Syncing Diary, Address Book, Reminders and Notes between Nethserver and Apple macOS or iOS
With SOGo running on Nethserver you can setup your Mac, iPhone and iPad to replicate Apple’s iCould system and keep your Calendar, Contacts and Reminders synchronised.
With SOGo (and Active Directory) running on your Nethserver create a few ‘test’ items in your Personal Calendar (both Events and Tasks) and Address Book.
You can set up macOS either by opening System Preferences and going to Internet Accounts, or the Preferences for each app, Calendar and Contacts. I prefer the latter so open the Preferences for Calendar and in the Accounts section click the “+” plus icon to add an account. Select “Other CalDAV Account…”. Then choose Manual as the Account Type and complete your Nethserver username, password and server address. Calendar may or may not like what you complete but even if it fails you get to edit the details in the Preferences window which should be…
In Account Information:
Enable Account - Needs to be ticked (or checked)
Description - Whatever makes sense to you!
User Name - Your Nethserver username
Password - Your Nethserver password
Refresh Calendars - Every Minute
In Server Settings:
Server Address - The IP address or FQDN of your Nethserver
Server Path - /SOGo/dav/username/ - change to your username!
Port - 443 using SSL
Your SOGo Personal Calendar should now appear in your Calendar app’s list of calendars. You should see the test items created in SOGo and you should be able to create new events which will sync back to the SOGo web calendar. It sometimes takes a few minutes for the sync to show up. The SOGo preferences has a setting under General to Refresh View which I have set to every minute.
The advantage of using System Preferences’ Internet Accounts to set this up (the procedure is the same) is that you have the bonus of opting to sync Reminders. Tick (or check) the ‘Use With:’ Reminders option and take a look in your Reminders app where you should see an entry for your Nethserver account. This should sync with the SOGo Tasks in the Calendar section.
The procedure for syncing the SOGo Address Book with Apple’s Contacts is the same other than I have Preferences set to ‘Fetch’ Automatically (in Server Settings).
If you have already set up your Nethserver as an email server and are using your Mac for mail go and look at that account in System Preferences’ Internet Accounts. Ticking the ‘Use With:’ Notes option allows you to sync notes between your Mac’s and iPad and/or iPhone’s Notes app.
So you should be able to sync Calendars, Contacts, Reminders and Notes between a Mac and iPad and iPhone using SOGo. Once its all set up there’s no reason to use the SOGo web interface unless you want to. Its all the same as using Apple’s iCloud except you know where the data is being stored!