The prob\u00adlem du jour is one that I\u2019m sure lots of people have run into, and one in which the stand\u00adard answer is for every\u00adone to stand\u00adard\u00adize on one tool. Since I have this propensity for stand\u00adards that mean people can choose the tools they want, I don\u2019t really like that atti\u00adtude, even if I under\u00adstand the \u201cI just want to get some work done\u201d prin\u00adciple behind it.<\/p>\n
In short, I don\u2019t use Out\u00adlook. Lots of people do, and they want me to share my cal\u00aden\u00addar with them to make it easi\u00ader to book meet\u00adings. Fair enough, in this one com\u00adpany almost every\u00adone uses Out\u00adlook. I use Google cal\u00aden\u00addar, which can share in a num\u00adber of ways, and get\u00adting a basic ICS<\/span> file from point A to point B is not an issue. What is the issue is the pri\u00advacy angle, or free\/busy set\u00adtings. Since I have dif\u00adfer\u00adent cli\u00adents, and dif\u00adfer\u00adent pro\u00adjects, when I pub\u00adlish my cal\u00aden\u00addar on a site for cli\u00adent A, they should\u00adn\u2019t see the titles of the times I have booked for cli\u00adent B, or for my private appoint\u00adments. They just want to know when I have free time, any\u00adway. Should be easy, right? Just set the Google cal\u00aden\u00addar shar\u00ading options to show only free\/busy, down\u00adload the .ics file that\u2019s gen\u00ader\u00adated and upload to the appro\u00adpri\u00adate serv\u00ader, right? Wrong. Google cal\u00aden\u00addar saves free\/busy using the VFREEBUSY<\/span> com\u00adpon\u00adent. Microsoft Out\u00adlook does not import or export VFREEBUSY<\/span> com\u00adpon\u00adents<\/a>, thus when it tries to open that .ics file it throws an error. <\/p>\n I guess I could install Out\u00adlook and use Google\/Outlook syn\u00adchron\u00adisa\u00adtion, but I also have a Mac laptop and don\u2019t really feel like buy\u00ading mul\u00adtiple cop\u00adies of pro\u00adgrams just to share a cal\u00aden\u00addar. Next thought: maybe iCal on the Mac will pub\u00adlish the info cor\u00adrectly. I import the ICS<\/span> file into iCal, set it to pub\u00adlish to the web\u00addav serv\u00ader, make sure I leave off all the title and note info, only to find that what is still pub\u00adlished is the LOCATION<\/span> info, which con\u00adtains all sorts of things like who\u2019s call\u00ading whom, where the meet\u00ading is, etc. Thus it\u2019s not exactly just the free\/busy info I was look\u00ading for, des\u00adpite what the help file says.<\/p>\n At this stage I guess I\u2019m look\u00ading at pro\u00adgram\u00adming some\u00adthing to take the Google ICS<\/span> and get rid of the inform\u00ada\u00adtion I don\u2019t want pub\u00adlished. It seems a little silly that I can\u00ad\u2019t read\u00adily share a free\/busy sched\u00adule between sys\u00adtems that sup\u00adposedly are set up to allow sub\u00adscrip\u00adtions to oth\u00ader people\u2019s cal\u00aden\u00addars, so I\u2019m won\u00adder\u00ading what I\u2019m missing.<\/p>\n Update Sep 20: <\/em> hav\u00ading calmed down a bit over the week\u00adend, I looked at the ics file that Google Cal\u00aden\u00addar cre\u00adates with the free\/busy, and com\u00adpared to the usu\u00adal ics file. The solu\u00adtion is to find and replace \u201cVREEBUSY<\/span>\u201d with \u201cVEVENT<\/span>\u201d. Upload that edited .ics file to the cli\u00adent\u2019s Web\u00adDav serv\u00ader, prob\u00adlem solved. OK<\/span>, it isn\u2019t auto\u00admat\u00adic, but my appoint\u00adments don\u2019t change that fre\u00adquently. And when I have a few spare moments I\u2019ll script it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The prob\u00adlem du jour is one that I\u2019m sure lots of people have run into, and one in which the stand\u00adard answer is for every\u00adone to stand\u00adard\u00adize on one tool. Since I have this propensity for stand\u00adards that mean people can choose the tools they want, I don\u2019t really like that atti\u00adtude, even if I \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cCal\u00aden\u00addars and Sharing\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}