CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vbaoutlookicalendaroutlook-2010
James Lee
James Lee

Reputation: 45

How can I be notified of responses to a .ics file attached to an email?

If I attach an iCalendar file to an email, not a meeting or appointment but as an email with an attachment, is there any way I can be notified of responses/acceptances?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2501

Answers (1)

Cody A. Ray
Cody A. Ray

Reputation: 6027

Maybe. iCalendar is a file format that is opened by another program (such as Google Calendar, iCal, etc) which processes the file.

For example, this could be the contents of the file:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//hacksw/handcal//NONSGML v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:[email protected]
DTSTAMP:19970714T170000Z
ORGANIZER;CN=John Doe:MAILTO:[email protected]
DTSTART:19970714T170000Z
DTEND:19970715T035959Z
SUMMARY:Bastille Day Party
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

There's no way to embed a network call directly back to another service in the file to acknowledge acceptance of the iCalendar invite, like you embed <img/> pixels in emails which call back to a server for email analytics. However, it does support multiple "Relationship Component Properties". For your purpose, the most important field seems to be "Attendee" (Section 4.8.4.1 in the spec). This section might look like:

 ORGANIZER:MAILTO:[email protected]
 ATTENDEE;MEMBER="MAILTO:[email protected]":
  MAILTO:[email protected]
 ATTENDEE;DELEGATED-FROM="MAILTO:[email protected]":
  MAILTO:[email protected]

However, I believe its up to the client (like iCal) to parse the information out and use it for notifying of acceptances. So you may get notifications of acceptances from some people but not others, depending on their calendar client of choice.

Upvotes: 1

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