The Citadel Groupware Server

Setting up Kontact's Contacts (say that five times fast) is much the same as setting up KCalendar. Click the Contacts icon in the left-side pane. At the bottom of the middle column is a pane labeled Address Books. The right-click trick doesn't work here, so click the Add button instead. Select the same GroupDAV Server option, and fill in all the same data that you filled in for the KCalendar setup. Click the Refresh Folder List button, use the right-click-to-enable trick, and you're off to the races (Figure 8).

Figure 8. GroupDAV Settings in Kontact

As with KCalendar, once you've set up your GroupDAV connector, you can now manage your contact data from either KDE or WebCit (Figure 9).

Figure 9. Citadel and Kontact Accessing the Same Data

Tasks and the Journal are just plain-old work once KCalendar is set up. They don't require any of their own setup.

A lot of other clients support the GroupDAV protocol to varying degrees. Any of these can be used in place of Kontact, albeit likely with less functionality. For a complete list of clients and the status of their GroupDAV support, go to the GroupDAV site (www.groupdav.org/implementations.html).

GroupDAV isn't the only technology that can be used with Citadel. WebDAV and Webcal can be used with clients, such as Mozilla Sunbird and Evolution, to share calendars and schedule events. There is also a Microsoft Outlook connector in the works, but at the moment, Outlook can be used to access only POP/IMAP e-mail and IMAP folders. As time marches on, more and more clients that support GroupDAV and WebDAV come onto the scene. The Citadel FAQ contains a maintained list of clients and how to configure them.

Although a few groupware projects are underway that can give Microsoft Exchange a run for its money, we've found that Citadel is quite simply the easiest to install and maintain. The hardest part of a Citadel install is waiting for all the components to download. Citadel is under active development, and by the time this article prints, a new version may be out. The lead developer, Art Cancro, can be found in the Citadel support on the UNCENSORED! BBS forums (uncensored.citadel.org), along with other Citadel developers and experienced users.