I was recently asked how one might go about sharing a calendar on outlook. Having been on Thunderbird and Google apps for a while i assumed two way synchronization would be as easy as creating a public calendar and adding it to their outlook installs. Turns out even the newest Outlook can only really publish or subscribe to ical calendars without exchange.
Here’s a step by step guide to setting up calendar sharing in Oulook 2007 without Exchange. I know I’m not interested in paying for exchange so here’s some advice that might help if all you need to do is share calendars.
This post assumes you have access to a open webdav directory, eg; http://webdav/dir with directories set up for all your users. eg; http://webdav/dir/firstinitiallastname/
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It’s not a perfect solution and really it leaves a lot to be desired compared to some of the open source group calendaring platforms, but it might work depending on your needs. I ivestigated a number of free and otherwise alternatives but they all lacked in some ways, the only real solution to this problem is Exchange.