[CalendarServer-users] Questions regarding delegation, attachments and time errors

[Andre LaBranche]

> On Apr 21, 2017, at 12:32 PM, Ian Baker <ibaker at 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
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