A global shared address book is available independently from the contacts. Address book entries are maintained inside a LDAP directory on the Kolab server and can be exported to vCal format. The necessary conversion is done by the groupware client application.
The GUI on the Kolab client provides read only access to all address data stored inside the directory.
The Kolab client application stores contacts in the IMAP sub folder named "Contacts" on the Kolab server. The actual entries are represented as multi-part MIME emails with included vCard address data as MIME parts.
The Kolab client application maintains a private address book ("Contacts"). Note that this is very different from a global address book. A users private address book is stored on the Kolab server. A bidirectional vCard interface is provided. In consequence, vCards received as email attachments can be easily added to a users contacts repository.