3. iCalendar Testing

Two vendors tested their applications against each other and other servers that would accept iCalendar objects. These were some of the findings. What is shown is the specific test and observations for each test.

Send a meeting invitation

• There is a problem with reading MIME messages sent from one of the servers.

Accept a meeting invitation

• Issue where Accepts are showing as Tentative (likely related to above mismatch bugs)

• One vendor will investigate incorrect assumptions on name match

• Acceptances do not reliably get delivered

• The entire body shows in accept comments

Cancel a Meeting Invitation

• Not bumping the sequence on cancel

• One vendor will consider not requiring SEQUENCE to be bumped

• Updating the subject only — possibly related to sequence bump (retest)

• Viewing the cancel causing duplicates

Send an invite with Rich Text

• Not honoring ALTREP or sending any rich text.

• Displaying rich text in invite, not in calendar.

• Putting HTML directly in description rather than in an ALTREP.

Send an invite with attachments

• Putting inline attachments that can’t be handled

• Attachments show in mail only and not in calendar

Update a meeting invitation

• Bumping the sequence number and forcing another vendor to accept.

Reschedule the original meeting invitation

• Not clearing invitee status on reschedule

Decline a meeting invitation

• Not sending RSVP thus causing lost responses

Create a meeting with required and optional Participants

• Not correlating the message.

• Showing CC users as To users, but without data loss

Create a repeating monthly by date

• Bug for monthly on first thurs until 1/2/09 — last instance missing

• Not handling multiple by date entries

Create a repeating monthly by day

• Not working when multiple days are selected

• Not implementing second day

• Not handling multiple by day entries

Create a repeating monthly event from end

• Error with end of month iCalendar.

• Writing bad iCalendar

Create a repeating yearly

• Not honoring DTSTART that doesn’t match RRULE. DTEND is also wrong (early).

Create a repeating RDATE meeting

• Not supporting or understanding RRULE

• Not supporting RDATEs

Repeats with no end date

• Sending a response for all even though it truncates the set to some finite value

Repeat every other…​

• Failing for every other year

Test until (daily)

• Not including time on the date

• Not showing last instance

• Time on the until is not before the instance — still puts it on the calendar.

Create a repeating daily invite

• Duplicate entries upon acceptance (not reproducible)

Update the invite (all instances)

• Not supporting RDATEs

• Deleting the existing meeting (and invite) and recreating a new invite since it does not handle RRULE updates

Reschedule the invite (all instances)

• Showing as accepted despite not receiving an updated acceptance

Cancel the invite (all instances)

• Not bumping sequence — also RDATEs

• Not bumping sequence number on cancel

Update one instance, then series

• Not supporting series update (RDATEs?)

• Fail when working on messages with multiple VEVENTs

• Not interpreted — Does One vendor need to put the RDATE?

Cancel a single instance

• Pass but last char of subject is truncated

• Not interpreted — Does One vendor need to put the RDATE?

• Doesn’t bump sequence

• Does not bump sequence number on cancel

• Only updating subject line — possibly related to a bug

• Only updating subject line — possibly related to a bug

Reschedule a single instance

• Does not bump sequence number

Update a single instance

• Not interpreted — Does One vendor need to put the RDATE?

Accept the updated single instance

• Not handling exception instances

Counter a single date

• Could not correlate the message,

Cancel this and all future instances

• Not supporting RDATEs

• Bug preventing RDATEs from working

Reschedule meeting and all future instances

• Not sending cancel when it splits, which causes duplicates

Remove an attendee from a simple meeting

• Does not bump sequence

• Chair does not work

Add an attendee to a series

• Does not handle RDATEs

Create a meeting with Reminders — one for 5mins, one for 10 mins

• Alarms are not preserved for anyone

Items not supported by several applications:

• Counter all dates

• Counter for this and all future instances

• Accept the counter for this and all future instances

• Counter a meeting invitation

• Counter a single date

• Counter all dates

• Accept a meeting invitation counter

• Accept the countered single date

A summary of significant interoperability issues is as follows:

1. Needs to handle VCALENDARs with multiple VEVENTs — this results in very ugly behavior and result in severe data loss.

2. Needs to increment SEQUENCE on cancellations to comply with the standard to unblock cancellation tests.

3. Revisit handling of RRULE updates — current method does not lose data but is a very brute force method. Is there a better way?

4. RDATEs are not supported: This causes severe data loss on some (rare) invites and also on multiple instance updates, which are very common.

5. Rich body content is not supported in either direction.

6. Must fix the reliability of responses as these seem to intermittently not be sent (bug).

7. Fix bug with RDATE format. This should be working but is not. Fixing this will unblock a large number of tests.

8. Attachments and rich body content come in but do not make it to a calendar.

9. Counterproposals are not currently supported.

10. Not handling nested multipart/mixed MIME sections.

11. The MIME structure needs to be revisited to allow iCalendar data to be represented as workflow rather than as an attachment. This does not block tests but is ugly and annoying.

12. RDATEs are not supported: This causes severe data loss on some (rare) invites and also on multiple instance updates, which are very common.

13. Counterproposals are not currently supported.

14. Meeting modifications to a single instance is not yet supported.

15. Intermittent problem where meetings get duplicated