Thread

advance apologies for the shudders that an MS reference is likely to cause…

This is not a CI question, but the community rocks, so I’m hoping to tap experiences of others.  I’d like to create outlook appointments from my CI app, but my initial searching has come up empty.

Why?  My users need to have a series of reminders, and the specifics include enough frequency and business logic that a web app makes good sense.  The existing functionality of Outlook, and the fact that all my users are on the same Exchange server, make it a very good fit if I can get the appointments created.

What’s needed?  I can create a “phantom” exchange user.  I’d want my app to send a meeting request to that user.  That user can be set up to auto-accept appointments.  The appointment will be simple - a description, a date (no time), a list of other attendees, and a reminder.

What’s my problem?  I’m thinking/hoping that a correctly formatted email to the “phantom” user can accomplish my goal, but I can’t find documentation telling me how (or if it can’t be done that easily).

Any suggestions/pointers out there?  (other than the obvious solution of repurposing the Exchange server as nautical ballast)

Good luck finding your answer.  I don’t know anything about exchange, so I’m of little help here, but I’m going to move this into the lounge for you.

Have you thought about the iCal spec ? I’m currently building a soon to be launched CI app and I’m using it with success so far, except when importing the .ics feed to Google Calendar which screws up characters encoding (if anyone can help with that) but it works fine with Outlook 2007.

You can find documentation about the iCalendar specs on http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2445, and you can validate your .ics feed on http://severinghaus.org/projects/icv/. There is also basics .ics layouts on Wikipedia but I don’t have the links handy.

Here’s what I found out, just in case future searches lead other souls to this thread.

Matthieu’s references are great for creating iCal messages.  Outlook understands both iCalendar and the older vCalendar formats.  The trick in my case was that an appointment needed to already exist in order to send a message about it.  Actual creation of an appointment requires talking to the Exchange server.  Messages then reference it.

The horrific part, from the viewpoint of a PHP framework audience, is that it turns out that I’ll need to put this functionality into a Java application, so my path will be down the javaexchangeconnector.com or j-integra.intrinsyc.com/products/exchange path.  Couldn’t find viable open-source option, and didn’t care for the MS API (go figure).  Don’t fret about me, though, Java is also part of what I must do when I’m not creating new apps, which are in CI.  I’m PHP special forces that can survive behind enemy lines.

So my final word is that you need something that can talk to the exchange server, either directly, through a running instance of Outlook, or a standalone Messaging API (MAPI) client.  Once an appointment exists, and you can get the GUID of it, then you can create iCal messages that reference that appointment.

And yes, Derek was right to “relegate” this to the lounge, only because there’s not a forum called “nasty old rock that you don’t want to pick up and see crawly things under”. 🐛

And yes, Derek was right to “relegate” this to the lounge, only because there’s not a forum called “nasty old rock that you don’t want to pick up and see crawly things under”. 🐛

Oh I know we need a sub-forum with that title 😊

I know this is an old post, but I ran across it by accident.  What amazes me is that there is a large percentage of the IT community that confuse the concept of a ‘calendar’ with MS Outlook & Exchange.  A much safer way to address this sort of requirement would be to use a carrier such as Google Calendars and post to it.  Then if a user wants to access and integrate that Calendar into their local desktop software (ie. Outlook, Thunderbird, their iPhone, etc.) its up to them to install the appropriate conduit for this. 

By doing it this way, and using Google Calendar as a middle tier server, you remove the issues of alienating a vast majority of your potential user community by being only Microsoft oriented, and it sure helps to keep the iPhone users happy with this too, since they can integrate iPhone calendars with Google Calendar very easily.

Just a thought.

Myles