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I am writing an application that will send out .ics files to be interpreted mainly by outlook. When my applications sends an update, it will successfully update everyone's calendar except for the organizer's calendar. I'm using the same UID and I'm incrementing SEQUENCE each time. Is there anything else that I'm missing in my ICS file or does it not update my calendar because I am the organizer?

Below is an example of the ics code that we're using:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook 16.0 MIMEDIR//EN VERSION:2.0 METHOD:REQUEST X-MS-OLK-FORCEINSPECTOROPEN:TRUE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Eastern Standard Time BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:16011104T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=11 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:16010311T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=2SU;BYMONTH=3 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT ATTENDEE;CN='test';RSVP=TRUE:mailto:test@testing.com ATTENDEE;CN='attendee';RSVP=TRUE:mailto:attendee@attendees.com CLASS:PUBLIC CREATED:20180628T182531Z DTSTART;TZID=Eastern Standard Time:20180630T141500 DTEND;TZID=Eastern Standard Time:20180630T160000 DTSTAMP:20180628T182531Z LAST-MODIFIED:20180628T182531Z LOCATION:some place ORGANIZER;CN=Conference Room Board:mailto:test@testing.com PRIORITY:5 SEQUENCE:1 SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-us:test TRANSP:OPAQUE UID:SomeUniqueUID CREATED:20180628T182531Z DESCRIPTION:Test X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1 X-MICROSOFT-DISALLOW-COUNTER:FALSE X-MS-OLK-AUTOFILLLOCATION:TRUE X-MS-OLK-CONFTYPE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR

Thanks for any help!

Bjellesma
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  • A quick bit of googling indicates that this is quite probably a known Outlook bug. Here's one such post withut resolution https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook-mso_windows8-mso_2010/outlook-calendar-not-updating-for-meeting/017dc719-9209-4394-9a6f-728353228a61 perhaps outlook assumes only the organiser would be doing updates? – anmari Jun 29 '18 at 00:43
  • After more research, I think that it is an outlook issue. When you normally try to send a meeting request in outlook, you can click and drag the meeting on your calendar and then send an update to all of the attendees. Sending the update appears to be working but it seems that the problem is trying to replicate that first action of "click and drag" through a third party program. Any ideas on that? – Bjellesma Jun 29 '18 at 19:14

2 Answers2

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This is expected. As the organiser, your client assumes that only itself is in control of invitation. As such it ignores invitations sent by other parties. You may want to make the organiser also an ATTENDEE but there is no guarantee that this will work.

See Change event description for organizer using VCalendar and When creating an iCal event on behalf of an organizer and email it to him, no "Add to calendar" or "RSVP" wrappers appear

Arnaud Quillaud
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So, you guys are correct and this is expected behavior. I tried adding the organiser as an attendee and ended up running into problems when I tried to create an event cancellation. The organiser would receive the email but be unable to remove from calendar because they were recognized as the organizer.

I ended up abandoning using ICS files and instead started using a library that communicates through Exchange Web Services. EWS allowed me to simulate creating a meeting on someone's calendar through an API and then adding attendees just like I created the meeting in Outlook. Specifically, I was using python so I started using Exchangelib.

I wanted to put an answer to this question for anyone else that may stumble upon this.

Bjellesma
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