20084 Kerio Mail Server Incompatibility
- #20100 "mailto:" tag in field failing event comparison
- #20102 Content-transfer-encoding on kolab.xml and incorrect parsing
- #20190 XML Contact parsing - Home Web Page and Business Web Page switched
- #20216 Usernames consisting of digits are ignored
- #20239 Custom 3 filed not controlled nor synced
- #20296 Encoding issues
- #20593 Notes not synced
- #20292 Images in email not syned
- #20046 config saved correctly
- #20596 added extra exception catch and debug output (wip)
- #20595 fix for problematic uuids (containing :)
- #20814 maximum number of minutes before next sync upped to 5 digits
- #20815 Setup does not work any more
- #20876 multiple syncs can be running in parallel
* disable uri-encoding for vcards (should fix problems with other clients like citadel)
* more citadel fixes
* fixed bugs:
- #19412 (kolab.xml not well formed)
- #19483 (unparseable messages)
- #19597 (Synchronization stops and doesn´t continue)
- #19764 (sync fails for calendar - CallDateTime is not defined)
- #19779 (Sync fails on ADR;HOME:)
- #19335 (Only one imap account can be chosen)
- #19781 (Parsing empty BDAY: contactTools. js fails at line 1237)
- #19559 (Compatibility between KAddressBook and SyncKolab)
- #19666 ("Custom 2" value forces update on server)
- #19464 (SyncKolab Fails During Sync)
* should work with lightning 0.9pre
* added fix from Nicolas Hatier to prevent weird lightning behaviour
* fixed an syntax error (never work in more than one programming languages....)
This is the first stable release. the 1.0 branch will only include bugfixes from now on. All feature
requests will be applied to the nightly/trunk
In case you have problems:
- uninstall synckolab
- remove all lines containing synckolab from your prefs.js (in your thunderbird profile folder)
- remove all *.hdb files from your profile folder and the synckolab subfolder
- install 1.0.1 and configure everything
Known Limitations:
- no Mailing List support
- untested on newest alpha/beta releases of lightning/thunderbird
Changelog:
* fixed #19104
* fixed #19169
* fixed problem with compact (problematic function name)
* added exception handling for deletecards
Older Release Notes
Contact and Help
In case you find a bug or have any suggestions on what to add, you should subscribe the mailing list on mozdev.org .
In the wild...
I started a few threads around the globe on different sites during development. If you are interested in some insight you can check them out.
This one is for those who have ideas on how I overcome some of my biggest problems: open a tb message in read/write mode
Antoher problem I ran into (which could have been avoided if the rewrite stuff had worked): Copying mail folder content from temp folder to imap
I took some of the code from the TB Attachment Tools and TB Header tools for the writing of messages. You can get those pretty usefull extensions from Frank DiLecce (Ausdilecce).
