[SOLVED] create new appointment using email?

[glenndm]

Hi there,

is it possible to send a (special crafted) email message to a mailbox where, upon retrieval, an appointment is automatically created in its calendar? (given of course, the sender has appropriate rights)
This is part of the functionality of "net folders" in outlook 2000 (before service packs destroyed it and it was dropped in later versions)

regards
glenn

[Chewie71]

I think you just need to create a correctly formatted .ics file as an attachment and send it. A very basic file would look like this...

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20080718T130000Z
DTEND:20080718T140000Z
SUMMARY:Test
LOCATION:My Office
DESCRIPTION:Some Description Goes Here
PRIORITY:3
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Google for iCalendar Formatting and you'll find all sorts of other options you can throw in there for timezones, recurrence, whatever.

Or even better...you can create the sample in your Zimbra calendar exactly the way you want it to appear to the end user, export your calendar to ICS, and look at the raw iCalendar data. Wrap the event in VEVENT and VCALENDAR ics tags and send it as an attachment...should work fine.

Matt

[Chewie71]

Just thought....that won't automatically create the appointment in their calendar unless they accept it, though it may create a "tentative" appointment until the click accept/deny.

To automatically add an appointment you could do it from the command line with 'zmmailbox importURLIntoFolder(iuif)' and pass it an ICS file as a parameter instead of a URL. I think that works...someone else will have to correct me if I'm wrong.

Matt

[glenndm]

Hi Matt,
thanks for your suggestion. I'll read up on the ics format.
automatic creation would have been nice. but then again, if the user has accept/deny the appointment, they sure are aware of it.

-modifiying zimbra will have to wait till I'm more comfortable with the standard product. (I'm still weening off outlook). But it's something on the todolist.

glenn