Address Autocompletion in iCal with Kerio Mail Server

How to get iCal to know your Address Book exists. It’s a “simple” as telling your Mac to look at the Kerio Mail Server as an Open Directory Server. Follow me here, it’s simpler than it sounds.

 

Open the web interface to your mail server

Usually you do this by entering https://mail.mycompany.com in either Safari or Firefox. Don’t log in! Click the link “Integration with Mac.”

Use the Auto-configure iCal option

Click the Auto-Configure iCal link. It says it needs Mac OS X 10.5, but I have tested this in 10.6 and it works.

Enter your Email username and password

Make sure you enter your email username (and depending on your mail server it might just be the part before the @ symbol, or your entire email address. If you don’t know your email password because your computer stores it for you, click here to learn how to retrieve it from the Keychain.

Click OK to save the file to your computer.

It will go to your Downloads folder, which is the folder that your web browser saves files to. It could be a folder called Downloads in your Home directory, the Desktop, or elsewhere. Read on if you don’t know where this is, I’ll explain further how to find the resulting file. This picture is from Firefox, but Safari is nearly identical.

Firefox Downloads Window

If this window does not pop up after you hit OK in the previous step, navigate to the Tools menu and select Downloads. Note – this file should not be shared among users, because it may contain some information specific to your email account. Each user should download this file individually.

Reveal the download

After the download completes, control-click (or right click if you have a two button mouse) and select Show in Finder. This will switch to the Finder and open the folder that the file was saved to.

Double click on the file

Double click on the Kerio-iCal-Config-Tool.zip to decompress the file and you will then zee the Kerio iCal Config Tool.mpkg. Then double click on the Kerio iCal Config Tool.mpkg to open the Installer.

Install iCal Config Tool

Click Continue

No changes here

Click Install

Enter your COMPUTER password

NOT your email password.

Close iCal

If iCal was running when you started this process, it will stop and ask you to quit that program before you continue. Once iCal is closed, click OK

Enter your Email username and password

This is where the program is configuring your computer for your access to the Mail Server.

Wait a while…

This step can take a few minutes, so allow it to complete. On the two machines I tested this on, it took 4-8 minutes, so be patient.

Open iCal…

and if it asks you for a password, enter your Email password.

Create a new Event

And click Add Attendees….

Type in the name of the person you want to invite

And autofill should now be working. Type as much as you need to identify an attendee, or use the mouse to select an attendee. After the first attendee has been entered, start typing again to add another attendee. Once you hit Done, an email with the event is sent to those users.