[horde] Shall I use ActiveSync?

[Michael J Rubinsky]

Quoting Ralph Ballier <ballier at mail.schule.de>:

> Hello,
>
> I use from Android so far the apps "CALDAV sync" and "CARDDav sync" and it
> seems to work very well.
>
> Now I had heared that ActiveSync is a world wide standard and it isn't
> necessary to install several apps. I have try it.
>
> For mail it works very well, but for calenders it mixed all calenders in
> one. This is not better, when I cross "separate calender". Or it show my
> own calender only.

This is because some versions of ActiveSync only support synchronizing  
the user's single main calendar (or addressbook, notepad etc...). We  
purposely "multiplex" all of the user's personal calendars together  
into a single calendar to sync with the client when this is the case.  
More and more clients are supporting separate collections now though,  
so the option to use them is present in the prefs. Since any user may  
have multiple devices attached to their account, we also attempt to  
sniff out the client in use and automatically turn off this ability  
when we know the client does not support it.

That being said, last I checked Android 5.0 supported individual  
calendars - but no other individual collections. The opposite of what  
you are reporting. After checking the "separate calendars" preference,  
have you made sure that all of the calendars you wish to sync are  
included in the "synchronization" prefs? Have you re-created the  
account on the client (depending on the client it might not pick up  
the change automatically).

> I use Android 5.1.1.
>
> Where is the big advantage to use ActiveSync?

The biggest advantages, IMO, are that ActiveSync clients are built in  
to just about every mobile client you can think of out of the box,  
plus some non-mobile clients like Microsoft Outlook and Windows Mail.  
It (usually) integrates nicely with other software on the devices, and  
only requires a single account to be configured that sets up Mail,  
Calendar, Notes, Tasks, and Contacts (which usually will only require  
a single email address and password if the server is setup correctly).

If the client is fully featured, you can do things that you can't  
normally do with just a *dav connection. Things like setting your out  
of office message, viewing a user's freebusy times when scheduling a  
meeting, integration between email/calendar when handling iTips etc...  
Replying to or forwarding a large email potentially uses less  
bandwidth because the ActiveSync client will only send the new part of  
the email - building the reply message on the server by getting the  
original email directly from the IMAP server. In fact, bandwidth usage  
will typically be smaller for ANY information synchronized when  
compared to *dav since ActiveSync uses wbxml - a binary  
encoded/compressed form of xml.

The biggest disadvantage is that there are a LOT of buggy clients out  
there, and some minor inconsistencies in the protocol itself but this  
is getting better and better every year.


-- 
mike
The Horde Project
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