Monday, February 15, 2010

MS Exchange Calendar on Thunderbird with Lightning

Finally figured out how to integrate the Microsoft Exchange Calendar with Thunderbird using the Lightning Add-on. There is no clean way to do this but whatever i am going to mention below at least works and lets you treat the Exchange Calendar as a CalDAV Server, so you can very well imagine what all you can do with it.
  1. Download DAVMail Gateway from this LINK. DAVMail is a sourceforge project which basically uses the OWA to get all the data you need i.e. Mail (SMTP/POP), LDAP and most important, the proprietary Calendar Data
  2. Install DAVMail and what it will do is basically install a server on your computer which will interact with the Exchange Server and manage creation of new events, accept events and the whole 9 yards.
  3. All you need to do is provide the OWA (Outlook Web Access) URL to the settings page and it will ask you for outlook Username & password.
  4. Here is a Link from the Wiki page on DAVMail for Step by Step guidance for Thundebird Setups.
UPDATE

Just found out a great add-on for Lightning & Thunderbird called "Exchange 2007/2010 Calendar & Tasks Provider"

The Link is below


The setup is pretty straight forward. Follow the screenshots on the page and you are all set. Just make sure that the URL you use is "https:///ews/exchange.asmx" and provide the user id and password and you are all set.