Outlook 2010 .ics and a Windows Server query
By ozthekeymaster on Thursday, 12 December 2013
Posted in Pre-Sales
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Hi Geraint

Love the calendar - used it on a few small sites and it always performs brilliantly. However, they are using it as their main calendar...

We want to use it on our school site (<!-- w -->www.notleyhigh.com<!-- w -->) to publish the events from our Windows 2010 Exchange server. We have got a quick and dirty version running directly from Outlook OWA but it looks horrible and it doesn't want to work on iPads!

http://mail.notleyhigh.com/owa/calendar ... endar.html

So...a few questions before I go hassle the finance office for an order

A) I have exactly the same issue as this person on the forum in that Outlook sets the Timezone to GMT Standard and I have to hack it to change all the times to Europe/London.

<!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.jevents.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=11992&p=58895&hilit=gmt+standard#p58895]viewtopic.php?f=29&t=11992&p=58895&hilit=gmt+standard#p58895[/url]<!-- l -->

If we pay for JEvents is there a fix so that we can import the ICS file directly?

B) Given that we use Windows Servers exclusively (IIS7) how can we automate the periodic importing of the ICS file?

C) We have had a problem in 3.1.14 Where the options to choose the type of calendar disappear (see attached file) so you can't reimport any events. Is this a known bug?

Thanks Geraint - hope to here from you so we can get Gold Club membership sorted asap.
viewtopic.php?f=29&t=11992&p=58895&hilit=gmt+standard#p58895[/url]<!-- l -->

If we pay for JEvents is there a fix so that we can import the ICS file directly?

B) Given that we use Windows Servers exclusively (IIS7) how can we automate the periodic importing of the ICS file?

C) We have had a problem in 3.1.14 Where the options to choose the type of calendar disappear (see attached file) so you can't reimport any events. Is this a known bug?

Thanks Geraint - hope to here from you so we can get Gold Club membership sorted asap.

A. Its easy to add a mapping for non-standard timezones used by Outlook - but it sounds as though want something different. That the server is set to GMT but you want to treat that as Europe/London (with BST etc.). Is that right?

B. You can create scheduled tasks in windows and write a VB script to be run to load the web page - or use a 3rd party cronjob service (many offer a free basic service)

C. You can't reimport from a file - this is a one off process. If you want to reimport you should use a URL based calendar and put the file on a server using FTP
geraint
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11 years ago
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Hi Geraint

Thanks for the reply.

A) I think that's right .The server writes all the times in the ICS file as GMT Standard and if I search/replace them to Europe/London it imports fine. That won't be a problem then?

B) Would you help us write the VB Script (I know - I'm stupid) if we buy Gold membership :-)

C) Ah ok sorry told you I was being stupid.
ozthekeymaster
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11 years ago
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Hi Geraint

Thanks for the reply.

A) I think that's right .The server writes all the times in the ICS file as GMT Standard and if I search/replace them to Europe/London it imports fine. That won't be a problem then?

Can you change the timezone in Outlook itself to Europe/London?

B) Would you help us write the VB Script (I know - I'm stupid) if we buy Gold membership :-)

There is a topic on this with such a script in the silver/gold member forum which I can hopefully help you with.

C) Ah ok sorry told you I was being stupid.

Nothing of the sort - its probably not documented anywhere (which is our fault).
geraint
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11 years ago
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A) Nope sorry - it's a Windows Server. Europe/London isn't an option.

B) Oh good :-)

C) Thanks :-)
ozthekeymaster
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11 years ago
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Hi Geraint.

I've bought a Gold subscription :-)

Could you please let me know how best to get this to work with our Windows server?

Thanks

Chris Rowe
ozthekeymaster
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11 years ago
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AHA! Poked about the forum and found the answer: (for anyone with same issue...)
edit components\com_jevents\libraries\iCalImport.php
add a line in at around line 680
$wtzdata["GMT Standard Time"] = "Europe/London";
where the first bit (GMT Standard Time) is your Windows Timezone and the second (Europe/London) is the one you want it mapped to.
Save ...done!

So....now you mentioned you could give me a clue on a vbscript file to automatically update this periodically.....Er...Help? Please?

:-)
ozthekeymaster
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11 years ago
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GMT Standard should probably be mapped to UTC and not to Europe/London - can you confirm this with an event that starts during summer time,

We'll add this to the next release of JEvents so that this timezone mapping is preserved for the future
geraint
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11 years ago
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GMT Standard should probably be mapped to UTC and not to Europe/London - can you confirm this with an event that starts during summer time,

We'll add this to the next release of JEvents so that this timezone mapping is preserved for the future


Cheers Geraint. I've checked the times of a few events both before and after British Summer Time starts and they look ok. However, I'll take your advice and map it to UTC
ozthekeymaster
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11 years ago
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