I understand that iCal should be honoring the privileges set in FileMaker, but am seeing erratic results, and am not sure why.

For my first project, we want read only access from iCal to the FM database. I have a calendar account in a calendar privilege set and it's set with the necessary extended privilege and view only for all tables. I have tried both subscribe (which seems to work perfectly) as well as a CalDAV account. I particularly like that there is not even an Edit button available for the subscribe option. What are the major differences/pros/cons to these approaches?

When I use the CalDAV account, it seems I can edit an item. At some point, however, I may get a message that "The server responded with an error. Access to ... is not permitted. The server responded: '403' to operation CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation." with "Go Offline" and "Revert to Server" buttons. In our case, I think the "Revert" option is the only viable one; why would one "Go Offline" instead, and is there any way to not even show that?

I think the privileges are being honored, but there is such a delay - in fact, I've edited and then un-edited an entry, returning it to previous values, and edited multiple entries, before seeing any message - that it does not SEEM to honor the privileges at all. What is the expectation for receiving the message? It would be great if it were immediate, but, at least, I'd like to be able to tell the client what to expect. I've tried with both 1 minute updates and manual refresh, but both seemed to have multi-minute delays. On a couple of occasions, it seemed that the message popped when "committing" (leaving) a date on the calendar, or when closing iCal. Are there some "rules" that govern this that we can use to manage expectations?

My second project is going to involve some more complicated privileges, so, even if subscribe becomes the solution for project #1, I'm still anxious to resolve the CalDAV issues. Realizing that there are many questions asked here, TIA,

Debi Rubel
FullCity Consulting

Hi Debi,

Right, the subscriptions are the way to go for Read Only. As you mentioned, the no edit button makes this a more intuitive experience.

For CALDaV, the privileges are being honored on the FileMaker end, but we don't have control over when iCal or the iOS calendars refresh and roll back the event, and if they choose to stay offline, then it may appear like they're able to edit events, but they will roll back to the FM data with the next refresh. This can be a little more severe on iOS as you don't get the error dialogs like you do in iCal, so folks are working offline, but don't necessarily know it until the Calendar tries to refresh again.

We also don't have any control over the dialogs and error capture for iCal, so again subscriptions are best here.

Let me know if that helps,
Jason

Jason,

Thanks, it does help clarify - and extra thanks for such a speedy reply!

d~

Thanks Debi,

Cheers!