SOGo calendar — events, reminders and sharing

The SOGo calendar is a full calendar — not just show-and-tell, but with sharing, reminders, recurrences and CalDAV sync. Via CalDAV you can hook the calendar into Apple Calendar, Thunderbird, Outlook (with a plugin) and any smartphone.

Opening the calendar

In SOGo, click the Calendar tab at the top. You see:

• Left: list of your calendars — “Personal Calendar” by default
• Middle: the calendar view (day / week / month / year — switchable top right)
• Right: detail area for events

Creating your first event

Double-click the desired day or time slot in the calendar view.

In the event dialog:

Field	Value
Title	short label — what is it?
Location	physical, or the URL of an online meeting
Start / end	date + time
All day	if the event lasts the whole day
Recurrence	daily / weekly / monthly / yearly / custom
Reminder	when SOGo should notify you — browser popup or email
Attendees	invite other people — they get an ICS invitation by mail
Description	notes, agenda, links
Category	color tag (work, private, …)

Save. The event appears in the calendar.

Recurrences

For recurrences you can pick:

• Daily, every X days
• Weekly on specific weekdays — say “every Mon + Wed + Fri”
• Monthly on day X — say “every 15th”
• Monthly on the Y-th weekday — say “every first Monday”
• Yearly

Plus an end condition: never / after X times / until date Y.

From our experience: weekly events are the most common. Be careful with “never-ending” recurrences — if you don’t want the event anymore after 5 years, you have to stop it manually.

Editing and deleting events

Click an event → opens the preview on the right → Edit for changes or Delete.

For recurring events you get asked:

• Only this event: changes or deletes just this one instance.
• This and all following: gone from today onward, earlier ones stay.
• All events in the series: the entire recurring event disappears.

Take care to pick the right option — especially when deleting.

Multiple calendars

You can create as many calendars of your own as you like — say “Private”, “Work”, “Family”.

New calendar: click the + in the calendar list on the left → set a name → pick a color → save.

Events live per calendar. In the calendar view you can toggle each calendar on and off — checkbox in the list on the left.

Handy when you want, say, family events kept to themselves and out of your work view.

Sharing a calendar with others

Right-click a calendar → Properties → Sharing tab.

You can:

• Grant read access — others see your events, can’t change anything.
• Grant write access — others can add or edit too.
• Respect private markers — events marked as “private” show up to others only as “busy”, without details.

With whom? Another mail address from your domain. External people (@gmail.com) can’t be invited directly — for them, work with event invitations via ICS file.

From our own experience: very popular with families — one shared family calendar for birthdays, school dates, vacations. Write access for each family member.

Sending event invitations

If you add attendees to an event (with a mail address), they automatically get an ICS invitation by mail. They can accept or decline directly in their mail client — the answer comes back and you see the status (accepted / declined / unanswered).

Works with all Mailcow-internal addresses plus external ones (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) — ICS is a standard, every mail client can read it.

Careful with event changes: if you change an event after the invitation has been sent, SOGo automatically sends an update to all attendees. Change it several times a day and everyone gets a pile of update mails — so better edit once, cleanly.

Subscribing to external calendars

You can add public calendars (say public holidays, sports tournaments, your own Google Calendar) as a read-only subscription:

1. Calendar list on the left → Subscribe (plus symbol with a small arrow) or Add → Web calendar.
2. Enter the URL of the ICS calendar — for instance https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/....
3. Save.

SOGo syncs the ICS regularly (roughly hourly). Events appear read-only in the calendar view.

Useful for example:

• German public holidays per federal state
• The Bundesliga schedule
• Your own Google Calendar visible in parallel

Sync to mobile devices and mail clients

The SOGo calendar is available via CalDAV — the open standard every modern calendar client speaks.

Server address for CalDAV: https://mail.xaweho.de/SOGo/dav/<your-mail-address>/Calendar/.

Configuration per platform:

• iOS / iPadOS: Settings → Calendar → Add Account → Other → Add CalDAV Account. Enter server, login, password.
• Apple Calendar (Mac): Apple Calendar → Settings → Accounts → + → CalDAV account → enter the CalDAV URL.
• Android: via DAVx⁵ (F-Droid or Google Play). Add account → URL + login.
• Outlook: needs the “CalDav Synchronizer” plugin or Microsoft’s own connector.
• Thunderbird: Lightning extension → New calendar → On the network → CalDAV → enter the URL.

After setup, the calendar syncs both ways: events you enter on your phone land directly in SOGo. Changes from SOGo are fetched by the device on the next sync — on iOS you set the interval under Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Fetch New Data.

Frequently asked questions

How many calendars can I have? Practically unlimited. We’ve seen setups with 30+ calendars — no problem performance-wise, though organizationally it gets confusing at some point.

Do reminders fire on the smartphone too? If you’ve hooked the calendar to your smartphone via CalDAV: yes, the smartphone triggers the reminders, not SOGo. So you have to set the reminder before the CalDAV sync.

What if I change an event after the sync? Two-way sync works via CalDAV — change it on the phone, it lands in SOGo. And the other way around.

Can shared calendars be edited without conflicts? With simultaneous access to the same event by two people: last write wins. Whoever saves last, wins. Not an issue for family workflows; for teams with frequent parallel editing it can get annoying.

Can I have events in multiple calendars at once? No. Every event has one primary calendar. What does work: enable the cross-calendar view so you see all events in one overview.

Are ICS invitations to external people a privacy problem? The event content contains everything you entered — title, location, description, attendee list. That data ends up in the recipient’s mailbox. If that’s sensitive, trim the description or don’t invite all attendees in the same mail.

How do I protect private events from colleagues who can read my calendar? Mark the event as “private” (checkbox in the event dialog). Colleagues with read access then only see “busy” without details — provided “respect private markers” is active in the sharing settings.

What’s next

• SOGo contacts and address book
• SOGo webmail — first login and overview
• Setting up Apple Mail on iPhone and iPad