Please select a calendar that supports tasks

For discussing the Mozilla Calendar, Sunbird and Lightning projects.
rmbrme
Posts: 48
Joined: November 17th, 2007, 11:52 pm

Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by rmbrme »

T-bird 3.1, Lightning 1.0b2
I am running Lightning with 5 Yahoo calendars and it has been working well. One of the reasons I choose Yahoo calendar is because of the ability to sync tasks. I now receive a "Please select a calendar that supports tasks" message when trying to enter a new task and the only calendar it will let me use to enter tasks is the holiday calendar which is the only local Lightning calendar.

I haven't actually entered any new tasks for awhile, so don't know precisely when this changed, but suspect it happened when I upgraded to Lightning 1.0b2 which I had to when I upgraded to T-bird 3.1. Thoughts?
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ssitter
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Joined: October 19th, 2007, 12:24 am
Location: Germany

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by ssitter »

Lightning 1.0b2 asks CalDAV servers what features are supported by the server. If the feature (e.g. tasks) is not supported by the server it is disabled. So maybe the Yahoo server doesn't correctly announce task support?
rmbrme
Posts: 48
Joined: November 17th, 2007, 11:52 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by rmbrme »

Good to know this; I will do a bit more research. I agree that if 1.0b1 didn't ask the server or asked it in a different way thereby allowing tasks within a Yahoo calendar and posting a task to a yahoo calendar worked, it is a communication issue. I'll also attempt to see if I can get anything out of Yahoo on that (that will be interesting).

Many thanks.
wintogreen
Posts: 3891
Joined: October 31st, 2003, 8:38 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by wintogreen »

As far as I can tell, in the process of rolling out the new-and-improved beta calendar, Yahoo quietly dumped their support for tasks (which worked great with Lightning) and switched to an extremely simplified implementation of "to-dos" (which does not).

OLD tasks: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/calend ... ks-01.html
NEW to-dos: http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/cal/cal/cal_todo2.html

The to-dos are simplified to the extent that you can't even add a due date. You can still subscribe to the to-do list, but it's read-only.

Judging from the comment by "Yahoo! Calendar employee Herbert Wang" here, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for improvements in the to-do functionality:
http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?pr ... fid=113924 .

Shame, as tasks was the only thing Yahoo's calendar had going for it.
wintogreen
Posts: 3891
Joined: October 31st, 2003, 8:38 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by wintogreen »

Update: I've found that I can still write tasks to Yahoo calendar using Lightning 0.9, so what I said above about the to-do list being read-only is incorrect. (Thought I'd read it in the documentation somewhere.)
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ssitter
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Joined: October 19th, 2007, 12:24 am
Location: Germany

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by ssitter »

As mentioned above the latest Lightning 1.0b2 releases now checks what features are supported by the CalDAV server. Probably the Yahoo sever announces to support only events but not tasks.
rmbrme
Posts: 48
Joined: November 17th, 2007, 11:52 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by rmbrme »

I have contacted yahoo about 'announcing' functionality on the caldav server. Yep, what you are thinking is exactly how far I got with that! And, yes, all still works well in Lightning 0.9: events, tasks, reminders, so it is really not an issue of functionality, it is an issue with Yahoo announcing that.

I recently reviewed a Mozilla document where it was indicated by Mozilla that according to statistics, there are substantial business users of T-bird. We really need an alternative to MS Exchange and it appears there is substantial demand for T-bird fulfilling that need. The weak link is the ability to share calendars and tasks among multiple single user computers and other users in our company. Yahoo calendar was fulfilling that need and actually pretty darn well. Memotoo and Sogo are not up to speed yet with T-bird 3, so that is not a viable solution either.

Is there a chance or any discussion on Mozilla taking control of this issue with a server solution we can count on?
dlkp
Posts: 5
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 11:56 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by dlkp »

To me, this is a deal-breaker as far as upgrading to 1.0b2 goes, so after figuring out what was going on, I downgraded back to 1.0b1. Obviously, this is not a solution, but it allows me to continue using Lightning in conjunction with my Yahoo calendars to manage my tasks. If you need to do this too, here's how:
- Uninstall Lightning. None of your configuration gets lost, so you don't need to worry about this step.
- Download the older version's xpi file. For those using US English, that can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunde ... ion-1.0b1; for others, go to the Thunderbird add-on site, search for Lightning, and click the "View all versions" link way down at the bottom.
- Once you've downloaded that, rename it to be a .zip file, as in "lightning-1.0b1-tb+sm-win.zip" instead of "lightning-1.0b1-tb+sm-win.xpi".
- Using your favorite zip program, pull out "install.rdf" from that file (or edit it in place, if your program allows you to do that).
- Open that using any text editor and change the line that says "<em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>" (in the Thunderbird section) to "<em:maxVersion>3.1.*</em:maxVersion>".
- Save that file and replace the copy in the zip file.
- Rename the zip file back to its original name (e.g. lightning-1.0b1-tb+sm-win.xpi)
- Manually install that into Thunderbird.
- Clutter up your Yahoo calendars with as many tasks as your heart desires.

Like I said, this is not a true solution -- you're missing out on the benefits of the upgrade, and the Mozilla Calendar team obviously hasn't tested Lightning 1.0b1 against Thunderbird 3.1+ -- but if you need your Yahoo tasks like I do, this may be your only option.
rmbrme
Posts: 48
Joined: November 17th, 2007, 11:52 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by rmbrme »

Thanks for this information; it is valuable. Yahoo calendar is our best solution for Lightning calendaring and has been very stable for me until this arose. There is also another option and at the time, was not my first choice. We currently have two people in our organization using and evaluating Postbox via Postbox Express as we wait to see how this plays out. Lightning is working fine with Yahoo calendar, based on Lightning 0.9, and they seem to be listening concerning this issue as they too will eventually move to the more current version of Lightning when it comes out of beta.

If you are willing, we really need to get to the Mozilla Calendaring folks here http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/. It would be a shame to lose this as T-bird/Lightning/Yahoo calendar offers those of us in small business a viable option to MS Exchange. We'll see...
dlkp
Posts: 5
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 11:56 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by dlkp »

rmbrme wrote:...If you are willing, we really need to get to the Mozilla Calendaring folks ...


Actually, I think that the Mozilla people have it right, or at least they're closer to right. The real issue lies with Yahoo. I only downgraded because I'm not optimistic about getting Yahoo to change that behavior as soon as I need it changed. I did submit something to their customer care department, though; we'll see how that goes. I think the right strategy is for everybody that wants this to contact Yahoo and ask them to correct their server so that it appropriately announces its support for tasks.

The other thing to do, and I think this could be a feature request to the Mozilla Calendaring team, would be to add a configuration option that allows us to specify whether or not a calendar supports tasks. It would be a checkbox that would show up in calendar properties box, alongside "Read Only" etc., could be automatically populated by querying the server in question, but could be overridden by the user (probably with appropriate warnings about trying to use features that aren't advertised as supported).
dlkp
Posts: 5
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 11:56 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by dlkp »

Update: I got a reply back from Yahoo stating that they're escalating my inquiry. With any amount of luck, that might mean that they're escalating it to somebody that can fix it, rather than just answer it. Stay tuned ...
dlkp
Posts: 5
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 11:56 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by dlkp »

Update: Yahoo sent me two replies, which I'll paraphrase. (1) It's not really our problem; it's a problem with Lightning. (2) We don't support syncing tasks via CalDav. I wrote them back saying that it really is their problem, and that they really DO support that functionality; I just want their server to correctly advertise that they do.

So, I'm guessing that Yahoo isn't going to change this behavior any time soon, since they believe they don't support the functionality in question. Therefore, I went ahead and submitted an enhancement request to bugzilla asking for a configuration option like I mentioned above. It's bug 594085; feel free to vote on it if you agree.
pdcweb
Posts: 38
Joined: September 9th, 2010, 6:18 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by pdcweb »

It's a shame that the big guys (google, yahoo) don't support tasks properly.
Yahoo appears to be using zimbra for it's "new" calendar.

Does anybody know of a free caldav server that does support Tasks?

I tried Chandler, it does not.
wintogreen
Posts: 3891
Joined: October 31st, 2003, 8:38 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by wintogreen »

dlkp wrote:Update: Yahoo sent me two replies, which I'll paraphrase. (1) It's not really our problem; it's a problem with Lightning. (2) We don't support syncing tasks via CalDav.

Thanks for the update.

pdcweb wrote:Does anybody know of a free caldav server that does support Tasks?

Unfortunately no. But for the past few weeks, I've been using Dropbox to sync tasks between the two computers that I use regularly. So far it has worked flawlessly.
pdcweb
Posts: 38
Joined: September 9th, 2010, 6:18 pm

Re: Please select a calendar that supports tasks

Post by pdcweb »

can you explain using dropbox for this?
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