1742101 - Opening a calendar invitation no longer shows time, date, location etc.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

As described by https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/enterprise/T0661b5915a2d00e8-M43050dbf43c83726521bb141/expand-calendar-event-details-by-default

Reproduction:

• Somebody else invites you to a meeting from MS Exchange / MS Outlook (e.g. a MS Teams meeting), and sends you an invite.
• You open the invite in Thunderbird

Previous result, in older Thunderbird 68 (and TB 91.0?):

• You see the calendar invitiation, with time, date, participants, and a plaintext-only description.
• You have no way to see the HTML description of the event. (This was fixed in bug 760412.)

Actual result, in current 91.3.x and later:

• You see the HTML description of the event.
• You do not see the calendar invitiation, with time, date, and participants. So, you have no idea when the event is.
• There's a small black "expand" arrow, which you can click, and then you see the calendar invitation with time, location, etc.

Expected result:

• You see the HTML description of the event.
• You see the calendar invitiation, with time, date, and participants.
• (Without further interaction, settings or clicks, but by default.)

User impact:

• This is a highly visible problem for anybody who receives calendar invitations sent by Outlook/Exchange.
• Date and time of the event are part of the core information about the event, and must be easily visible, i.e. displayed without hiding them. It makes no sense to ever hide the time and date of a meeting.

Implementation notes:

• Regression: This was apparently regressed by bug 760412. In the good attempt to show the HTML description, it went too far, and was hiding the calendar event entirely.
• For a first stab implemenation, it's acceptable that you see the description as HTML, then the calendar event data like time and location, and then the description again as plaintext (duplicated). Ideally, the latter would be hidden. That might be done with a CSS style sheet, which is activated only when the HTML part exists, or similar means on the frontend. We already have frontend code to show/hide the calendar event, which could consequently be removed.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

We only collapse when HTML parts do exist. If we only get the event it's expanded from start. The issue here seems to be that we get a useless html part... which is unexpected.

Comment 2

[Richard Leger]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #1)

We only collapse when HTML parts do exist. If we only get the event it's expanded from start. The issue here seems to be that we get a useless html part... which is unexpected.

By the look of it, the HTML part received is the body content of the Outlook invite formatted in HTML which does not contain meeting info likely located elsewhere...

This is a pretty Microsoft Outlook "standard" way to send invite... so "unexpected" may not be the right term here... certainly there must be a better way to handle invite upon reception by TB to show meeting info by default in the UI... avoiding extra click and not intuitive access.

This is critical for all users and especially organisation ones that do use invite feature a lot...

May be worth checking how other email clients parse those for comparison...

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

We only collapse when HTML parts do exist.

OK, great! That should make the implementation here relatively simple: Instead of collapsing the entire calendar event, you should collapse only the plaintext description within the calendar event, so that the time and date and participants and so on stay visible.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: outlook-test-invite.eml

Comment 5

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #1)

We only collapse when HTML parts do exist. If we only get the event it's expanded from start. The issue here seems to be that we get a useless html part... which is unexpected.

Interesting.
Do we have an easy way to check if the HTML contains any event info, like for example what fastmail sends with their own "invite preview" in the body?

We have plans in motion to create a more interactive IMIP bar which will replace this invitation preview, so we can ignore the email content in the future, but maybe for now, if this issue is constantly present with outlook invites, we could consider always showing the Thunderbird invitation preview, regardless of the email content, as a temporary fix.

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

FYI, Outlook ignores the spec and sends the HTML description only in the HTML email content, whereas the calendar invitation contains only the plaintext description, which typically looks very garbled with the MS Teams URLs etc.. So, as much as I hate it, we need to show both. (But you could maybe hide plaintext description from the calendar invite, if we have a HTML email content. That's what I tried to get at in comment 3.)

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

@Magnus: Can you assign a developer to this? This is a high-profile problem for end users.

Comment 8

[brendel oliver]

perhaps as a first step the small right pointing black triangle could be changed to make it more evident that there is something clickable ?
Or : when having accepted an event, I get actually a "Details..." button in the blue window bar. If this button could be shown from the beginning (that is, before having accepted or refused the invitation), beside the buttons for "Accept" "Refuse", it would be quite clear where to click to get the information.

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

@Magnus: ping. People keep complaining about it on all fronts, and in a number of bug reports. This is highly confusing for our users, and a high profile bug. Can you please assign a developer to fix this ASAP? If done as I suggested in comment 3, this should be fairly simple to implement.

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yeah we should look into this.

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: Bug 1742101 - show the iMIP details expanded by default. r=lasana

This expands the details if any of these conditions are met:

• there is no html part, all we have is the event
• the html part is there, but doesn't appear to contain enough useful information; using text length < 70 for this.
• the user sets a pref calendar.itip.imipDetailsOpen true to always show expanded

Comment 13

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Hi Magnus, thanks for the patch.

But the heuristic with length won't work. In the invitations that I get from Exchange, the HTML part contains only the description field, not the other fields. And that description can be very long, or very short, but that has no bearing on whether the meeting time and place is included. Even very long descriptions do not contain the time.

Comment 14

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Instead, would it be possible to show all fields, and collapose only the (redundant) plaintext description, if we have an HTML description? See comment 3.

I don't think we should ever collapse the meeting time and place fields, because they are the primary information about a meeting, even more important than the description.

Comment 15

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I guess in that case, we'll just have to the the pref to show by expanded by default.

Comment 16

[Miguel J]

I also think that the meeting data should never be collapsed (except if the user really clicks to collapse it), as said in Comment 14, date and time are the most important information for an invitation.

Comment 17

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

The equivalent bug report in the Calendar component seems to be bug 1735417.

Comment 18

[pac.carlier]

Attachment: TB02.pdf

Someone asked me to provide more details with a real step by step documentation. Here it is

Comment 19

[pac.carlier]

Attachment: TB03.pdf

I came accross one case which was not good but with ZOOM (see pages 6 and 9).

• the date and time are not showing when display is in HTML but showing in text mode (ie exactly the same as Teams)
• but the link is in the calendar

See screenshots on pages 9

Comment 20

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/d003cea03301
show the iMIP details expanded by default. r=lasana

Comment 22

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Docs:

When receiving a meeting invitation the Thunderbird-generated view of the event is now shown as expanded by default. It was previously showing only a one line summary, and an arrow next to them that one could click to expand the details.
People who prefer having the details collapsed by default can set the preference calendar.itip.imipDetailsOpen to false.

Comment 23

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Ready to uplift to Monday's beta?

Comment 24

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 9259675 [details]
Bug 1742101 - show the iMIP details expanded by default. r=lasana

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): due to changes in bug 760412
User impact if declined: some users don't understand how to see the event times
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): c-c
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): Low risk.

Comment 25

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9259675 [details]
Bug 1742101 - show the iMIP details expanded by default. r=lasana

[Triage Comment]
Approved for beta

Comment 26

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Comment on attachment 9259675 [details]
Bug 1742101 - show the iMIP details expanded by default. r=lasana

There was no 97 beta 4. Merge day picked this up for 98beta.

Comment 27

[ferry.toth]

This issue was highly irritating. I would like to note that KDE's Kontact does display Teams meeting requests properly.

But my colleague just showed me that the needed information IS present in TB 91.5. It is hidden behind a little triangular fold out button.

I will upload 2 screenshots TB1.png and TB2.png right after this.

I hope the planned fixes do not break this?

Comment 28

[ferry.toth]

Attachment: Teams invitation with little fold out button.

Comment 29

[ferry.toth]

Attachment: Discard this

TB1 and TB2 are taken with TB 91.5

Comment 30

[ferry.toth]

Attachment: After clicking fold out button

TB1 and TB2 taken with Thunderbird 91.5

Comment 31

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9259675 [details]
Bug 1742101 - show the iMIP details expanded by default. r=lasana

[Triage Comment]
Approved for esr91

Thanks for the test

Comment 32

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 91.6.1:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr91/rev/3b29dbe8d6ef

Comment 35

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #2)

This is critical for all users and especially organisation ones that do use invite feature a lot...

Agreed. Richard Leger, has 91.6.1 and higher fixed this usability issue for you?

Comment 36

[Richard Leger]

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #35)

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #2)

This is critical for all users and especially organisation ones that do use invite feature a lot...

Agreed. Richard Leger, has 91.6.1 and higher fixed this usability issue for you?

It seems to.

Comment 37

[Miguel J]

I had the problem too and it is new fixed.