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Bug 260853 - No alarm/reminder for birthdays
No alarm/reminder for birthdays
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Calendar
2.22.x (obsolete)
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Milan Crha
Evolution QA team
: 258747 318087 333719 335506 337217 524085 537042 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 327508 327510
 
 
Reported: 2004-06-29 02:24 UTC by Eric Lambart
Modified: 2013-09-10 14:04 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
proposed eds patch (9.19 KB, patch)
2008-08-14 10:28 UTC, Milan Crha
committed Details | Review
proposed evo patch (13.36 KB, patch)
2008-08-14 10:36 UTC, Milan Crha
committed Details | Review

Description Eric Lambart 2004-06-29 02:24:50 UTC
Description of Problem:
A friend had a birthday today, and the event can be found in the read-only 
Birthdays/Anniversaries calendar.  I never got a reminder.

Expected Results:
I should get a reminder 15 minutes before the birthday-day begins, as 15 
minutes is my Evolution-wide default reminder setting.

Additional Information:
I am currently using evolution1.5-1.5.9.0.200406241827-0.snap.ximian.6.1
Comment 1 Chenthill P 2005-08-22 19:43:56 UTC
I don think alarms are enabled for birthday calendars.
Comment 2 Andreas Kotowicz 2005-09-09 12:26:43 UTC
would it be hard to give the user an option to enable a  "birthday &
anniversaries alarm"? the birthday & anniversaries options seems useless for
many people in it's current setup. If you don't look at the calendar, you'll
definitely miss you're mum's birthday (ok, you should remember this one without
a computer).
I talked to a lot of people using evolution and they all wish evolution would
remind them of these important days like a day or two in advance (which should
be an configurable option)
Comment 3 André Klapper 2005-10-06 11:57:49 UTC
updating and retargetting
Comment 4 André Klapper 2005-10-06 11:58:06 UTC
*** Bug 318087 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 André Klapper 2006-03-07 16:19:43 UTC
*** Bug 333719 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 André Klapper 2006-03-24 00:46:51 UTC
*** Bug 335506 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Karsten Bräckelmann 2006-04-04 16:07:03 UTC
*** Bug 337217 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Michael Monreal 2006-04-04 16:30:19 UTC
I can only second Andreas... I have to add, I half way expected this to work because of the design of the preferences (I described this in #37217).

What makes this so difficult to solve that the bug is still open after nearly 3 years?
Comment 9 Michael Monreal 2006-06-19 11:19:58 UTC
*ping*

Is this on the list of considered features for the next release?
Comment 10 Chenthill P 2006-06-20 07:21:33 UTC
yes.
Comment 11 Anne Hendrik Buist 2006-12-16 19:38:25 UTC
In my 2.8 release it is still not possible to do this: has this enhancement already been made or is it on some kind of sidetrack?
Comment 12 Michael Monreal 2007-10-29 11:36:17 UTC
And still not possible in 2.12 :(
Comment 13 Matthew Barnes 2008-03-11 00:37:25 UTC
Bumping version to a stable release.
Comment 14 Pedro Villavicencio 2008-03-24 11:40:41 UTC
*** Bug 524085 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Miri Arie 2008-06-28 04:56:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> Description of Problem:
> A friend had a birthday today, and the event can be found in the read-only 
> Birthdays/Anniversaries calendar.  I never got a reminder.
> 
> Expected Results:
> I should get a reminder 15 minutes before the birthday-day begins, as 15 
> minutes is my Evolution-wide default reminder setting.
> 
> Additional Information:
> I am currently using evolution1.5-1.5.9.0.200406241827-0.snap.ximian.6.1

New to Evolution.
I have been using outlook for as long as I can remember and had hoped to find similar features in evolution. I can see an alarm button on the menu bar but it is not enabled.
  
Seeing that this has been reported as far back as 4 years ago leaves me less hopeful than I was before finding this long list of "brothers".  Please give us our alarms!!!
Comment 16 Milan Crha 2008-08-14 10:28:34 UTC
Created attachment 116561 [details] [review]
proposed eds patch

for evolution-data-server;
Comment 17 Milan Crha 2008-08-14 10:36:14 UTC
Created attachment 116563 [details] [review]
proposed evo patch

for evolution;

I thought I'll cheat a bit in alarm-notify, to make changes only in evo part, but I realized it to be unsystematic, thus there is a change in eds part too. In eds, it's listening to the changes on the related gconf entries and updates all events when in idle, which should work fine, and it does, but can be also changed to do changes say 5 or 10 seconds after last change, because now the events are blinking every time you increase/decrease interval value. Just consider this, and if you think I should change that, then I will. I'm fine with that.

In evo patch, UI change/string add. Be sure you've Birthdays & Anniversaries checked for the alarm notification when testing/using this, otherwise it will not notify you.
Comment 18 Michael Monreal 2008-08-14 22:07:01 UTC
I would love to test those patches but atm I'm not even able to enable the birthday calendar in the unpatched version :( If I do so, evolution just freezes...
Comment 19 Milan Crha 2008-08-15 08:14:14 UTC
Try to attach gdb to the evo/eds frozen process and do "thread apply all bt" and we will see what it does.
Comment 20 Michael Monreal 2008-08-15 11:24:37 UTC
Milan, I can now enable the birthdays calendar. However, it does not show the birthdays from my personal addressbook. However, if I go to the addressbook and edit the contacts (make one change and save) the birthday shows up in calendar. Any idea why that could be happening? 
If I get this working I would love to test your patch.
Comment 21 Michael Monreal 2008-08-16 09:05:55 UTC
I'm finally able to test this :)

However, when can I expect the alert to happen? I have tested this way:

- created fake contacts with birthdays in the next days
- set notification time to 13h (it was well before 11 o' clock so I assumed this would work)
- ran evolution-alarm-notify like this:

/opt/gnome2.24/libexec/evolution/2.24/evolution-alarm-notify --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Calendar_AlarmNotify_Factory:2.24 --oaf-ior-fd=38

Nothing happend. I started Evolution and this is what I see on evolution-alarm-notify:

alarm-queue.c:1817 (check_midnight_refresh)
alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:754 (query_objects_changed_async) - No currently queued alarms for 20080323T220843Z-85916@coltrane
alarm-queue.c:460 (add_component_alarms) - No alarms to add
alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:754 (query_objects_changed_async) - No currently queued alarms for 20080323T220843Z-33951@coltrane
alarm-queue.c:460 (add_component_alarms) - No alarms to add
alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:754 (query_objects_changed_async) - No currently queued alarms for 20080323T220843Z-85916@coltrane
alarm-queue.c:460 (add_component_alarms) - No alarms to add
alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:754 (query_objects_changed_async) - No currently queued alarms for 20080323T220843Z-33951@coltrane
alarm-queue.c:460 (add_component_alarms) - No alarms to add
Comment 22 Michael Monreal 2008-08-16 09:10:49 UTC
Update: pressed "up" (+1h in the evo prefs) a few times and got the notification! So either This was bad luck or some issue with timezones perhaps? Do birthdays start on 0h local or 0h GMT? 

Output:

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:621 (remove_alarms) - Removing for 0x80eff90
alarm-queue.c:310 (remove_queued_alarm) 
alarm-queue.c:339 (remove_queued_alarm) - Last Component. Removing CQA- Free=0
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Setting timeout for 3193 1218880800 1218877607
evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 12:00:00 2008

evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 11:06:47 2008

alarm-queue.c:803 (query_objects_changed_async) - Adding 0x80a51a0 to queue 
alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 01:02:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:621 (remove_alarms) - Removing for 0x80eff90
alarm-queue.c:310 (remove_queued_alarm) 
alarm-queue.c:339 (remove_queued_alarm) - Last Component. Removing CQA- Free=0
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Setting timeout for 0 1218877200 1218877607
evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 11:00:00 2008

evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 11:06:47 2008

alarm-queue.c:803 (query_objects_changed_async) - Adding 0x8324980 to queue 
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Alarm callback!
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Process alarm with trigger 1218877200
alarm-queue.c:402 (alarm_trigger_cb) - Setting Last notification time to Sat Aug 16 11:00:00 2008

alarm-queue.c:1565 (popup_notification)
alarm-queue.c:1443 (display_notification)
alarm-queue.c:445 (alarm_trigger_cb) - Notification sent:2
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Setting timeout for 46393 1218924000 1218877607
evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sun Aug 17 00:00:00 2008

evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 11:06:47 2008

alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:2162 (update_cqa) - Generating alarms between Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008
 and Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008

alarm-queue.c:2204 (update_qa)
alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:2162 (update_cqa) - Generating alarms between Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008
 and Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008


(evolution-alarm-notify:29145): evolution-alarm-notify-WARNING **: Failed in auid lookup for old component also

alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:2162 (update_cqa) - Generating alarms between Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008
 and Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008


(evolution-alarm-notify:29145): evolution-alarm-notify-WARNING **: Failed in auid lookup for old component also

alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:2162 (update_cqa) - Generating alarms between Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008
 and Sat Aug 16 00:00:00 2008


(evolution-alarm-notify:29145): evolution-alarm-notify-WARNING **: Failed in auid lookup for old component also

alarm-queue.c:729 (query_objects_changed_async) - Querying for object between Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008
 to Sat Aug 16 11:00:01 2008

alarm-queue.c:761 (query_objects_changed_async) - Alarm Already Exist for pas-id-48A68AE700000000-anniversary
alarm-queue.c:621 (remove_alarms) - Removing for 0x80eff90
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: alarm.c:246: Requested removal of nonexistent alarm!
alarm-queue.c:310 (remove_queued_alarm) 
alarm-queue.c:339 (remove_queued_alarm) - Last Component. Removing CQA- Free=0
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Setting timeout for 3176 1218880800 1218877624
evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 12:00:00 2008

evolution-alarm-notify-Message:  Sat Aug 16 11:07:04 2008

alarm-queue.c:803 (query_objects_changed_async) - Adding 0x81852e8 to queue 
alarm-queue.c:1329 (tray_icon_clicked_cb) - left click and 1 alarms
alarm-queue.c:1284 (open_alarm_dialog) 
alarm-queue.c:1329 (tray_icon_clicked_cb) - left click and 1 alarms
alarm-queue.c:1284 (open_alarm_dialog) 
alarm-queue.c:1329 (tray_icon_clicked_cb) - left click and 1 alarms
alarm-queue.c:1284 (open_alarm_dialog) 
alarm-queue.c:1329 (tray_icon_clicked_cb) - left click and 1 alarms
alarm-queue.c:1284 (open_alarm_dialog) 
alarm-queue.c:1329 (tray_icon_clicked_cb) - left click and 1 alarms
alarm-queue.c:1338 (tray_icon_clicked_cb) - right click
Comment 23 Michael Monreal 2008-08-16 09:17:32 UTC
I have not been able to set off another alarm like this... but it may be related to the bug where birthday events would not show up before going back/forth one day (I have seen this too now a number of times).
Comment 24 Michael Monreal 2008-08-18 05:23:26 UTC
After a few days of testing (displaying fake birthdays one day before they are supposed to happen) I can say that the feature basicly works, but not all the time. Fairly sure this is because of the unsolved issues in bug #347287 though.
Comment 25 Milan Crha 2008-08-18 11:47:16 UTC
Michael, you mentioned you have some clue why you do not have all the Personal events notified, when we were testing this on Friday, something with photos, and you said you'll attach somewhere a test case. I'm not sure where, maybe it's attached to other bug?

Regarding to alarm, the events are created as day events, so starting on midnight, lasting for 24 hours. The best would be to check correctness of the patch on patched stable version (2.22.3), to avoid possible errors because of the above bug you mentioned. (I'm not sure if you hit there the issue with photos.)

If it will work fine there, then we will know where to look (more or less).
BTW, thanks for taking time to test it.
Comment 26 Michael Monreal 2008-08-18 12:17:08 UTC
Sorry Milan! I meant to look up your email address to CC you to the other bug but seems like I forgot... anyway, have a look at bug #547949.

So with bug #547949 worked around by removing photos I see birthdays in the calendar but not always all of them, which I suppose is a variation of the issue you mentioned in bug #347287 (both bugs may even be the same thing... perhaps having photos only makes it much much worse?)

Does the patches apply to 2.22? If not, imho fixing 347287 and 547949 and then testing the patch on 2.23.x would be easier.
Comment 27 Milan Crha 2008-08-18 15:15:10 UTC
It should be possible to apply to stable, I do not expect many changes there, but I didn't try myself.
Comment 28 André Klapper 2008-11-23 16:05:54 UTC
*** Bug 537042 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 29 Chenthill P 2009-01-19 06:59:48 UTC
The patch looks good. Would it be better to have it as a B&A reminder plugin ? Please announce the string changes and commit the patches. We have the feature freeze starting today. So please commit the patch and probably we can move this a plugin later. I have not tested the patch, scanned through it and the changes looks fine.
Comment 30 André Klapper 2009-01-19 09:17:12 UTC
today is feature freeze for 2.25.
so if this does not get in today for 2.25.5 you should change the severity to != enhancement. ;-)
Comment 31 Milan Crha 2009-01-19 14:15:48 UTC
eds part committed to trunk. Committed revision 9954.
evo part committed to trunk. Committed revision 37098.

With respect to the plugin, hmm, it's too late and doesn't worth it, from my point of view.
Comment 32 Milan Crha 2009-07-09 16:51:11 UTC
*** Bug 258747 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***