Native Zimbra Syncing to OS X Snow Leopard, But Not The Way We All Thought

      by Wyatt Walter

One of the biggest features that Apple is touting of the new version of OS X is native Exchange integration. Native Exchange integration is a great feature for Apple since not even Windows offers it. Being a Zimbra fan, I was hoping that Snow Leopard had implemented this via ActiveSync rather than Exchange’s Web Services. It turns out that this is not the case, but it looks like we may still get native syncing just not the way we all thought.

According to a Zimbra forum thread, this will likely happen via CardDAV and CalDAV. Zimbra has CardDAV support slated for version 6.01 which is supposedly scheduled around the same time as Snow Leopard. One of the new, not-so-hyped features of Snow Leopard is the use of CardDAV for Address Book Server along with (of course) support for CardDAV on the client side. OS X as well as Zimbra have supported CalDav for some time so calendar syncing. While it’s not quite as simple as we would have liked, it appears we’re still getting the native syncing that we were hoping for, just not the way that seemed obvious from the beginning.

Update: As @thebitnix points out, it’s not a bad thing that native sync with Zimbra isn’t happening via the Exchange protocols. It was just unexpected that it would happen via different methods.

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Filed under News : Comments (1) : Jun 19th, 2009

One Response to “Native Zimbra Syncing to OS X Snow Leopard, But Not The Way We All Thought”

  1. Gray Rothkopf Says:
    June 19th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    You’re probably already aware of it, and interested in the iPhone 3.0 thread in Zimbra bugzilla…

    http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=30950

    …seems like it’s working well with Zimbra 5.0.16 (we’re hosting Zimbra with 5.0.16 currently), and btw, it seems as if a few very useful CalDav features will be added to 5.0.17, due soon, for examples:

    http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=37683
    http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21489

    …at least based on fulfilling the requirements of the Zimbra project management site. We’ll move to version 5.0.17 as soon as it’s tested, and we offer automated activation with free 30 day trials (Zimbra network professional edition), if you want to test it out without much trouble.

    PS: An Apple Consultants Network member for more than 5 years, our zimbra host team is an early supporter of adding CardDav support to Zimbra: http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22008

    Hope this is helpful.

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