Unable to Subscribe to iCloud Calendar by URL with Team Calendars for Confluence
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Symptoms
When attempting to Subscribe by URL to iCloud Calendars with Team Calendars for Confluence, the provided iCloud URL fails to become subscribed with an Error message shown in the subscription dialogue.
Diagnosis
Reproduction steps:
Build an iCloud Calendar, share it publicly
Gather the webcal URL from your iCloud service
Go to Configure Team Calendars for Confluence, Subscribe by URL
Try the URL: webcal://p29-calendarws.icloud.com/ca/subscribe/1/ylFkt2Busa4o9Y-5TIDGL1tXOsin82JyqCIun8t1amMo0PC97k4DZMZ84Ay3gB2w
Try as an http URL : http://p29-calendarws.icloud.com/ca/subscribe/1/ylFkt2Busa4o9Y-5TIDGL1tXOsin82JyqCIun8t1amMo0PC97k4DZMZ84Ay3gB2w
Try as an https URL : https://p29-calendarws.icloud.com/ca/subscribe/1/ylFkt2Busa4o9Y-5TIDGL1tXOsin82JyqCIun8t1amMo0PC97k4DZMZ84Ay3gB2w
All attempts fail to connect to the URL with either the message: Unable to read specified Calendar or Specified calendar does not seem like iCalendar
Cause
iCloud has obfuscated the URL through a non-standard method of displaying the iCal URL as shown in the above example (faked). This method denies normal iCal URL subscription wherein the URL ends in *.ics like: https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/2rf3dgfhakd32j@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
This due to Apple obfuscating the actual full path of the host and location of the iCal Url of the iCloud calendar. This does work with Mail on a Mac, but does not work with any other known services without extensive work to de-obfuscate the URL.
Resolution
An issue has been opened for this CONFSERVER-48725 - iCloud calendars for iCal URL not working If you are interested in this issue, please consider voting for it to be corrected.
Was this helpful?