No way to accept invitations

[smittles]

Hi there,

I'm the support tech at a small company in Seattle. We just moved from Exchange over to Postfix and CalDAV, and we like Thunderbird for our email client for users on PCs. We have a mixed-OS house, lots of Macs, lots of PCs. Our Mac users have no problem keeping Mail.app and Ical as their clients. However, when I get an invitation from Entourage-created events, I don't have the option to accept the invitation. Is there a reliable work-around for this dilemma?

[smsmith]

What kind of dialog do you get if you double click the meeting.ics file?

[smittles]

If I double-click the meeting.ics file, I get a pop-up that asks what program I want to open it with. If I choose Thunderbird, nothing happens. If I browse around and find Sunbird.exe, it opens in a new, non-CalDAV calendar called meeting-1 (I've tried this three times, so now it's called meeting-3), and if I try to modify that event's calendar to my CalDAV calendar, then I get an error message: MODIFICATION_FAILED

If I don't change the meeting's calendar, it won't alert me via TBird+Lightning, obviously.

[smittles]

Oh, snap!

I see, also, that when I get the MODIFICATION_FAILED, it also disconnected my remote calendar.

[smittles]

Anybody else ever have anything like this happen in their calendar?

[smittles]

From iCal, it's a different story, but no less frustrating:

There's only the ability to "Add Event to Calendar", not Accept or Decline or Tentative. That's maybe due to iCal being a separate application than Mail.app, but the result is pretty debilitating.

After receiving an iCal invitation, I am given the option to add it to my calendar as an event, and then given a selection box to pick which of my calendars I want to add it to. However, when I do select the calendar, it breaks my calendars. However, opening Sunbird, I see that the event was successfully added to the CalDAV calendar, it just breaks whichever client I was using to accept the invitation.

[ssitter]

I see at least two Lightning bug reports (392465 and 437982) that could describe the Outlook issue. Check Tools > Error Console if the issue appears again and compare the error message with the bug reports.

Both bugs are fixed in current Lightning 1.0pre development builds. You could test with Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 and a Lightning 1.0pre development build if the issue still exists. (Keep in mind that both are test builds. I strongly recommend to backup your profile before testing or use a dedicated test profile.)

[consultant1027]

I'm having similar issues with CalDav and Google Calendar. (Will start a separate thread.) Just wanted to let you know it appears these types of problems are widespread.

Am I seeing things or is the last latest release of Lightning almost a year ago? Sheesh. Can I donate somewhere to speed things up and getting problems like this fixed?

[smsmith]

As I understand it, the development of Lightning is following along with the development of Tb 3, which has been slow. The latest Lightning won't install into the last release of Thunderbird, as too much has changed.

I think everyone thought Tb 3 was going to be completed a lot sooner than this. I remember reading something about splitting up or losing some of the Tb development team. I don't recall the details.

[JB101]

I'm having similar issues with CalDav and Google Calendar. (Will start a separate thread.) Just wanted to let you know it appears these types of problems are widespread.

Same problem here with CalDav and Google Calendar. ICS files are a non starter here I get the same error message as in the screenshot above and it disconnects the calendar.

Related to all this is the problem of Folder Hanging stopping IMAP email from working properly. I managed to workround this by installing Sunbird alongside Lightning - documented in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=127442&p=6643105#p6643105

[smittles]

I see at least two Lightning bug reports (392465 and 437982) that could describe the Outlook issue. Check Tools > Error Console if the issue appears again and compare the error message with the bug reports.

Both bugs are fixed in current Lightning 1.0pre development builds. You could test with Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 and a Lightning 1.0pre development build if the issue still exists. (Keep in mind that both are test builds. I strongly recommend to backup your profile before testing or use a dedicated test profile.)

Thanks much for this response. Tell me, how did you track down those bugs in Bugzilla?

Also, I'm looking around for TB 3.0b and Lightning 1.0b, but I can't find them. Where can I get these?

[ssitter]

Thunderbird 3 Beta 3: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/

Lightning 1.0pre: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/ (Warning: This is a development snapshot: It contains the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including data loss situations. In fact, it may not work at all.)

[smittles]

Thanks so much for the links. I installed Thunderbird 3 beta 1 and Lightning 1.0 b and I'm getting better results from iCal invitations. Like iCal, events auto-populate to my calendar - flawlessly. I still am not getting accept invitation requests on iCal-generated events, but I don't believe that iCal users get even that privilege. I do get an "Add Event to Calendar" button, which is somewhat the same in its intent, so I'm happier now.

Still, however, Entourage calendar-generated events error out with MODIFICATION_FAILED when I attempt to Accept an Invitation to my remote calendars. No cure for the M$ mess, yet...

Still, Thunderbird is looking ever more promising. I wish I was a better coder, or I'd help out with the project

[Evantjuh]

Having the same issues here, anyone already a solution?

Getting MODIFICATION_FAILED when a user accept a invitation. (Caldav 0.9.7, Thunderbird 3 beta 4, Lightning 1.0pre)

[helvecioguimaraes]

Hi. I'm new to the TB/Lightning game, but the other day I realized that syncing between my TB/L calendar and Google's calendar was not working due to time zone issues. It seems my TB was set to one time zone, whereas GCal was set to another, and thus they could not communicate. Once I set both to the same TZ, it started working flawlessly (with the notable exception that when someone invites me for an event, and I accept, the event organizer gets an email saying he or she, not me, has accepted the invitation.) Best of luck.