Making Daylite play nice with others so far as calendaring goes was a major goal for 4.0. We’ve added a CalDAV server as part of Dayite server that allows other calendar apps, such as the built in ones on Mac and iOS, to access your Daylite calendar. You can view appointments on your iPhone or iPad, and create new ones using either the keyboard, or, if you have an iPhone 4S, using Siri, Apple’s friendly and helpful personal digital assistant.
The initial setup of both CalDAV and CardDAV on your iOS devices requires having your server setup with a proper domain name, and making sure that address resolves properly outside of your office internal network. In other words, if you only have a .local address for your server, when you’re away from the office, new appointments you create won’t sync immediately. Other users, when viewing your Daylite calendar may accidentally double book you for a meeting – never a fun phone call to have to make to sort that out. Make sure you have your computer setup with a proper domain name before continuing.
Setting up the Calendar App on iOS
On your iPhone or iPad, go to the settings app and select Mail, Contacts, Calendars. At the bottom of the Accounts list, tap Add Account… and in the next screen choose Other. Under the Calendars heading, select Add CalDAV Account. You’ll need the following details in the next screen:
- Server name. Find this information in the Calendar Sharing pane of Daylite Preferences under the “In Other Apps” tab. Again, if your server address ends in .local, you need to go back and configure external access in Daylite Server Admin.
- User name and password
- Change the description to something simpler, like “Daylite”
- Tap Next
Your iPhone will prompt you with a message about being unable to connect using SSL. This is expected – click Continue. You’ll see a progress spinner next to Verifying and it will spin for several minutes. For now, this is normal. We’re working on a better solution to this initial setup, but we discovered some bugs introduced in iOS 5.1.1 that relate to both SSL certs and using mobile profiles to create accounts. (If you’re still using iOS 5.1, you can follow the instructions in the User Guide and setup using SSL on port 6185.)
In the meantime, your password is sent encrypted, only the data from your events and contacts are sent without encryption. For most people this isn’t a problem, but if you store any sensitive information in either appointment details or contact notes for example, be aware of the very slight risk of someone capturing packets and seeing that information. In the meantime, use Daylite for iOS which transfers all data over SSL and we’ll update this article when things change here so you can use Siri and Caller ID with complete security.
Okay, eventually your iPhone will throw up a dialogue that says it was unable to verify account information.
- Tap OK and then navigate into Advanced Settings.
- Tap next to where it says Port 0 and delete the zero and change it to 6188.
- Go back to the first CalDAV screen and tap Next again.
This time the verification should pass and you’ll be back out at the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen. Scroll down and near the bottom, you’ll find a preference for Default Calendar. Change this to your new Daylite calendar so that any appointments you create via Siri will be added to your Daylite calendar so they will sync back to Daylite back on your Mac.
After everything is configured properly, in Calendars app, when you click on the Calendars button you should now see the Daylite calendar alongside your iCloud calendars.
Now just repeat the process to add your CardDAV server, this time being sure to select Add CardDAV Server in the Other server setup. After the initial verification delay, it will give you a warning about not being able to see contacts.
- Click Save.
- Go back into this new Contacts account and navigate into Advanced Settings… and change the port number to 6188
- Go back to the main account screen and tap Done.
It should verify again, much quicker this time around. Exit settings by clicking your Home button and go to either the Phone or Contacts apps. If you were viewing All iCloud contacts previously, tap the Groups button and you should now see Daylite account alongside your iCloud. Tap All Contacts to see one aggregated list. Depending on where you’d like new contacts created on your iPhone to go, you can go back to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and under Contacts section, set the Default Account to either Daylite or iCloud.
View iCloud calendars in Daylite
To setup Daylite for Mac to view your iCloud calendars, go to Daylite > Preferences and choose Calendar Sharing. From the the Add Account menu, select iCloud. A pane will pop down and you’ll enter your iCloud password. You’ll then see a list of all your calendars there. Simply check off each one that you’d like to have visible overlaid on your Daylite calendar. You can choose which calendars are visible in the action menu of your Calendar.
If you are having any difficulties in getting this set up, please contact our friendly support team via the Help Menu in Daylite, selecting Contact Support.
