On Apr 21, 2017, at 12:32 PM, Ian Baker <ibaker@eem.ca> wrote:
Hello,
I have 4 questions. If any are better directed elsewhere, please let me know.
Some background. We are a small consulting firm using Server.app v5.2 and its associated WebCal client. All of our users are running El Cap or better and also use Calendar.app. We also make use of delegation to provide other employees access to our calendars.
1) At the top of the WebCal interface there is a popup that permits full display of the calendars that we have delegated access to. We’ve found this a very useful feature and wonder if there is some way to do the same using the Mac Calendar.app client? If not, is there any other way to provide full calendar display of delegated calendars
In Calendar.app, the 'Window' menu should contain entries for all of the accounts for which the current user has delegate access. Choosing one should open that calendar in a separate window. To make delegate calendars appear in-line with the user's calendars, select the CalDAV account in Calendar preferences, and use the checkboxes in the 'delegation' tab.
2) I have one user (the boss of course ;-)) who has delegated read access to all employees. When trying to use the aforementioned popup menu in the WebCal interface to display his calendar we get the “Getting events from server…” panel, but it never completes. No problem accessing other user’s calendars. How would one debug, and hopefully fix, this issue? His calendar is very busy! Creating an event and inviting the boss does present his busy/free times without issue.
Hard to say what might be wrong. It could be stuck, or it could just be taking a long time. The CalendarServer logs should be somewhat useful here; they are in /Library/Server/Calendar & Contacts/Logs - specifically access.log and error.log. You could also use the web developer console in the browser to look for javascript errors (the webcal client is implemented in javascript).
3) We recently hired some PC user types who are pushing us to move to Outlook and Exchange for the simple reason that they want to be able to add attachments to meeting invitations, e.g. meeting agenda. Apparently Outlook/Exchange can do this. Is this possible using Mac’s Calendar.app and/or the WebCal client?
Attachments are supported in Calendar.app. Select an event, click "Attachments", then "Add attachment". Attachments are not supported in the web client.
4) We’ve had some reports of inbound meeting invitations from Exchange servers having wrong times (e.g. one hour off). How can we determine what the cause of this time shift might be? I’m assuming that the time zone of the calendar server is taken directly from the OS, and that this is not the source of the occasional error.
Ah, timezones. There are at least a few common causes of this problem. Often times, comparing the event received from Exchange with one generated by Calendar is all that's needed to reveal the salient difference. To do this, you can drag an event from Calendar to the desktop to reveal the ics file, then open that file in a text editor. The iCalendar body might look something like shown below. I've highlighted in red portions that are especially relevant: the VTIMEZONE component, which describes the client's understanding of time zones with respect to things like daylight savings time, and also the DTSTART and DTEND properties in the VEVENT component, which defines the starting and ending time stamp for the event *including time zone specification*. BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Apple Inc.//Mac OS X 10.12.5//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU DTSTART:20070311T020000 TZNAME:PDT TZOFFSETTO:-0700 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU DTSTART:20071104T020000 TZNAME:PST TZOFFSETTO:-0800 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT CREATED:20170421T193938Z UID:37F10F60-55D5-4631-8810-F86DA2DFA9DB DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20170421T114500 TRANSP:OPAQUE X-APPLE-TRAVEL-ADVISORY-BEHAVIOR:AUTOMATIC SUMMARY:New Event DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20170421T110000 DTSTAMP:20170421T193938Z SEQUENCE:0 BEGIN:VALARM X-WR-ALARMUID:50C22A83-4512-4888-9194-7E3E600206AF UID:50C22A83-4512-4888-9194-7E3E600206AF TRIGGER:-PT5M X-APPLE-DEFAULT-ALARM:TRUE ATTACH;VALUE=URI:Basso ACTION:AUDIO END:VALARM END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR Hope this helps, -dre