Calendar and Contacts features

[ptC7H12]

Hello,
this is a following discussion of the closed issue: #206 (comment)

As for my opinion I'm very happy to see the Calendar&Contacts feature in OC, but there are some very crucial features missing.
My biggest hope in this project and what I've heard and read from others is, that OC can replace my Nextcloud instance, but to do that, it need the feature to manage Calenders and Contacts via GUI.

The decision to use radicale is made - a simple and straight forward move, but comes with some downsides:

• You can't upload Calendar via ics files via gui - you've to use a curl command: Add manual import of existing calendar to documentation Kozea/Radicale#892
• If you use that curl, your whole calendar will be overwritten (See link above)
• You can't merge calendars
• If you want to share calendars, you've to create symlinks: Calendar sharing support? Kozea/Radicale#696

Conclusion: at this moment the calendar and contact feature is only useable for advanced users or user with a very simple setup (one user, one calendar, no shares).
As I'm using my Nextcloud for my Family and others - this is a dealbreaker for me and for many, many homelab users - in my opinion a missed chance to get many Nextcloud users, to "convert" to OC.

Please share your thoughts about this.

[rhafer]

• You can't upload Calendar via ics files via gui - you've to use a curl command:

Actually it is possible to enable the Radicale web UI. There you can also create additional calendars and addressbooks. But that is clumsy to use as you e.g. have to (re-)login using the app token. That is why we have it disabled by default. The example config has a hint about how to enable it:

https://github.com/opencloud-eu/opencloud/blob/main/deployments/examples/opencloud_full/config/opencloud/proxy.yaml#L31

Also many clients allow importing ICS files into existing calendars I think.

[webobardewisch]

Hi, I have deployed OpenCloud with S3 storage. Now I will activate the Radicale server. I have uncommented the lines in the env, but I don`t know what I have to write in the storage line. All data shall be saved also to the S3 storage.
Maybe you can help me?
Regards

[rhafer]

Radicale is not able to store it's data on an S3 Storage. It needs a "normal" filesystem

[webobardewisch]

OK, thanks. I have leave it to the defaults settings and it works fine.

[Karsto-sys]

maybe add dotnetfactory/fluid-calendar as app?

[tamis-laan]

I just discovered OpenCloud and I think it's fantastic! Indeed I am also on NextCloud and would love to move to OpenCloud. Personally I love OpenCloud because it's fast small efficient implemented in GoLang.

Now I also need a Calendar and Contacts in order to move. However I think the problem with NextCloud is that it's trying to push so many features into one app. What I would like to see is a dedicated GoLang binary for Calendar and Contacts so we can do something like:

cloud.mydomain.com for cloud functionality
calendar.mydomain.com for contacts and calendar

Similar to what Google does. Of course this means both systems are separate and communication between the two would be non trivial although the question is if they even need to communicate with each other.

As to Radicale It's written in python. It would be way better to have this written in Golang in my opinion but not sure about the complexity. I would be happy to contribute in this area btw.

[daniel-tigges]

@ptC7H12 I am a bit lost when it comes to the calendar and contacts feature. I am running an OpenCloud instance on my VPS, using coolify and docker-compose. I have a dedicated Radical service in there which is starting the radical server. This is working as expected.

However, I am unsure on how to integrate this in OpenCloud to get the possibility of managing Calendars and Contacts from within the Opencloud UI. When I go to calendar I get the 'The calendar is not yet configured on your system, in order to learn how to enable click' error. So basically I have these two questions:

1. Is it at all possible to manage Calendars and Contacts from within the Opencloud UI?
2. How can I configure Opencloud to use my radicale server? Haven't found anything useful so far in the docs oder docker-compose repo.

Best regards,
Daniel

[jpnilson]

I’m using SOGoMail/iRedMail for calendars and contacts. After a bit of configuration tweaking, I was able to add external domains like Google and Yahoo. I’m also using vdirsyncer to sync SOGo, Nextcloud, and OpenCloud, with SOGo acting as the master source for both calendars and contacts.

I’ve embedded SOGo into OpenCloud using the External Sites app, and I did the same in Nextcloud with its external apps integration. I haven’t fully cut the cord from Nextcloud yet, but once I finish loading data into OpenCloud and things look stable, that’s the plan.

I also switched to Immich as an external site to replace the Nextcloud Memories integration. It’s already running on its own server, and I was able to embed it through the External Apps interface without any issues.

The one remaining thing I wish I could do is set a custom landing page after login. I’m still experimenting with it, but so far I haven’t found a reliable way to make that happen.

[kulmann]

You can set a default app via WEB_OPTION_DEFAULT_APP_ID . If you use the external sites app and have defined a dashboard you can also set that as the default dashboard, see https://github.com/opencloud-eu/web-extensions/tree/main/packages/web-app-external-sites#dashboard-options

[jpnilson]

I tried this. I am using version 5.2 and it doesn't seem to work. All documentation I found seems to be written for version 4. I may take another run at it but at this point I can't make it work.

[kulmann]

Could you share details about what exactly you tried and what symptoms it showed?

[jpnilson]

So I took the example and modified it with data from my existing config.json and was finally able to get it to show up. I think it was just a formatting issue on my part. In any event I got a bare bones dashboard. I should be able to build it out now. Thanks for pointing out variable I need to make the dashboard show up at login.

[kulmann]

Nice! Would appreciate if you let us know if it turns out useful for you when you're done. 😇

[kulmann]

Someone from the community (= this is not officially supported in any way) built this: https://github.com/mschneider82/opencloud-web-calendar - maybe some of you want to try it out and give feedback.

[jpnilson]

I gave the calendar app suggested a try. It looks like a good start. I found that the calendar was not supporting recurring events at the moment. I left feed back. I'll check back on the project from time to time. It would be nice to retire agendav as it isn't supported much anymore.

[bragefuglseth]

For those interested, I've got a pretty decent calendar management setup working by:

1. Enabling the Radicale web UI
2. Installing the "External sites" app
3. Embedding the Radicale web UI into the OpenCloud web interface with this in apps.yaml:

external-sites:
  config:
    sites:
      - name: Edit Calendar
        url: https://opencloud.my.domain/caldav/.web
        target: embedded
        color: '#FF710E'
        icon: calendar-event
        priority: 50

In the Radicale config, I changed the [web] section to this:

[web]
type = internal
prefer_browser_login = True

The radicale web UI becomes accessible from the app menu, and after logging in it looks like this:

It's obviously not very aesthetic or integrated, but as a functional management solution it's fine. For actually viewing the calendars, contacts and tasks, I use native apps.

[jtinov]

Yes, the first question is always: Is there a calendar? And the second question is immediately: How can I share it?
And there are a few solutions, though unfortunately they don’t always answer both questions:
https://github.com/LordGuenni/opencloud-web-calendar
https://github.com/mschneider82/opencloud-web-calendar
https://github.com/kja999/opencloud-radicale-web-apps

[boogiewoogit]

Per https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale/blob/master/SHARING.md, collection sharing landed in radicale 3.7.0. Could this facilitate sharing calendars in opencloud?

[micbar]

Yes that would be awesome. Most small scale users would be completely happy with that.

[gnacho]

Since a Go implementation of this came up in the thread, this is what I run on my own OpenCloud instance.

davcloud (https://github.com/gnacho/davcloud) is a CalDAV + CardDAV server in Go, built as a drop-in for Radicale rather than as a new stack:

• One static binary (~7 MB), no Python runtime, no database. go-webdav does the REPORT filter engine; the DAV plumbing is written against Radicale's flat URLs (/caldav/<user>/<collection>/<item>).
• Same data as Radicale: multifilesystem layout, .Radicale.props in the same string format, same port, same def-calendar / def-addressbook bootstrap. Identity arrives in X-Remote-User, so it sits behind the stock OpenCloud proxy: proxy.yaml points /caldav/ and /carddav/ at 127.0.0.1:5232 with the prefix stripped and nothing else changes.
• Items are stored exactly as the client sent them, and I checked the way back: Radicale 3.5.3 started over the same volume, served every item davcloud had written (same UIDs, same fields, same collection properties) and left the files untouched. Rollback is a service switch, which matters if you already have calendars and contacts in Radicale.

Honest limits, so nobody wastes time on it: it is an early beta, working in my deployment but not tested in different environments yet. It does not do calendar sharing between users (the 3.7 feature mentioned above), iMIP invitations, or Radicale's web UI features for importing and sharing, so it does not solve the share and merge complaints in this thread. Issues and PRs are welcome.

For the apps themselves, I use these community extensions (Vue 3 + extension SDK, CalDAV/CardDAV), mirrored from Frank Mankel's repos with a few fixes on top (Spanish i18n, ETag/If-Match on updates, DST and UNTIL handling for recurring series):

• https://github.com/gnacho/opencloud-agenda (upstream: https://forgejo.linux-nerds.org/frank/opencloud-agenda)
• https://github.com/gnacho/opencloud-contacts (upstream: https://forgejo.linux-nerds.org/frank/opencloud-contacts)