How to define vcalendar to let me edit attendees in Outlook?

[Dave Caughey]

We produce an audio conference server. We'd like to be able to allow
users schedule conference calls, but feel that that kind of activity is
best left to each user's favourite calendaring application (eg.,
Outlook).

Our idea was to let me (as a user) go the conference server web GUI,
pick a time for a conference call using my bridge number, and our
server would simply send me the meeting details (including subject,
dial-in details, bridge, PIN, etc.) bundled as the description of a
vcalendar event, which I could then drop into my Outlook calendar.

From there, I would be free to invite anyone I want from my existing

contact list, change the details, make it recurring, update times,
etc., and Outlook would take care of sending out updates and reminders,
etc.

We've had no problem generating meeting requests that are correctly
intepreted by Outlook, however, once in my calendar, the meetings can't
be edited... More, specifically, the "Add others" ability in the
"Scheduling" tab is disabled. It would appear that Outlook doesn't
make me the organizer, even if the vcalendar "ORGANIZER" field matches
my own address.

Is there some way I can configure a vcalendar such that I can
subsequently invite people to the resultant calendar entry in Outlook?

Note, we can't assume that a user is behind exchange... the only
identifier we have is an email address.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Dave Caughey]

For those of you who care, I did some more playing, and found:

1. Specifying "METHODUBLISH" rather than "METHOD:REQUEST" will allow
you modify the conference (specifically, add attendees).

2. Specifying "METHODUBLISH" has the unfortunate side effect on the
resultant email causing it to just exist as a meeting in your Inbox,
without an obvious way to add it to your calendar!... (Save just saves
it back into your Inbox, yet you can't drag & drop the Inbox item to
your calendar).

3. But ultimately, sending out an email in response to a button click
is a really awkward way to accomplish my goal. A much simpler solution
is to have the button click point to a server that dumps the vcalendar
(with type "text/calendar"). The browser then causes outlook to be
opened, and a "Save & Close" adds it to your calendar. This works with
both Outlook and Firefox, and further appears to work well with the
Google Calendar plugin for Firefox.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Popovic.Sasa]

Thank you Dave Caughey,

This was very helpful.

Regards,
Sasa