The other evening, I discovered that my esteemed colleague, Spencer Harbar, will be presenting a MSDN webcast on the topic of “SharePoint Products and Technologies for Internet Site Development: Content Deployment”. Upon registering, I realized that I didn’t have Outlook setup to connect to my work e-mail (rather it’s set up for my test servers on the home network) so there wasn’t an easy way to add the iCalendar reminder to my Outlook calendar that I use for work that alerts me on my BlackBerry.
Perhaps it would work on my Google Apps domain that I have setup for personal e-mail, right? Unfortunately the iCalendar file (ics format) was not readable by the Google Calendar on my first attempt. Doing a little Googling, I came across several articles that stated compatibility issues between Microsoft iCalendar reminders and other non-Microsoft iCalendar systems.
So that led me to download the iCalendar object, open it in Outlook and then save it to yet another iCalendar object, slightly reformatted which then apparently could be imported into my Google Calendar. “Huh?”
Reading through the IETF RFC 2445, I pondered whether or not Microsoft is following the proper format to provide a well formed iCalendar object. From the looks of it they are, however I’m perplexed as to why the Google Calendar is incapable of importing the object without having it reformatted through Outlook first. Is it due to the fact that it’s looking for the PRODID field which looks to be missing?
The initial iCalendar reminder form Microsoft:
BEGIN:vCalendar VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:vEvent DTSTART:20090127T173000Z DTEND:20090127T183000Z UID:1032396521 DTSTAMP:20090104T205527Z DESCRIPTION:Thank you for your interest in Microsoft Events. We w ould like to remind you of the following event: TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing, Developing, and Deploying Share Point Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300). \n\nPlease revi ew the information below.\n\nEvent Code: 1032396521\nEvent Name: TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing, Developing, an d Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300) \nStart Date: 1/27/2009\nStart Time: 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)\nEnd Date: 1/27/2009\nEnd Time: 10:30 AM (GMT- 08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)\n\nPlease click on the followin g link for more information regarding this Event https://msevents .microsoft.com/cui/r.aspx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&t=4. We look forwa rd to seeing you at the Event! SUMMARY:Live Webcast - TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: De signing, Developing, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publish ing Portals (Level 300) PRIORITY:3 BEGIN:vAlarm TRIGGER:P0DT0H15M ACTION:DISPLAY DESCRIPTION:Reminder END:vAlarm END:vEvent END:vCalendar
What I received upon exporting from Microsoft Outlook 2007:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook 12.0 MIMEDIR//EN
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-MS-OLK-FORCEINSPECTOROPEN:TRUE
BEGIN:VEVENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
CREATED:20090104T205909Z
DESCRIPTION:Thank you for your interest in Microsoft Events. We would like
to remind you of the following event: TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does
IT: Designing\, Developing\, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishi
ng Portals (Level 300). \n\nPlease review the information below.\n\nEvent
Code: 1032396521\nEvent Name: TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Desi
gning\, Developing\, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Porta
ls (Level 300)\nStart Date: 1/27/2009\nStart Time: 9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pac
ific Time (US & Canada)\nEnd Date: 1/27/2009\nEnd Time: 10:30 AM (GMT-08:0
0) Pacific Time (US & Canada)\n\nPlease click on the following link for mo
re information regarding this Event https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/r.a
spx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&t=4. We look forward to seeing you at the Event!
DTEND:20090127T183000Z
DTSTAMP:20090104T205527Z
DTSTART:20090127T173000Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090104T205909Z
PRIORITY:1
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Live Webcast - TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing\,
Developing\, and Deploying SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Leve
l 300)
TRANSP:OPAQUE
UID:1032396521
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//E
N">\n<HTML>\n<HEAD>\n<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server ve
rsion 08.00.0681.000">\n<TITLE></TITLE>\n</HEAD>\n<BODY>\n<!-- Converted f
rom text/plain format -->\n\n<P><FONT SIZE=2>Thank you for your interest i
n Microsoft Events. We would like to remind you of the following event: Te
chNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing\, Developing\, and Deployi
ng SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300). </FONT></P>\n\n<
P><FONT SIZE=2>Please review the information below.</FONT>\n</P>\n\n<P><FO
NT SIZE=2>Event Code: 1032396521</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Event Name: Te
chNet Webcast: How Microsoft Does IT: Designing\, Developing\, and Deployi
ng SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Portals (Level 300)</FONT></P>\n\n<P>
<FONT SIZE=2>Start Date: 1/27/2009</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Start Time:
9:30 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US &\; Canada)</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SI
ZE=2>End Date: 1/27/2009</FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>End Time: 10:30 AM (GM
T-08:00) Pacific Time (US &\; Canada)</FONT>\n</P>\n\n<P><FONT SIZE=2>P
lease click on the following link for more information regarding this Even
t <A HREF="https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/r.aspx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&
t=4">https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/r.aspx?r=1300308275&c=en-US&t=4</A
>. We look forward to seeing you at the Event!</FONT></P>\n\n</BODY>\n</HT
ML>
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:2
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT15M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
Is it just me or is there some variance between the two iCalendar objects? The Google iCalendar specification for formatting of an iCalendar object merely requires:
BEGIN: VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:< [enter ID information here] > (other header information goes here) BEGIN:VEVENT (event details for individual event) END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT (event details for individual event) END:VEVENT END: VCALENDAR
Any thoughts on why the variance of the objects would cause an issue for the first ICS to not be importable, but the second could be after being processed by Outlook 2007?
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MSDN Webcast ICS
Outlook 2007 MSDN Webcast iCalendar ICS file
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