ICal Support

Hello,

I read on this forum that the following standards were supported in domino :

iCalendar (RFC2445)

iTIP (RFC2446)

iMIP (RFC2447)

IMIP describe ways of sending multiple calendar events in a single SMTP message .

If I test examples given in the IMIP RFC containing two events like the following, only the first event is diplayed .

mail from: tototititata@toto.fr

rcpt to: zziphone1@toto.fr

data

To: zziphone1

From: tototititata

Subject: Summer Company Holidays

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type:text/calendar; method=PUBLISH; charset=US-ASCII

BEGIN:VCALENDAR

PRODID:-//ACME/DESKTOPCALENDAR//EN

METHOD:PUBLISH

VERSION:2.0

BEGIN:VEVENT

ORGANIZER:zziphone1@toto.fr

DTSTAMP:19970611T150000Z

DTSTART:20120701T150000Z

DTEND:20120701T230000Z

SUMMARY:Company Picnic

DESCRIPTION:Food and drink will be provided

UID:CALSVR.EXAMPLE.COM-873970198738777-1

SEQUENCE:0

STATUS:CONFIRMED

END:VEVENT

BEGIN:VEVENT

ORGANIZER:MAILTO:zziphone1@toto.fr

DTSTAMP:19970611T190000Z

DTSTART:20120715T150000Z

DTEND:20120715T230000Z

SUMMARY:Company Bowling Tournament

DESCRIPTION:We have 10 lanes reserved

UID:CALSVR.EXAMPLE.COM-873970198738777-2

SEQUENCE:0

STATUS:CONFIRMED

END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR

.

All my attemps of splitting events with boundaries also fail.

Is it technically possible to send multiple entries ical in a single message other smtp ?

Thank you . Regards .

Subject: Excellent question…

Multiple VEVENTs sent in an iMIP stream has traditionally not been supported by Domino, but has been supported by Notes. That is, Domino will see the multiple VEVENTs and will defer the processing. When the message is opened / viewed by the client, a dialog will appear asking the user to extract the events.

This has traditionally been fine as these were never encountered until a few years ago. The only real world (and my memory serves the only supported) cases of multiple VEVENTs in an iMip stream are cases that refer to the same UID. That is, one VEVENT representing a recurrence pattern (RRULE), and additional VEVENTs representing exceptions to that rule (specified using RECURRENCE-ID). When these VEVENTs started showing up from Exchange, they did not work well. We did improve client processing in 8.5.3 such that these are properly handled by the Notes client. However, there were cases where a server side solution was desired. One server side solution was implemented via an ini parameter ($IcalMltVEvntHndl=1, which I expect that you have on the Domino server of your recipients) processes only the first VEVENT and discards the rest. This works well in the Exchange interop case since Exchange also sends redundant VEVENTs for the exceptions, so the discarded VEVENTs are unecessary. However, as this is technically not valid per iMIP, this “first only” processing is not enabled by default.

Your timing is interesting as I am currently investigating another solution in hopes to contain for Domino 8.5.4. This solution would handle the MIME that you represent below. However, I would expect that the Notes client could properly handle your iCalendar if you removed the $IcalMltVEvntHndl=1 from the server ini. Another potentially more attractive alternative is to send an iCalendar attachment. This would never be processed by Domino but would have a nice import experience for the Notes client.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR

PRODID:-//ACME/DESKTOPCALENDAR//EN

METHOD:PUBLISH

VERSION:2.0

BEGIN:VEVENT

ORGANIZER:zziphone1@toto.fr

DTSTAMP:19970611T150000Z

DTSTART:20120701T150000Z

DTEND:20120701T230000Z

SUMMARY:Company Picnic

DESCRIPTION:Food and drink will be provided

UID:CALSVR.EXAMPLE.COM-873970198738777-1

SEQUENCE:0

STATUS:CONFIRMED

END:VEVENT

BEGIN:VEVENT

ORGANIZER:MAILTO:zziphone1@toto.fr

DTSTAMP:19970611T190000Z

DTSTART:20120715T150000Z

DTEND:20120715T230000Z

SUMMARY:Company Bowling Tournament

DESCRIPTION:We have 10 lanes reserved

UID:CALSVR.EXAMPLE.COM-873970198738777-2

SEQUENCE:0

STATUS:CONFIRMED

END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR