GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 541115
Won't Notify Meeting Organizer of Acceptance/Denial
Last modified: 2008-07-02 12:01:53 UTC
Please describe the problem: When I get an outlook/exchange meeting invitation, I would expect to see an option to reply-to/notify the organizer with my disposition (i.e., tentative, accept, decline). Indeed, this option *is* displayed, but only *sometimes.* When it is, and I select the option to reply to the organizer, my acceptance *is* mailed to the organizer. However, more often than not lately, there is no option to notify/reply to the organizer. Consequently, when I accept the meeting invitation, it does *not* reply to the sender, although it *does* add the meeting to my calendar. This causes problems, because the organizers are thinking that I'm ignoring their invitations. Evo 2.22.2 (2.22.2-0ubuntu2) Ubuntu 8.04.1 Linux mercury 2.6.24-17-generic #1 SMP Thu May 1 14:31:33 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux Steps to reproduce: 1. Open an outlook/exchange-generated meeting invitation message. 2. The reply (or notify, or whatever it's called) is usually missing. 3. Click "Accept" Actual results: Meeting goes in Calendar, but notification is not sent to the organizer Expected results: I would expect to see the reply-to option in step 2. Upon selecting this and accepting the invitation, I would expect for the meeting to go in my Calendar (which it always appropriately does) *AND* I would expect a notification to be sent to the meeting organizer. Does this happen every time? No, but it's happening almost all of the time now. Other information: One potentially juicy clue: The first meeting ("Meeting A") I opened after clearing the cache (rm -rfv /home/jamie/.evolution/mail/exchange/icf-hq/) *did* display with the notify organizer option, and it *did* send out the notification upon accepting. However, the next invitation I opened ("Message B") did not have the option again. I wondered if there was anything different about the invitations themselves, so I draggeed "Meeting A" back to the Inbox back to the trash, opened it, but this time, saw no notification option. Not sure if the paragraph immediately above this one proves anything or not, but the cache clearing bit seems relevant.
is it possible the event is already in any of the calendars you have? I noticed the checkbox about "send notification to sender" is shown only for fully new events. It is shown in the generated body whether the event was found or not, and in which calendar, I think. Maybe better solution would be not hiding the options, but change the default state, like for already known events uncheck the "Send notification" checkbox. I didn't read the code yet, so it can have any good reason why hiding it.
Created attachment 113798 [details] [review] always shows option to send confirmation > is it possible the event is already in any of the calendars you have? I noticed > the checkbox about "send notification to sender" is shown only for fully new > events. It is shown in the generated body whether the event was found or not, > and in which calendar, I think. This behavior has bothered me for a while now. At work it's not unusual to get meeting updates, and in those cases the sender sometimes expects to get a confirmation that the update was seen. I was scolded for not using the standard email client because of that (jokingly, but still...) :-/ Today I patched the itip-formater.c so that it always allows sending a reply and does that by default. I would prefer this solution, but I guess I can also train myself to always checkmark the option when accepting an update (or patch my Evolution before compiling it).
Jamie, if having the event already in your calendar is not the reason for not showing the option, then there may be another reason: the option is not offered for meetings that are forwarded from inside the calendar, at least when Evolution forwards it. It is only offered if you get a copy of the original meeting invitation. You can check that when looking at the message source (View menu): METHOD:PUBLISH near the beginning of the VCALENDAR is used for normal events where sending a confirmation is disabled. METHOD:REQUEST is used for invitations for which Evolution offers the reply option.
Comment 2 and Comment 3 are on the money. I hadn't seen those comments before I submitted the more precise bug 541121 (after Milan helped me understand the behavior better on IRC). I'm closing this bug and will start to refer to the other...
Patrick, I think your proposal 'always show the 'send reply' item" is correct. It makes sense. Same as the way "keep it checked always". Can you add such patch to the new bug, with a changelog entry, please?