Setting up Sunbird with WebDAV

NOTE: DAMTP now runs a WebDAV service allowing for people to create and share calendar files.

Briefly: WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.

The reason we use WebDAV is so that users can use the calendar program like Sunbird with remotely stored calendar data files. Users could store the data files on a local hard drive but as we know, pcs do go wrong and they could lose all their calendar entries if the pc suffered a failure. By using WebDAV, users can store their data files on a backed up server, it also allows them to view/edit any entries from other computers elsewhere in the world as long as they have the mechanism to read/write to .ics files.

How to create a calendar

Firstly set your webdav password using your Raven password to create your space and a URL.

If you want to share your calendar (currently only with members of DAMTP), you need to tell help@damtp who you want to share it with and if you want the other people to be able to read and write to it or just read.

At the moment you have to use your username e.g. ab543. You can then start your calendar program and proceed to make a calendar file.

In this example, we are using Mozilla's Sunbird as our calendar program. Start Sunbird and click on the 'Calendars' tab near the top left of the screen.

  • In Sunbird, right click in the calendar box and select 'New Calendar'
  • Type in the name of your calendar, choose a colour and press ok
  • Now create at least one calendar item in this new calendar. This can be anything, it's just an entry required for setting up
  • Right click the new calendar name and choose 'Publish entire calendar'
  • Type in the http address of the WebDAV server (you'll of been told of this when it was setup for you) plus the name of your calendar, e.g. https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/dav/ab543/chicken.ics, press publish
  • Type in your username and password. Press close
  • Now delete the calendar you've just created (right click it, choose delete calendar and it's file)
  • You now need to subscribe to the calendar you saved on the WebDav server. Do the first step again (right click in the calendar box and select 'New Calendar') and this time give it a final sensible name and the WebDAV web address e.g. https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/dav/ab543/chicken.ics. Click the tick box to 'Automatically publish your changes to the remote calendar'. Press ok.
  • Finished, you are now looking at an ics file held remotely. To refresh the calendar events, single right click one of your calendars and choose the option to 'Refresh Remote Calendars'. This isn't done automatically so you need to manually do this every now and again. It does load at start up.

You don't need to have Sunbird installed to view the calendar file just created. If you use another calendar program that understands .ics files then point that to the https:// address used above. For example, there is an extension for Thunderbird called ReminderFox that writes it's date to a WebDAV server. This extension claims to not be a fully fledged calendaring system but it does provide a number of good useful features like a To do list and a simple calendar/reminder service.

If you want settings like what day is the first day of the week, alarm and notification settings etc, Download the Sunbird Preference file and save it in: 

C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Mozilla\Sunbird\Profiles\SOMETHING\