I am curious. How do you share that in SM?

We used the webmail interface to set up sharing.

There is a vendor list maintained in one user account, and shared to a 2nd account as read-only.  That 2nd account is added to our mobile device fleet as a CardDAV account, and that's how the list is distributed to many people (and kept fresh).  When the sharing broke, all devices with that account lost the list.

 

In versions up to 8451, sharing a folder across a domain required setting up an account as the owner of the folder, like Jay descried. Build 8495 introduced public folders - folders that are owned by the domain and can be shared with specified users or groups. To create and manage public folders in SmarterMail, log in as a domain administrator and go to Domain Settings > Sharing. On the Public Folders card, you can create and manage folders that are owned by the domain. These folders can be accessed over each of the protocols using any account that has been granted sufficient permissions.

As for Jay's issue, I suspect it was caused by some changes we made to better enforce sharing permissions. In the lead-up to 8495, we realized that some protocols were not properly respecting read-only permissions. In some cases this was due to limitations in the protocol, and in other cases it was due to poor client-support for permissions related extensions to the protocol. We tried enforcing the permissions server-side to allow more protocols to see the data, but that tended to cause more problems. Because of that, we made the decision to only sync shared folders with full access on those protocols. At this time, I think that the only protocols which allow syncing read-only shares are MAPI and EWS.

So are you saying that, going forward, a contact list shared from User A to User B as read-only (and User B accessing with CardDAV on their mobile device) is a thing of the past?

cardDav uses EWS.   Please open a ticket and update us with results. 

Jay -

I just double checked, and it looks like sharing permissions are working for WebDAV connections. Based on the testing I just did, it looks like sharing is working for calendars and tasks. Unfortunately, I am having difficulty getting contact sharing to work with WebDAV right now. Based on that, I second what Douglas suggested about getting a ticket open on this.

Douglas -

CardDAV is part of the WebDAV protocol, which is separate from EWS.

Thank you for the summary of your technical obstacles, but a more thorough statement is needed.

All of us need a clear statement of what configurations are not supported for contact sharing. 

+1 to Douglas Foster for a more clear statement...

Here's a quick summary of how sharing should currently work with each of the protocols:

Thank you for the update.   A rather big "oops" that this was not in the release notes for any recent version.

Even when listed, the release notes tend to be so cryptic that one can miss the significance of some entries.   For issues like this one, the release notes should include a link to a more detailed article on your website.   The link will help to highlight that the change is significant and a well written KB article will help to answer questions that the change raises.   For example, this is what you provided on a recent major improvement:

Build 8495 (Apr 5, 2023)

Added: Support for attachments across email, calendar appointments, notes, contacts, and tasks that can sync across MAPI & EWS, EAS, and WebDAV.

But here is what I wish you had provided:

Build 8495 (Apr 5, 2023)

Added: Support for attachments across email, calendar appointments, notes, contacts, and tasks that can sync across MAPI & EWS, EAS, and WebDAV.

Since this particuar linked article is long, a # tag to jump to the relevant section would improve the link even more.

Doug Foster

More questoins about the limitations to EAS:

Assume:  User x has read-only access to shared Calendar C, and she uses ActiveSync to connect her phone to her emal account.

The ideal would be for the shared calendar to be invisible, but I am guessing that invisible is not possible.

It sounds like I should encourge my users to migrate from EAS to EWS.   I assume that it is possible on IPhone.   Does anyone know of viable options for EWS on Android?

+1 (again...)

Douglas,

In the scenario you described, the read-only calendar is hidden from the sync. Since the calendar is hidden by the server, there are no synchronization errors on the device or in the EAS logs.

For user-shared folders that have Manage or Owner permissions, they are prefixed with the owner's username when synced over EAS, IMAP and WebDAV. For example, if userA shares "Calendar 2" with userB, granting them Manage permissions, it will sync to userB's EAS client as "userA - Calendar 2". That way, if userB has their own "Calendar 2", it is easy for them to differentiate between their own folder and the one shared by userA.

As for switching users to EWS, that may work. One thing to keep in mind is that EWS clients don't automatically connect to shares and additional steps need to be taken to sync shared folders in an EWS client. For example, Connecting to Shared Resources in eM Client via EWS details how to sync shared folders in eM Client. Another thing to consider is that some EWS clients, such as the MacOS clients, don't include support for connecting to shared folders.

@Andrew -- Our circumstance revolves specifically around contact sharing with CardDAV.  That's the only reason SmarterMail was purchased for this particular company.  They already have Exchange 365 but needed a way to regularly maintain and publish a corporate vendor contact list to a fleet of smartphones that didn't involve yet another 365 plug-in subscription.  SmarterMail was the perfect solution with CardDAV because iPhones natively support CardDAV.

Assuming this bug is found and fixed, is it the expectation that the shared contact list (shared from User A to User B as read-only) will be accessible to User B again with CardDAV?  Or has that all changed now?

 

Jay,

We expect that the contact list in your scenario should be accessible to user B using Card DAV once this bug is resolved.