GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 601531
Cannot accept meeting invite to Google calendar
Last modified: 2009-12-09 18:19:52 UTC
Evolution 2.28.0 on Karmic Koala has trouble accepting some meeting invites to a Google calendar. Specific steps taken to reproduce: 1. Open Evolution 2. Set up a Google calendar in Evolution (Under calendar, select "new calendar" type of "Google" and enter credentials) 3. Receive a meeting invitation in Evolution. 4. In the invitation, select your Google calendar and hit "Accept" 5. Receive the error "Unable to send item to calendar '<Google calendar name>'. Authentication failed." Expected behavior: To accept the meeting request and publish the event to the Google calendar Actual behavior: Rejected due to "failed authentication." I can create a Google calendar event from Evolution outside the context of accepting a meeting invite, so the authentication should work for accepting an invite as well. Please see more on: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/434262 I can mail some problematic invites privately to a developer, provided they are not shared. The invites contain confidential information, so I cannot just attach them here.
To test further, I just tried to send a mail to my GMail account with one of the problematic .ics files and add the event to my Google Calendar from the GMail web interface. This works perfectly and makes me think that it has something to do with the way Evolution speaks to Google Calendar and not Google Calendar that does not like the .ics file. The problem exists regardless of connection method from Evolution to Google Calendar (CalDAV vs. "Google Calendar" mode)
Created attachment 148331 [details] error message
Thanks for a bug report. This is really caused by the way of Evolution talking to Google calendar, but not Evolution's fault. They are preventing adding a meeting through CalDAV when you are not the organizer (here 'you' means an email associated with Google account on their site). By the way, in 2.28.x the Google calendar is also using CalDAV internally, it only makes the setup easier, as one is not forced to know the CalDAV URL of his/her calendar. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 588858 ***
This makes sense, thanks. With this knowledge in mind, I rechecked the meeting invites that I *could* add via CalDAV and for the ones that failed. The ones that failed all had an ORGANIZER; field. The ones that work, does not and is added to Google Calendar with my GMail address as organizer. I realize this is a workaround for Google Calendar "features", but two temporary solutions come to mind: 1) Have Evolution remove the "ORGANIZER;" line from the .ics file before sending it to Google Calendar via CalDAV. This may not be 100% what we want, but it will work better than now... 2) Use http POST (or whatever the Google Calendar web interface uses) to send the .ics file to Google Calendar. This is kind of far out, I know. But creative ;-)
No, definitely not, and do not reopen this bug, please. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 588858 ***
Definately not what? There are three options, IMO: 1) Make a workaround 2) Wait for Google to change their CalDAV implementation (could be never) 3) Live with what we've got. (not an option for me) The only reason I reopened the bug was that I was afraid that my comment would otherwise not be seen - sorry if that upset you.