ownCloud Clients

ownCloud Clients for Windows

Self-hosting services merging out

As cost for storage and Internet access get lower and lower, end-users prefer installing their own NAS or small server at home or office. One of the major reasons is security and confidentiality. Files are no longer scattered around inside those cloud storages such as Dropbox, which we don't even know where files are actually physically stored. Also, cost per MB is lower if we do-it-ourselves. ownCloud comes in the play

In speaking of servers or NAS, Windows- or Linux- based ownCloud has been one of the popular choices since the beginning of 2010. You may find more resources on http://www.ownCloud.org/ or http://www.ownCloud.com/ .

Accessible resource sharing

What ownCloud WebDAV services can fulfil your daily running tasks? In case you are not yet familiar, here are reminders:

1. Files storage,
2. Calendar,
3. Task,
4. Address book,
5. Music streaming,
6. Sharing of content across groups or public,
7. Bookmarking,,
8. URL shortening,
9. Photo gallery,
10. Video viewer,
11. PDF and ODF viewer,
12. Connecting external storages

In other words, ownCloud basically provides information sharing of any sort.

ownCloud WebUI is powerful for your collaboration tasks

With ownCloud v7.0, lots of improvements have been made. You can sort large number of files more efficiently while users from other ownCloud server can virtually share files with you. You can edit documents with your local document editing applications such as Microsoft Word through a transparent layer while your colleagues are working on the same document at the same time. Resource sharing we mentioned above can all be done with ownCloud WebUI.

ownCloud clients

If you would like to have your local files to stay synced with files on your ownCloud server, you can download and install ownCloud Desktop Client software for your operating system from https://ownCloud.com/products/desktop-clients/. Any copy/delete/modify to files will reflect almost in real-time so that other people with proper privileges can access the most updated version of files on server. Among all platform versions of ownCloud Desktop Client software, ownCloud Windows 7 Client is perhaps more popular. Example: ownCloud's file sharing feature

With ownCloud Desktop Client software, it is easy to achieve file sharing through ownCloud's network folder mapping. For more detailed usage, please refer to the on-line manual (http://doc.owncloud.org/desktop/1.7/).

Any other 3rd party Apps I can use to access ownCloud services?

There are hundreds of 3rd party vendor writing both Desktop and Mobile Apps for ownCloud and they range from Multimedia, PIM, Productivity, Games to Tools as we mentioned above. You can visit ownCloud's Apps webpage that top 10 Apps are generally related to file sharing/management, calendar, task, and media streaming.

How do I retrieve ownCloud data on my mobile devices?

Accessing ownCloud address book, calendar and task from your mobiles devices can be handy if your are not in front of your desktop and laptop. Here are tips on each of mobile platforms on the market:

1. iOS - iPhone and iPAD both natively support ownCloud server through CardDAV and CalDAV.
2. Android - Try Contact-Sync and Calendar-Sync. For more detail, visit http://www.dmfs.org/
3. Windows Phone - There is an App called ownCloudSync. For more detail, visit http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/owncloudsync/2fdb96e1-7472-4be7-accf-835785f5dd91
4. Blackberry - Use BB's built-in CardDAV and CalDAV support and read the following thread from ownCloud forum: https://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9187

ownCloud services being Integrated into 3rd party e-mail client software

Other than existing Mobile Apps, imagine how convenient it would be that users access their ownCloud personal contact, agenda and to-do list within e-mail software applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird in your desktop PCs with no hassle?

How Outlook and Thunderbird retrieve data from ownCloud?

For the past few years, plug-ins or add-ins have been available for Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2019 and Thunderbird. Such integrations turn out to evolve into alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Server or IBM Domino Server.

1. For Thunderbird, plug-ins of soGO connector and Lightning can do the job but they require much more work configuring initially.
2. For Microsoft Outlook, there is barely an add-in specifically written for Microsoft Outlook. iCAL4OL, Bynari and EVO Collaborator for Outlook are perhaps the ones that can do the job. I tried them all, but, as an end-user, Bynari and iCAL4OL are a bit too complicated to figure out how to configure. On the other hand, I installed, configured and used EVO Collaborator for Outlook with no hassle.

When NAS and ownCloud work together…

Occasionally, when people buy a NAS appliance, they also would like to stuff in an ownCloud server at no extra cost. This is when a NAS with ownCloud-capability comes in. There are NAS brands that come with built-in ownCloud features such as Thecus, Synology, and IONAS-server. There are also several NAS brands that require DIY implementation, such as D-Link, QNAP, and NETGEAR. You may google this solution for more detail.

Why ownCloud cannot send e-mails?

So far, e-mail messaging is still occupying a large percentage of how people communicate each other across Internet. However, e-mail messaging is missing from ownCloud even though ownCloud team has been working on its own mail server solution with no official release yet. For those of you who need an e-mail server alternative, you may try EVO Mail Server along with EVO Collaborator for Outlook that sync your contacts, calendars and tasks between ownCloud and Outlook . How to setup mail server Windows

How to sync OwnCloud / Zimbra calendars and contacts with Outlook?

OwnCloud Outlook Calendar Sync

Some of my friends are using (Owncloud / Zimbra) CardDAV/CalDAV server They complain that the there is no plug-in to import their Zimbra or OwnCloud contacts and calendars with Outlook 2016/2019/2013/2010 or Office 365.

OwnCloud

Zimbra

I tried hooking up to both servers with some connector software plug-ins on the market. Amazingly, I found that EVO Collaborator for Outlook works!

Without this OwnCloud add-in (plugin), Outlook is impossible to show your contacts or calendars in OwnCloud or Zimbra.

All I need to do is to enter the following information inside spaces circled in the screenshot below:

1.      Server URL:

https://<servername_or_server_ip>/owncloud/   (for owncloud)

for Sync OwnCloud 9 calendar with Outlook, please visit this post

https://<servername_or_server_ip>/                     (for zimbra)

2.      Your username and password

After fields within the profile have been properly filled out, calendar sync is a breeze.

Not only (OwnCloud / Zimbra) platform supports CardDAV and CalDAV, but also EVO Mail Server has native support on ECO smoothly.

How to synchronize Nextcloud contact, calendar and task with Outlook?

How to sync outlook calendar with Nextcloud?

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.

For you ownCloud fellows, you should already heard of founding engineering crews from ownCloud left the company and created a brand new company called Nextcloud. Theoretically, Nextcloud and ownCloud should share the same or similar concept in the server backend. 

Out of curiosity, I want to check if EVO Collaborator for Outlook is compatible with Nextcloud. I applied for a trial account on Nextcloud (https://demo.nextcloud.com/). The server path is https://nextcloud_server/<username>/remote.php/, which (looks pretty familiar lol?) is what you would enter hostname space if you were to have an account from a Nextcloud service provider. 

However, if you run your own Nextcloud server, the server URL is the same as ownCloud and I think that looks very familiar to me: https://<nextcloud_server>/remote.php/

Therefore, we can still use EVO Collaborator for Outlook to synchronize Nextcloud’s contact, calendar and task with Outlook 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019.

After some basic tests, I think everything works fine, if you find any problem maybe you can contact next cloud or evo staff.

How to sync with DAViCAL calendar server?

How to sync with DAViCAL calendar server?

After I posted the article about EVO Collaborator for Outlook syncing with ownCloud server, I started to receive many feedbacks wondering if EVO Collaborator for Outlook is able to support other services such as Kolab, SOGo or DAViCAL too? One of the special case is DAViCAL. They tried their luck if they can connect to DAViCAL but they failed. These audiences are running DAViCAL calendar server for company mostly. Let’s find out if EVO Collaborator for Outlook can handle the job?

Since DAViCAl is also an open-source server like ownCloud and both of them are based on CalDAV, there should be less complication to sync. However, before I test, I wrote EVO staffs and wonder if ECO supports sync with DAViCAL? They replied that "yes", so I wil give this add-in for Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 or 2019 a try if want. Why not, right? However, since 

Once I received the beta release, I quickly installed it and configure it following instruction given by EVO staffs as below:

1. As usual, select Profile 15 – not configure or below
2. Since DAViCAL seems like not being to support server auto-discovery, we need to manually enter generic DAViCAL calendar URL in space next to Calendar URL:
   
   
   
   
   http://<server_hostname>/caldav.php/<username>/calendar/
3. Click TEST and Apply when authentication is complete
4. DAViCAL calendar will start sync

I am quite impressed that EVO staffs have done a good job on picking up almost every popular CardDAV/CalDAV services either cloud or on-premises within eight months as of early march of 2015. This is an outstanding report card I should say. 

Three Exchange Calendar Alternative based on SabreDAV

Three Exchange Calendar Alternative based on SabreDAV

When your company is short on funds to run an Exchange Server, there are cheaper options to host your email part.

However, there are not many free mail server or affordable solution for hosting contact and calendar services for your company. There are a few options that run based on SabreDAV. You may want to try them out.

1. Kolab –
   
   A Unix-like groupware offering mail, contact, calendar services. It is free and has support forum community. If you are running Unix-like environment, go for it.
2. OwnCloud –
   
   A cross-platform contact/calendar/task/webdav server. It is also free based on AGPLv3 license. Many people run it at home or in office. It is a good choice if you already have a preferred email solution.
3. Baikal –
   
   A very light-weight CardDAV/CalDAV server running on Apache2 with running PHP environment. Same as OwnCloud, it is free and worth a while to try if you already have an email solution.

The above are the serverpart, what about client software? There are a wide variety of choices out there. They require many steps to configure. Here is a client software called EVO Collaborator for Outlook. This Outlook add-in for 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019 compatible with many public contact/calendar/task services such as iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo! and fruux. Yet, some of the on-premise ones are also supported such as OwnCloud, Zimbra, Baikal, EVO Mail Server, Mac OS X Server and many more.

Five Online Address Book Services Review

Five Online Address Book Services Review

Some of you still remember Edward Snowden incident some time ago, right? This incident reminds me of some security issue that may happen if you were to place company confidential information on the cloud service such as Gmail or iCloud. Perhaps we should reconsider where to place our precious and sensitive contact information on the cloud. If you are just using it for specific but trivial purpose like wedding, you may choose some free services such as Zexer.

1. Yahoo! -

   

   This contacts service is always there on its web based interface, OS X, OS, and Android. To use it under Windows Outlook environment, you need an add-in such as EVO Collaborator for Outlook.
2. iCloud -

   

   This address book service is a good one under Apple machines and devices. Though it has an iCloud control panel but it has a few problems. If you want to use its birthday reminders, you need to have an iPhone.
3. fruux (Germany) -

   

   This service has a good web base GUI and yet provides tutorials on how to set up in different platforms.
4. QQ and 163 (China) -

   

   If you are somewhere in China, these two service providers are the ones you can count on.
5. Google -

   

   Why Google is still on the list? The reason being is that Gmail still works well with Apple and Android devices. If you happen to be Outlook victims, then you still can survive by syncing items through some kind of add-in for Outlook 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 from third-party software vendor such as EVO Collaborator for Outlook.

If you were to use more than one service from above in you Outlook, then you may want to try EVO Collaborator for Outlook. It is compatible with all services mentioned plus some other on-premise CardDAV/CalDAV platforms, paid or free mail server such as EVO MailServer, OwnCloud, Zimbra, SabreDAV and etc.