GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 214705
iTIP compatability with versions of Outlook
Last modified: 2013-09-10 13:54:28 UTC
Currently we think we have Evolution working with Outlook 2000 and XP. But Outlook Web Access isn't working, since as soon as we got that working, Outlook 2000 stopped working. Ideally we'd be compatable with all 3 versions (and possibly more). So we should try to figure out if it is possible to do that. If not, maybe we should provide an option so users can choose whether to be compatable with e.g. Outlook 2000 or Outlook Web Access. All 3 versions use different message structures: Outlook 2000 uses simple text/calendar messages. Outlook Web Access uses multipart/alternative. Outlook XP uses multipart/mixed. We use multipart/mixed at present. Outlook 2000 and XP accept that, but Outlook Web Access doesn't. Outlook 2000 would not accept multipart/alternative.
Nat: is this 1.0.1?
I was lead to believe that it was very difficult/near impossible to do. Anyway, yes, if we can produce a fix, we should make it available in the 1.0.x stable track.
OK, in fact, we are currently compatible with *no* versions of Outlook. We generate a multipart/mixed containing a text/plain part and a text/calendar part, which O2k, OWA, and OXP all display as a message containing an attachment which it doesn't see as a request. Switching from multipart/mixed to multipart/alternative makes it work for me in all three of O2k, OWA, and OXP.
If you click on the attachment it should show a window with buttons at the top to Accept/Decline the meeting. (We have done this with o2k and oxp, and a number of other people have used it.) When I tried multipart/alternative with o2k it didn't understand it. Maybe I have a different version of o2k.
I just tested Evo 1.0 (from RedCarpet) against my copy of o2k again. It worked OK, both ways round. If you use multipart/alternative does it display the Accept/Decline buttons in the main email view? That would be better. (We could do with test boxes running o2k/oxp close to us. Currently I have to reboot to use my o2k.)
Can someone attach a patch to make it use multipart/alternative? I'll test it with my o2k again.
Created attachment 40851 [details] [review] use multipart/alternative again
Outlook 97 and 98 don't support iCalendar. Outlook 2002 is the proper name for 'Outlook XP'.
I've just tried multipart/alternative with my copy of o2k again. It still doesn't recognise it, unfortunately. I'm trying to install the Office service packs and other updates to see if that helps, but they aren't installing atm.
Moving to 1.0.2. It looks like there are other factors besides the version of Outlook, since o2k works for me but not for Dan. We both think we have o2k SR-1. My notebook is running WinMe and using pop for mail, and Dan's machine is running Win2000 and connected to Exchange. So we need to check if the different behavior is caused by the OS or the Outlook setup - Exchange or Internet.
OK, the issue seems to be whether or not you're using Exchange. If you are, you have to use multipart/alternative. If you aren't, you can't. But it looks like all versions can deal with a plain iMIP body with no multipart of any kind, so I'm going to try to get the mailer to generate that.
I'm sorry to cut in ignorantly, as I often do, but does this make it impossible to create a text version of the meeting request for non-iMIP capable mailers? Not that I think this is a showstopper, I was just curious.
I thought just the plain itip body from before was causing a problem as well and that's why we changed it in the first place.
Nat: yes JP: In our pre-1.0 tests we were changing lots of variables at once (there were problems with Outlook not liking our timezones as well). Yeah, I'd swear that we'd tried some things before and they hadn't worked, but we tested this against several configurations last night and it worked on all of them.
Committed a patch to make it use multipart/alternative by default, fixing this to work with O2k+Exchange, so this no longer blocks the connector (although it's not actually fixed).
What will mailers do if they don't know what text/calendar is? I'd guess that since it starts with 'text/' they just show the text as it is. If that is the case, then we could possibly hack in a textual description of the event, by using an 'X-' property, e.g. BEGIN:VCALENDAR X-DESCRIPTION: Damon Chaplin <damon@ximian.com> has requested your presence at a meeting on 1/18/2001 12:30pm. Unfortunately your Email application does not understand iCalendar and so cannot reply to this request automatically. Blah Blah. VERSION:2.0 METHOD:REQUEST BEGIN:VEVENT ... END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR
10 bucks says Outlook won't accept that. :-)
I would take your bet if it didn't mean I was betting on Microsoft! It accepts our 'X-LOCATION:' property in the VTIMEZONEs, and other 'X-' properties we use. So I think there is a fairly good chance it would be OK.
*** bug 220497 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I was worried about it not liking the blank lines, but as long as you put a space on each one, both versions (corporate or internet) are ok with it. So, to sum up, we want to generate a message with a text/calendar body, with a human-readable textual description in X-DESCRIPTION and a machine-readable (\N's instead of newlines) description in DESCRIPTION (both versions of Outlook will display that as the message body in the preview pane). I'll work on the composer side
OK, we now can send non-obvious iMIP to all versions of Outlook. I'm closing this as FIXED and moving the "make our iMIP more obvious" bits into bug 220780.
*** bug 221385 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** bug 221756 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***