TechNet iCalendar Reminders…

Dan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:45:00 +0000

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>\nHEAD>\n<BODY>\n\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>\nP>\n\n<P><FO
    NT SIZE=2>Event Code: 1032396521FONT>\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: 1/27/2009FONT>\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: 1/27/2009FONT>\n\n<BR><FONT SIZE=2>End Time: 10:30 AM (GM
    T-08:00) Pacific Time (US &\; Canada)FONT>\nP>\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=4A
    >. We look forward to seeing you at the Event!FONT>P>\n\nBODY>\nHT
    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?

At a minimum, remember to signup for the event to hear Spence on SharePoint

MSDN Webcast ICS
Outlook 2007 MSDN Webcast iCalendar ICS file

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WSSv2: Photo Library Pet Peeve

Dan — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:46:30 +0000

I give Microsoft credit for having developed a highly usable framework for the Windows SharePoint Services v2 platform, however I do have to say that they left a lot of room for improvement between v2 and the newly released v3 (which is highly improved in many aspects).

For those who have not yet upgraded, I do have to say that one pet peeve of the v2 platform for me at least, is the Photo Library and its inability to mass edit metadata stored in the Photo Library. For instance, if you were to create a photo library and dump a few hundred images in via “Upload Multiple Files”, for any custom metadata column you have added to the photo library, it selects the default and appends that to the newly uploaded images. This is the common and expected behaviour, however, one would think that similarly to a document library you would have the capability to edit in a datasheet view quickly the information pertaining to the photos, but unfortunately no such capability exists.

Anyone have a workaround solution of any sort for this sort of mass editing?

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TechNet iCalendar Reminders…

WSSv2: Photo Library Pet Peeve