CardDAV Clients deprecated

Open-Xchange Calendar synchronization with CardDAV

This site describes how the Open-Xchange server can be accessed via its CardDAV interface after the server has been configured as described in the upper level page. Depending on the used client software, different steps are necessary. Other clients may be configured similarly, but are not officially supported.

Mac OS X Contacts

For the Contacts application on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) and above, a CardDAV account can be configured as follows:

  • Click the "+" sign in Address Book -> Preferences -> Accounts.
  • In the "Account type" field keep "CardDAV" selected
  • In the "User name" field enter your username
  • In the "Password" field enter your password
  • In the "Server address" field enter your server address usually with the prefix "dav." (e.g. "dav.myserver.tls")
  • Click "Create"
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    iOS Contacts

    Available since Open-Xchange Server v6.22

    The iOS Contacts application on the iPhone, iPod or iPad can be configured as follows.

  • Open "Settings"
  • Select "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" -> "Add Account..." -> "Other" -> "Add CardDAV Account"
  • Enter the server address, username as password as shown in the screenshot
  • Click "Next"
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    General Limitations

    Please consider the following known limitations for the CardDAV interface:

    Unsupported Properties

    • Generally, only those contact properties that are also available on the Open-Xchange server are recognized and transferred into attributes of OX contacts
    • Starting with v7.8.0, the original vCard is also preserved, so that other extended or not mapped properties are still available there (see AppSuite:VCardMapping for details)
    • Importing or exporting file attachments (property "ATTACH") is not supported via the CardDAV interface.
    • Due to various different handlings of representing distribution list members in vCards, distribution lists are excluded from synchronization via CardDAV (see below for client-specific exceptions).

    Unsupported Special Chars

    • The special char "/" in contact names is not supported. It will lead to an "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found" error in webdav.

    Client Restrictions

    • The Mac Contacts App does not support CardDAV Collections. Open-Xchange by default recognizes this and exposes an aggregated collection of the CalDAV Collections. As a consequence new contacts entered in subfolders on OX side will not appear in subfolders (or Contact Groups) on the Mac Contacts App but inside of the aggregated Collection itself.
    • Contact Groups from the Mac Contacts App are not synced to OX - however the Contacts itself will be synced to the OX Address Book. Creating a new Contacts Group from within the Contacts App using the OX CardDAV Account is not possible - the name will revert to “untitled group” and will not be synced to OX App Suite.
    • Contact Groups (aka distribution lists) synchronization is in general restricted to a limited group of clients. Since version 7.10.4 contact groups can be synced by using the Outlook CalDAV Synchronizer with some known limitations:
      • The Open-Xchange server does only support contact group synchronization based on the vCard 3.0 format specification.
      • Clients are not able to resolve distribution list members that are located in a different folder than the distribution list. The Open-Xchange server fixes this issue by doing a mapping based on the email address if the client provides a distribution list member without a UID.
    • The Contacts App on iOS devices does recognize CardDAV collections created in App Suite and synchronizes them properly as separate contact lists on the client. However, when trying to create a new list on the device, this is not upsynced as collection to App Suite, but as a special group vCard (decorated with X-ADDRESSBOOKSERVER-KIND:group). These groups are not supported and cannot be converted to addressbook folders, and are therefore discarded. It is still possible to create new folders in App Suite and use them in the client afterwards.
    • In the Contacts App on iOS, it is not possible to pick a certain folder while creating a new contact within the CardDAV account. Instead, the iOS client creates new contacts in a somehow randomly chosen folder of the account, which could also be the "Global Address Book" or the "Collected Contacts" folder, or even folders that are shared from others. Therefore, as the user cannot influence the target folder, an implicit workaround is in place so that new contacts are always created within the user's default contacts folder on App Suite. Within the iOS client, this is reflected after the next synchronization cycle as well.