RE: Outlook 2007 does not display ACCEPT|DECLINE buttons with an ICAL

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For those of us that are not so technically adept, can you please explain
further:

Does the sender have to attach this information to their message so that the
Outlook recipient will be able to properly accept? If so, how does this code
get attached, as a *.txt file?

I am really hoping that you can dumb this down for me!

Thanks

"francesco" wrote:

Dear All,

I developed an application to send meeting invitation using iCAL 2.0
protocol. The code is sent both in a proper body-section with
ContentType("text/calendar") and as attachment (.ics).

Once the receiver opens the email, the emai client evaluates such a
body-section and displays all the data properly as a normal meeting request
(showing the ACCEPT | TENTATIVE | DECLINE buttons).
This works with: Gmail, Thunderbird and Outlook 2003.
In Outlook 2007 the email is received as normal message. Only opening the
..ics attachment it then displayes (in the new window) the buttons.

How should I edit my code in order to be able to display directly the
buttons in OE2007?

Here the code for creating the iCAL invitation:

string Content = "";
Content += "BEGIN:VCALENDAR\r\n";
Content += "PRODID:Microsoft CDO for Microsoft Exchange\r\n";
Content += "VERSION:2.0\r\n";
Content += "METHOD:REQUEST\r\n";
Content += "BEGIN:VEVENT\r\n";
Content +=
"ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=TRUE:MAILTO:"; +
person.eMail + "\r\n";
Content += "ORGANIZER:MAILTO:"; + Organizer.eMail + "\r\n";
Content += "DTSTART:" + this.GetDateTime(this.Start) + "\r\n";
//LOCAL TIME
Content += "DTEND:" + this.GetDateTime(this.End) + "\r\n";
//LOCAL TIME
Content += "LOCATION:" + this.Location + "\r\n";
Content += "DTSTAMP:" + this.GetDateTime(DateTime.Now) + "\r\n";
Content += "UID:" + this.UID + "\r\n";
Content += "CREATED: " + this.GetDateTime(DateTime.Now) +
"\r\n";
Content += "SEQUENCE:0\r\n"; //Keeps track if the iCAL is
modified
Content += "LAST-MODIFIED: " + this.GetDateTime(DateTime.Now) +
"\r\n";
Content += "PRIORITY:5\r\n";
Content += "X-MICROSOFT-CDO-TZID:11\r\n";
Content += "STATUS:CONFIRMED\r\n";
Content += "TRANSP:OPAQUE\r\n";
Content += "DESCRIPTION:" + this.Description.Replace("\r\n",
"\\n") + "\r\n";
Content += "SUMMARY:" + this.Summary + "\r\n";
Content += "X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY";
Content += "X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1";
Content += "X-MICROSOFT-DISALLOW-COUNTER:TRUE";
Content += "X-MS-OLK-ALLOWEXTERNCHECK:TRUE";
Content += "X-MS-OLK-AUTOFILLLOCATION:TRUE";
Content += "X-MS-OLK-CONFTYPE:0";
Content += "X-MS-OLK-FORCEINSPECTOROPEN:TRUE\r\n";
Content += "BEGIN:VALARM\r\n";
Content += "ACTION:DISPLAY\r\n";
Content += "DESCRIPTION:REMINDER\r\n";
Content += "TRIGGER:-PT15M\r\n";
Content += "END:VALARM\r\n";
Content += "END:VEVENT\r\n";
Content += "END:VCALENDAR\r\n";


And here the main part of the class sending the email:

MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
string tempFilePath = "";
string Body = this.CreateBody(ToEMail);
string Subject = this.CreateSubject(ToEMail);

message.Sender = new MailAddress(this.FromEMail, "");
message.From = new MailAddress(this.ReplyEMail, this.FromName);
message.To.Add(new MailAddress(ToEMail));
message.Body = Body;
message.Subject = this.CreateSubject(ToEMail);
message.IsBodyHtml = true;

if (this._Calendar != null)
{
this.Calendar.Description = Body
string attachmentCode = this.Calendar.GetICalendarText();

/*Setting content type */
ContentType calendarType = new ContentType("text/calendar");
calendarType.Parameters.Add("method", "REQUEST");
calendarType.CharSet = "utf-8";

int randNum = new Random().Next(100);
string meetingFileName = "meetingInvitation"+randNum+".ics";
tempFilePath =
HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath
+ "/Temp/" + meetingFileName);

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(attachmentCode))
{
StreamWriter tw = new StreamWriter(tempFilePath);
tw.WriteLine(attachmentCode);
tw.Dispose();
tw.Close();

if (File.Exists(tempFilePath))
{
/*Creating the attachment*/
Attachment item = new Attachment(tempFilePath,
MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet);
item.TransferEncoding = TransferEncoding.SevenBit;
calendarType.Parameters.Add("name",
""+meetingFileName+"");
ContentDisposition disp = item.ContentDisposition;
disp.CreationDate =
System.IO.File.GetCreationTime(tempFilePath);
disp.ModificationDate =
System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(tempFilePath);
disp.DispositionType =
DispositionTypeNames.Attachment;

message.Attachments.Add(item);
}
}

/*Creating the alternative view for the meeting invitation*/
AlternateView calendarView =
AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(attachmentCode, calendarType);
message.AlternateViews.Add(calendarView);
}

smtp.Send(message);


Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

Regards,
Francesco


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