Sync Outlook with Horde Groupware Server

Sync Outlook with Horde Groupware Server 

In this year of 2020, more and more jobs require people to work from home due to COVID-19 pandamic. Syncing calendar, contact and task remotely from home in order to cope with colleagues has become an issue for those who have not done this before.

Horde Groupware Server is an popular open-source solution in United States and Europe Union. Many companies use them for address book, calendar and task sharing and synchronization.

A decent Exchange alternative

horde groupware

Since it is an open-source software, we can treat it as one of the alternatives to implement over Exchange Server or Office 365. Yet, it is well maintained that updates are released now and then.

CardDAV and CalDAV implementation

Horde Groupware serve is using CardDAV and CalDAV as backbone for contact, calendar and task. Users are able to connect to the server and synchronize data items across platforms such as Windows, Linux, iOS, OS X, BB, and Android...

What about Outlook 2016 & 2019?

Thanks to CardDAV and CalDAV webdav protocols, it is common to sync under all above platforms except Windows. For Outlook does not support these open-source standards, we need an add-in as bridge to interconnect the server and Outlook. Here, I found EVO Collaborator for Outlook handy and it works:

1. Download and install EVO Collaborator for Outlook from the official website
2. Open Outlook and go to Configure profile(s)
3. Click on a Profile #22 or any not-configured entry to the left.
4. Enter Horde Groupware server URL in Hostname (CardDAV/CalDAV) or webcal:// URL like this:
   
   
   https://<Server_IP>/horde/rpc.php
5. Enter username and password. Then click on TEST, Apply and Quit.