Persons with DESY account have different possibilities to access their e-mails and calendars. The applications offered by DESY-IT for accessing your calendars are briefly described below. At the end of this web page you will find links to specific notes of the programs.

Brief overview

Please note that only the Zimbra web interface provides a direct view of your email/calendar account data. All other applications only provide a local image of the data, which means that it has to be copied from/to the calendar/mail service.

Therefore: Please prefer to use the Zimbra web interface (https://mail.desy.de). Then use a locally installed e-mail/calendar program (e.g. Outlook) if

• the Zimbra web interface cannot be used efficiently (e.g. on smartphones or tablets)
• you need your data offline (e.g. on business trips)
• you need extended functions or a link to other programs (such as Word or
  enterprise resource planning)
   

Comparison of available calendar programs

Calendar program availability

	Zimbra Web	Outlook	Thunderbird (Lightning)	Apple iCal
Windows	yes	yes	yes	no
Linux	yes	no	yes	no
macOS	yes	no	yes	yes
iOS	yes	no	no	yes
Android	yes	no	no	no

 

Relevant aspects of the calendar programs

	Zimbra Web	Outlook	Thunderbird (Lightning)	Andere (e.g. iCal)
Supported by DESY-IT	yes	yes	no	limited
Cross-operating system	yes	no	yes	no
Local image (synchronization)	no	yes	yes	yes
Offline availability of data	no	yes	yes	yes
Integration in office-programs	no	yes	no	no
Configuration required on each device	no	yes	yes	yes
Synchronization-problems possible	no	yes	yes	yes

 

Zimbra Web

The Zimbra web interface (https://mail.desy.de) is the primary management tool recommended by DESY-IT to access calendars, emails and contacts. It can be used from any device that has an Internet program (browser). It does not matter which operating system is used on the device.

Through the Zimbra web interface, you have unlimited access to all the features and settings of your account. Moreover, you do not need to keep any data locally in order to use the web interface, which avoids a possibly lengthy synchronization of data.

iCal

Apple devices come with their own calendar applications. Like Outlook or Thunderbird, these applications also only provide an image of your data locally on the device, which means that it has to be copied down from or to the calendar/mail service. With iCal on macOS, there are known issues, especially with more complex configurations such as split calendars or similar constellations such as deputies. The same is true for the Calendar app that comes with iOS.

The use of these programs may not be unproblematic and can lead to synchronization problems. Therefore we generally recommend the use of the Zimbra web interface (see above). The use of iCal is only recommended for very simple use cases (e.g. exclusive access to the own calendar). iCal can therefore not or only very limited supported. Therefore we can not, or only very limited support iCal.

Smartphones / Tablets

Smartphones and tablets also usually come with their own calendar programs and allow many different calendar programs to be installed via the app stores. These also only provide an image of your data locally on the device. DESY-IT does not yet have a basic recommendation for certain applications.

In principle, however, the use of ActiveSync (which includes the synchronization of mails, calendars and contacts) should be primarily used as a synchronization type. Only if synchronization via Active Sync is not possible or desired, mails (with an IMAP account), calendars (with a CalDAV account) and contacts (with a CardDAV account) should be transferred from/to the central service to your device. Due to the wide variety of programs, different devices, etc., DESY-IT can only provide limited support in these cases.

Thunderbird Lightning

Thunderbird Lightning is the calendar module of Thunderbird. Formerly installable as an additional plugin, it has been a fixed part of Thunderbird for some time. Due to various problems that can occur during data transfer from/to Thunderbird Lightning and were also reproducible in tests, we do not recommend using Thunderbird for calendar management and do not support it centrally. Since data loss can occur in the worst case, we strongly advise against using Thunderbird for calendar management.