Hi,
I have a problem while importing ICS (iCalendar) files into Lotus Notes 8.5.1.
Here an example file, it’s an iCalendar content for Lotus Notes appointment :
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
X-LOTUS-CHARSET:UTF-8
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Lotus Development Corporation//NONSGML Notes 8.5.1//EN_C
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20100419T160000Z
DTEND:20100419T170000Z
TRANSP:OPAQUE
DTSTAMP:20100422T131925Z
CLASS:PUBLIC
DESCRIPTION:OMG, darling
SUMMARY:iCalendar - ESSAI - rendezvous
LOCATION:un lieu
UID:12719423047810.35029579498474506
X-LOTUS-NOTESVERSION:2
X-LOTUS-APPTTYPE:0
X-LOTUS-CHILD_UID:AB85103231EC23BF30E9CFE3E41AFE27
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
If I make a manual import (File… import ICS),
it’s threaten as an appointment, no problem.
If I import the same file from a mail (as a “text/calendar” mail content, via SMTP), it’s threaten as a MEETING 
Any idea ?
Thx.
Subject: Explaination
Since the iCalendar has no attendees or organizer and is by all means an appointment, the iCalendar import code SHOULD treat it as such.
When iCalendar comes in over iMIP as a text/calendar MIME part, it will by design be treated as a request for a meeting - there is no concept of an invitation to an appointment in Notes and this behavior is not expected to change.
If you included the ics file as an attachment notes 8.5.1 would allow the user to double click to import as an appointment, if that is what you desire.
Otherwise, change the method to request and add an organizer and it will show as a meeting request when you do a file import.
Subject: auto-accept rule for iCalendar appointments
Thx for the explanation.
Actually, I used SMTP to send iCalendar events because of the possibility for the recipient to establish a rule like “auto-accept invitations from foo@bar.com”.
Context : My customers work on a third-party software that allow them to take many appointments and meetings. My goal is to report these appointments and meetings automatically into their Lotus Notes Calendar. I’m working with Java on a J2EE server.
If there is no way to treat these events as appointments, have you any idea on how to update a Lotus Notes Calendar with an appointments, without the user to have to open any document ?
I’m working too on CORBA (via NCSO.jar) in order to read the personal calendar on the Domino server, so I think it’s possible to write directly appointments into a calendar, it could be a solution, but I still have a limitation : I need the recipient login/password 
The other problem : I don’t find any documentation about the Lotus Notes/Domino iCalendar Standard compliance.
Thx.
Subject: Response
If you use Notes 8.5 or higher, you can utilize our calendar overlay feature. You would then publish your content to an iCalendar feed (or google feed, or another notes database), and your users can subscribe to that feed from their calendar. You can have password protected feeds if you want separate feeds for each user.
Or, if you treat these appointments as meetings or broadcasts (from some ‘dummy’ chair), you can utilize autoprocessing to autoaccept them and any updates to those meetings will then be immediately applied when they are received.
Further, if you have the id and password, you can open appointment notes in the mailfile, modify them using NSF calls, and update them. More practically, you could have the users give access to your master user so that one user could access the calendar to modify for all users. This requires that you write each property that you see on a Notes appointment manually.
We recognize the need for comprehensive calendar APIs and continue to have discussions about them, but they are not available in any current Notes/Domino releases. Regardless, there are security concerns so even if/when available you would need to have access to a mailfile so you can create or modify Notes in that mailfile.
I hope this helps
Nate
Subject: icalendar in mail attachment vs mail body
Thanks for your help,
I still have a little problem;
I’ll let customers to choose the way to send iCalendar events : as a mail attachment or a mail content.
I’ve no problem with Appointments : it works fine as mail attachments, and I disabled the possibility to send them as mail content.
No problem too with Meetings as mail content, but I can’t send any meeting as a mail attachment :
=> I have the file in the mail attachment, I can double-click it, I have normal security warning, I confirm, and there is an error while importing the file content (“maybe the server doesn’t work, you should verify the file path…”). It’s strange because it works fine if I firstly save the attached file on my computer and I open the saved ics.
In addition, I tried to export an existing meeting to an ics file, but it exports it as an appointment 
(without organizer nor attendees, and via the “publish” method, so it imports an appointment).
Is it impossible to send an invitation for a meeting as a mail attachment ?
It is not a big problem, but -ideally- I’d like to offer as many options as possible to my customers 
In addition, other softwares only accept iCalendar contents as mail attachments (as Outlook), so I’m trying to find a generic way to send iCalendar events.
Thanks a lot for your help;
Regard.
Subject: Responses
You should be able to send a meeting as a mail attachment. If your mailfile is the open application when you do the import, it should try to import the meeting into that database. If a mailfile is NOT the open database, then it uses the data in your location document to open the mailfile and imports it there. I don’t know offhand if this is the cause of the difference you see - it seems it should work in either location… Is it possible that you are working on a different database than the one specified in your location document? Is it possible that when you open it the temporary location that it is being stored has it as read only? (I know there was a bug with read only ics in 8.5 but it doesn’t sound like the same error code that you are referring to). I cant think of anything else offhand… let me know if this doesn’t help and you continue to encounter the problem - also, please give me a screenshot of the error you see.
As far as your exporting meetings - this is a known and documented limitation that Notes iCalendar export has. I do not agree with the decision to do this and will be revisiting this in a future release.
Subject: fixed, I will not send meetings in mail attachments
finally, I will not send meetings invitations as mail attachments. To send them as mail body is more user-friendly 
A very big Thx for your help.