Group calendars in Apples Wiki Server has been an uncomfortable conversation piece among 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 Apple Systems Administrators. Ever since Apple has given us the ability to use web based group calendars its been a cat and mouse game to get some level of support in iCal. In 10.4 when these calendars first came out it was a very cool idea give users their own calendars and give them a web interface to use it. Allow them to subscribe to their calendars in iCal which allowed the user read only access to their calendar.

When 10.5 server came out not only were there personal calendars but group calendars. The difference was that the personal calendars allowed the user to fully manage their calendar both on the web and in iCal however Apple still maintained that group calendars would be only subscribe-able in iCal. The difference here was that many users found workarounds that allowed the fully managed solution of group calendars in iCal by using the following methods.

Method A: Creating a user account and changing the server path with the “groups” variable. (Solution)

Method B: Creating a user account and changing the server path with the “wikis” variable. (Solution)

This worked but much needed security updates broke both of these solutions causing unnecessary stress on the Apple user and the Apple systems administrator. The most recant update to 10.6.4 caused the group calendars in iCal to stop working entirely and cause an almost never-ending string Read more..