GroupCal 3.01: Sync iCal with MS Exchange

groupcal100pxGroupCal offers full two-way synchronization of iCal events and to dos with Ms Exchange Server 2000 or 2003 and will appeal especially to the many Mac users trapped in a Windows world.

It also allows you to make full use of other MS Exchange features like booking people or resources for meetings, responding to meeting requests and viewing Free/Busy time.

Calendar synchronization is controlled from the app’s main window:

groupcal3_main

GroupCal 3 brought compatibility with 10.4.

GroupCal 3.01, released on Saturday, fixes a significant problem in 3.0 in which Exchange “Tasks” (i.e. iCal “To Dos”) were not being synchronized from Exchange into iCal. It also adds hotkeys to the Synchronize menu entries.

The latest version will run on Intel Macs under Rosetta but is not yet universal.

Designed for the business market, it comes complete with a corporate price tag. Licences range from USD 54.95 for a single user to USD 1.029.95 for 25 users. A free but crippled demo is available from the developer’s web site .

(I have no access to an Exchange server to test this. I even had to pinch the developer’s own screenshot).ical, events, todos, MS Exchange server, synchronization, rosetta, meeting requests, booking resources

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5 Responses to “GroupCal 3.01: Sync iCal with MS Exchange”

  1. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » More on Entourage Vs Mail.app says:

    [...] Snerdware’s GroupCal can be used to synchronize selected iCal calendars with the Exchange calendar. It has improved dramatically in the past six months. When I first tried it last November it was still in beta as far as Tiger support was concerned, and even after release it took until version 3.5 until it was ready for prime time. Shared calendars are also supported from public folders, since each calendar can be given a URL. [...]

  2. Gheljn says:

    Damn! Snerdware haven’t managed to get their act together and have TOTALLY screwed up. Groupcal is totally incompatible with Leopard. A pre-release has been available for a while now and this is yet another example of how little companies like Snerdware fail to take responsibility for their customers. This is unacceptable and even when they do finally actually sort this out… I worry about what else they are failing to do. At the moment all they are offering on their site is an obscure little support article making technical excuses and blaming Apple (i.e. not taking responsibility). DO NOT download Groupal it just crashes on Leopard!

  3. Nick says:

    I agree with you Gjeljn – anybody know an alternative?

  4. Brian says:

    Actually, APPLE totaly screwed up. Leopard is totally incompatible with Groupcal. The Leopard pre-release had a bug in it (PPC-only library) that prevented Snerdware from testing it. The release version of Leopard completely changed the way SyncServices work, without any documentation of the changes on Apple’s part.

    They have taken responsibility for rewriting their software to work with the new SyncServices. Unfortunately, it is a big job.

    Yes, it sucks. On the other hand, the right thing for Apple to do would have been to build this into SyncServices, and eliminate the need for Groupcal!

  5. Steve says:

    Sorry, but I agree with Gheljn, and the reason is simple: Spanning Sync still works. I also think (but haven’t tested myself) that Entourage still syncs.

    I would buy Snerdware’s excuses if other applications weren’t able to continue to work in Leopard, but the fact that they do tells me it’s possible and feasible to expect it to work at launch. Snerdware really dropped the ball on this one.

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