Contacts and CardDAV
NOTE
Contacts need Viauna 0.4 or newer.
Each mailbox has an address book (see Contacts for how people use it). It's on by default and needs nothing set up: contacts are kept in Viauna's state store with everything else, so back that up as usual. Turn it off with CONTACTS=false or from the admin page; contacts already saved are kept.
Syncing with a CardDAV server
To have the same contacts in Viauna, on people's phones and in Thunderbird, point Viauna at a CardDAV server you run:
CARDDAV_URL: https://dav.example.com/Each mailbox signs in to it with its own login and password, the ones it uses for mail. That's how CardDAV servers built into mail systems work, and how standalone ones are usually set up next to a mail server (authenticating against IMAP or the same directory). Viauna finds each person's address books from the address, the standard way (RFC 6764 and RFC 6352); if someone has none yet, it makes one called "Contacts".
| Server | CARDDAV_URL |
|---|---|
Mailu, with WEBDAV=radicale | https://mail.example.com/webdav/ |
| Radicale | https://dav.example.com/ |
| Nextcloud (logins checked against your mail server) | https://cloud.example.com/remote.php/dav/ |
| Baïkal | https://dav.example.com/dav.php/ |
| SOGo | https://mail.example.com/SOGo/dav/ |
If your server wants each person's own address in the URL, {login}, {user} (the part before the @) and {domain} are filled in: https://dav.example.com/{login}/.
CARDDAV_URL is set only in the environment, never from the admin page, because Viauna sends each mailbox's password to it. Only mailboxes on your own mail server (IMAP_HOST) sync; one on a server someone typed in at sign-in never has its password sent anywhere else. The admin page can still turn syncing off and on (CONTACTS_SYNC).
How it syncs
Once sync is on, the server holds the contacts and Viauna keeps a synced copy for listing, searching and suggestions.
- The first sync sends the contacts already saved in Viauna to the person's first address book, each named after its vCard UID (
<UID>.vcf). A card the server already has under that name is matched, not doubled, and the server's copy is kept. - A change in Viauna is sent within a couple of seconds. It's sent only if the card hasn't changed on the server since (
If-Match). If it has, Viauna applies the fields changed in Viauna to the server's newer card, so neither side's other changes are lost. - Changes made elsewhere come in every ten minutes while someone has Viauna open, when they open Contacts (if the last sync was more than a minute ago), and with Sync now. Viauna asks only for what changed (
sync-collection, RFC 6578) and lists every card's ETag on a server that lacks it. - Several address books are all shown; new contacts go to the first.
- In an address book the mailbox can't write to, changes made in Viauna aren't sent: the server's copy stands.
When each sync runs, and how a contact changed on both sides is merged, is in How it works: Contacts.
The Contacts page shows where it syncs and how the last sync went: "Synced with dav.example.com 3 minutes ago", or the error.
If you change or remove it
Turning sync off keeps the synced copy, and changes made meanwhile are sent if it's turned on again. Pointing CARDDAV_URL at a different server replaces each person's contacts in Viauna with the new server's: the old server still has them.