ACCC Services and the iPhone

At this time, iPhone and iPodTouch devices cannot connect to UIC-Wireless. We are working on it, but don't currently have a timeline for when support will be added.

Basic configuration

The following instructions apply to ACCC-managed email servers: mailserv (recommended), tigger, and icarus. Tap the Settings icon, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Tap Add Account and select Other at the bottom.

• Enter
• your name as you would like it to appear in your correspondence
• your UIC email address (example: dvader@uic.edu)
• your ACCC common password
• Tap Save and type in the following information for both Incoming and Outgoing mail servers
• Host name: mail.uic.edu
• your UIC netid (example: dvader)
• your ACCC common password
• Tap Save and wait for the verification process to finish.
• Once the settings are verified, click on the newly created account and scroll down to Advanced
• In the advanced settings, scroll down to IMAP path prefix
• Tap the field and type in: mail. Press the Home button to exit the configuration screen and click on the Mail icon to access your account.

Screenshots

Mailbox behaviors

The final step is configuring the special mailboxes (Drafts, Sent, Trash) to use the same ones as on the server. By default, your sent and deleted messages will be stored in a folder on your iPhone. If you want to use the same folders as Webmail, or another email client (Apple Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird, for example) tap the Settings icon, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and scroll to Advanced.

In the Mailbox Behaviors section

• Tap Drafts mailbox. From the list labeled On the Server choose the folder you use for drafts.
• Tap Sent mailbox. From the list labeled On the Server choose the folder you use for sent messages.
• Tap Deleted mailbox. From the list labeled On the Server choose the folder you use for deleted messages.

In the Deleted Messages section, select how long you want to keep deleted messages. The default is one week.

At the moment, the best way to use UICalendar on an iPhone's is to use its Safari browser.

The long awaited wireless SyncML solution for the iPhone has come. SyncML is the best way to sync smartphones and PDAs, but unfortunately, Synthesis SyncML isn't quite finished yet. This is part of an email we received from them:

To find the application once it appears in the App Store, please just search for "Synthesis SyncML".. [It's in Production.]

The initial release will be a free download from the App Store, supporting only contact sync. Calendar synchronisation is prepared, but at this time Apple does not allow access to the calendar data yet. The Synthesis SyncML client for iPhone will become a paid application once it is complete with calendar synchronisation.

The version that is there now does only support contact sync. So we have a ways to wait yet.

Synthesis SyncML now actually did sync my contacts, and the sync was very fast over UIC-Wireless. The problem that I had before -- downloaded contacts from UICal, but they didn't go into Contacts, and the net result was that it erased the contacts I already had on my phone -- was a bug. Synthesis says they fixed it in version 1.0.2. I don't know about 1.0.2, but I can testify that version 1.0.4 works just fine.

The settings were the same as those for other smart phones, Appendix H: Oracle Calendar Mobile Data Sync.

Settings Server Settings Server, URL: https://uical.uic.edu/ocst-bin/ocas.fcgi

Settings Server Settings Server, SymcML version: SymcML 1.1

Settings Server Settings Server Login User: your UIC netid, and Password:, your ACCC common password

Settings Contacts, Server Path: ./contacts

It's the Settings, Contacts, Sync Mode: setting that I had to play with. Update device was the only one that synced, and now it works just fine. But it only updates the iPhone Contacts with changes made on UICal.

However, the next time I synced my iPhone with my Mac, it replaced all the UICal addresses with my Mac addresses. Sigh. But it is proof of concept.

Screenshots

But there is another way that almost allows you to use iCal on the iPhone now, which involves using SyncML to sync iCal on a Mac over the Web. This method has four problems:

1. The sync to iCal is one way: UICalendar iCal, so all changes have to be made in UICal. In fact, when you subscribe to the calendar in iCal, the subscription is read-only.
2. Only Events are synced.
3. Alarms aren't imported into iCal.
4. It involves an URL that you have to put your UIC netid and your UICal password in. This means you would have to send your ACCC common password over the Web, in the clear, to do this. This is not a good thing. But we can change your UICal password to something other than your ACCC common password if you want to use this method, so you wouldn't be sending out your actual ACCC common password. Just ask.

The Good News is that it's easy.

The really easy way gives you a read-only calendar: Subscribe your iCal to the SyncML Web page with your UICal account and set it up to auto-refresh at time intervals that are convenient to when your sync your iPhone. And, just once, set your iTunes up so it syncs your iPhone with iCal data.

The not quites so easy way gives you a calendar that you can modify (but you can't upload your changes into UICal): Visit the SyncML Web Web page, import the downloaded file into iCal on your Mac, set a few Sync options (once), and Sync your iPhone. Well, you also have to delete the last calendar you imported, but that's easy.

1. Open iCal on your Mac.
2. Go to Calendar Subscribe...
   
   
3. Paste this URL in the Subscribe box:
   http://sync.syncml2ical.com/?serverurl=https://uical.uic.edu/ocst-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=syncml&user=yournetid&pass=yourpassword&eventsdb=./Calendar/Events?/dr(0,30)
   
   
   • Where you replace "yournetid" and "yourpassword" with your netid and UICalendar password.
   • The (0,30) tells syncml2ical that you want to sync 0 days in the past to 30 days in the future.
   • In the real world -- when you put the URL on the Web page -- you can use, say, (-10,45) to get 10 days in the past to 45 days in the future. But I couldn't get the Subscribe box to take the - sign, even if I coded it as %2D. If someone knows how to get around this, I'd love to know.
4. In the subscribing box, you can select a title for the calendar, and tell it whether to remove the alarms and to do items. You don't really have to remove them or not; SymcML2iCal doesn't download them. But in case they ever do download them, I removed checks beside them. I selected Refresh every day, but you can change that later if you wish.
   
   
5. And that's it. If you click on any of the items in this calendar, you will see a pencil with a line through it icon in the upper right corner of the info tab; this means the item is read-only. (Yes, I know that St. Patrick's Day is March 17th; we just celebrated it on the 19th this year.)
   

Note when you sync iCal with UICal by subscription, the subscribed calendars are Read-Only, which means you can't do anything to the entries, including turn the alarms back on. Including on the iPhone. If you would rather have writable calendars, you must import the calendar into iCal instead of subscribe to it. You can also sync previous days this way.

1. Important: Delete the previous SyncML2iCal calendar in iCal. Command-click on its name and select Delete from the menu. (If you don't, there will be duplicated events .)
   
2. Go to this URL:
   http://sync.syncml2ical.com/?serverurl=https://uical.uic.edu/ocst-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=syncml&user=yournetid&pass=yourpassword&eventsdb=./Calendar/Events?/dr(0,30)
   • Where you replace "yournetid" and "yourpassword" with your netid and UICalendar password.
     The (0,30) tells syncml2ical that you want to sync 0 days in the past to 30 days in the future.
   • You can also use, say, (-10,45) to get 10 days in the past to 45 days in the future.
   • The URL will download a file named syncml2ical.ics.
3. Double-click on the downloaded syncml2ical.ics file to import it into iCal, or just open the downloaded file with iCal.
   
   
4. Import the file into a New calendar, because each time you download a new file, it will import all the items in it again as new events. If you import it into its own calendar, you can just delete the old one and import a new one each time. (See step 1. If you don't, you will get multiple instances of each event.)
   
   

After you get your UICalendar information into iCal, all you have to do is sync your iPhone using iTunes.

1. Select your iPhone from the DEVICES list.
2. Click the Info tab.
3. Scroll down to the Calendars section; click the Sync iCal calendars box.
4. Either click the radio button beside All calendars or beside Selected calendars and check your SyncML2iCal calendar.
5. Click Apply. This will start a sync, and will save these options for future syncs.