6.1 GroupWise Calendar Publishing Host Overview
6.1.1 Calendar Publishing Host Functionality
The GroupWise Calendar Publishing Host enables Internet users to view GroupWise users’ published calendars and to retrieve free/busy information from their calendars to assist with scheduling available appointment times. Internet users do not need login access to the GroupWise system in order to view published calendars and obtain free/busy status. Information provided by the Calendar Publishing Host is publicly available to Internet users everywhere.
For Calendar Publishing user functionality details, see the Calendar Publishing User Quick Start.
6.1.2 Calendar Publishing Host Components
The GroupWise Calendar Publishing Host includes three components: the Calendar Publishing Host Application, which connects to the Internet through a Web server, the Post Office Agent (POA), which connects to your GroupWise system, and an LDAP server, which provides authentication to the Calendar Publishing Host Administration Web console:
Calendar Publishing Host Application: The Calendar Publishing Host Application, which resides on the Web server, provides the browser interface for users across the Internet. As users request calendar and free/busy information from GroupWise users, the Calendar Publishing Host Application passes the information between the Web browser and the POA.
Post Office Agent: The POA receives user requests from the Calendar Publishing Host Application, accesses post offices and mailboxes to process the requests, and then passes information back to the Calendar Publishing Host Application in the form of ICS (Internet Calendaring and Scheduling) files and IFB (Internet Free Busy) files. These files can be imported into GroupWise, Outlook, and Macintosh iCal calendaring applications.
LDAP Server: The Calendar Publishing Host has an Administration Web console for configuration and management tasks. Authentication to the Administration Web console is through an LDAP server.
6.1.3 Calendar Publishing Host Security Requirements
The GroupWise Calendar Publishing Host Application can be configured to support the level of security you have established for your Internet/intranet communication.
If you are not concerned about security issues (for example, you only plan to use the Calendar Publishing Host Application on a secured intranet), you can install the Calendar Publishing Host Application to any server that provides access for your users and meets the requirements listed in Section 6.2, Calendar Publishing Host System Requirements.
If you plan to use the Calendar Publishing Host Application to provide calendar and free/busy information to users anywhere on the Internet (rather than simply within a secured intranet), and you already have a firewall in place to provide security, you have the following options for configuring the Calendar Publishing Host Application:
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Install the Calendar Publishing Host Application inside your firewall and use a proxy service, as described in Configuration with a Proxy Service. This is the recommended configuration.
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Install the Calendar Publishing Host Application on a Web server outside your firewall and have it communicate with a POA through your firewall, as described in Configuration without a Proxy Service.
Configuration with a Proxy Service
If your firewall includes a proxy service, you can install the Calendar Publishing Host Application to a Web server inside your firewall, and it can communicate with a POA that is also inside the firewall, as shown in the following illustration:
Configuration without a Proxy Service
If your firewall does not provide a proxy service, you need to install the Calendar Publishing Host Application to a Web server that is outside the firewall. Because the POA requires direct access (mapped drive or UNC path) to a GroupWise post office directory, the POA needs to be installed to a server that is inside your firewall.
The firewall must allow inbound IP packets to be sent from the Web server to the POA’s internal or external IP address and the calendar publishing port number for the POA (for example, 172.16.5.18:7171). If you are using an external IP address, all POAs that support calendar publishing must be configured to use the same external IP address. For more information about external POA IP addresses, see Securing Client/Server Access through an External Proxy Server
in Post Office Agent
in the GroupWise 2012 Administration Guide.
In addition, the firewall must allow outbound IP packets to be sent from the POA to the Web server. This requires all high ports (above 1023) to be open to outbound IP packets.