Open Bug 1758438 Opened 3 years ago Updated 7 months ago

URLs stripped from MS Teams-created events in Google calendars

Categories

(Calendar :: Provider: CalDAV, defect, P2)

Thunderbird 98

Tracking

(thunderbird_esr115 wontfix)

Tracking Status
thunderbird_esr115 --- wontfix

People

(Reporter: lohner, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: testcase-wanted, triaged, Whiteboard: [parity-outlook])

Attachments

(3 files)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:97.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/97.0

Steps to reproduce:

Following Bug 1727061 being closed, it appears that HTML links are now being stored in google calendars. The problem is that they are not displayed to be clicked on in the event in TB. Using TB98b3 currently.

  • receive email with MS teams invitation
  • accept into google calendar

Actual results:

  • open event via "details" button in event mail or double click on the event itself
  • see text only without any links to click on, and without the hyperlink text, so the meeting cannot be joined.
  • check the event on iOS and the link is shown properly, so it is definitely contained in the event description

Expected results:

  • The event should show the link, preferably as a hyperlink
  • The event should AT LEAST show the link / complete description in text format (like the ctrl-u for emails / web pages to show the source, maybe with a "Text Only" button??) to be able to get to the link to be able to copy-paste it into a browser to join the meeting

Also:

  • Bug 1659363 is possibly a precursor / related to this bug?
  • Bug 1747233 possibly also related?
  • if anyone wants to test, please give me an email address and I can send teams invitations from outlook
Component: Untriaged → Provider: CalDAV
Product: Thunderbird → Calendar

accept into google calendar

As I mentioned in bug 1727061 comment 67, could you please describe every click you make? Please read and follow https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/reproduction_steps/ . The reason why I keep asking is that I cannot tell how you accept the invitiation, nor how exactly you view it. I need you to describe how you receive the invitiation, where exactly you click, how the button is named where you click etc. Where exactly you click (or double-click) to view it, in all variants. Please describe the exact location of every single click. Please also attach screenshots, preferably for every step. Without this information, the I cannot understand this bug.

Attached image Accept invitation on GMail —

(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #2)

accept into google calendar

As I mentioned in bug 1727061 comment 67, could you please describe every click you make? Please read and follow https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/reproduction_steps/ . The reason why I keep asking is that I cannot tell how you accept the invitiation, nor how exactly you view it. I need you to describe how you receive the invitiation, where exactly you click, how the button is named where you click etc. Where exactly you click (or double-click) to view it, in all variants. Please describe the exact location of every single click. Please also attach screenshots, preferably for every step. Without this information, the I cannot understand this bug.

Two things related to the screenshot:

  • sorry, my interface is in French.
  • I removed all sensitive data from the screenshot

The only thing to do on GMail is to click on "yes" ("oui" on the screenshot). Then Lightning automatically sync the newly added event from GMail.
As you can see on the screenshot, the links are detected by GMail. The same way, they are available from Google Calendar, but in "raw" mode: Click here to join the meeting<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/[...]>

The last step to reproduce the problem is to open details of the event via TB → two possibilities:

  • double-click the event on the right panel (calendar preview);
  • double-click the event in the calendar view of TB.
    Each way will open the details of the event, but the "description" part of the event do not display any link to join Teams.

Possible hint (?): I saw once – but didn't screened it, and cannot find it back – some HTML br tags in a description on Google Calendar interface

Hope I described the steps to reproduce with enough details. If not, do not hesitate to ask for more :)

FYI, I made another test, but without thinking of it, so without screenshots.
For reproduction, and as far as I remember, you just have to accept the invitation threw Outlook (iOS in my case). You can do it by opening the email, or just accept the invitation from the preview.

The same thing happens when you accept the invitation from Outlook application on mobile.

The simple fact to display it in TB, once it has been saved on the server, does not display the links.
Another information: the links are still available threw the Google Calendar UI

Duplicate of this bug: 1802764

I can confirm that the issue is still present in 102.5.0, 64 bits (on Fedora 36). It's difficult for me to reproduce/test because the persons sending me the invitation are my customers. I can only say that not all invitations have the issue, it seems to depend on the person who sends it, so possibly something to do with the Outlook/Teams client configuration. My workaround is to keep the original invitation because the links remain there (not in the upper foldable part, but in the lower part of the e-mail).

This bug still seems present, as I am receiving Team's invites and no link is rendering. Whereas my team mates that are using Google Calendar/Google Mail are getting the calendar entry links properly rendered. This is happening with 102.10.0 (64-bit) - Flatpak

Can you provide a sample? Save the email as .eml

I have a meeting on my calendar that was created by teams. The HTML shows in the description on gcalendar, but it's stripped in Thunderbird for some reason.

Priority: -- → P1

Maybe they changed the format? We have a test for this (added in bug 1666296)

I doubt it somehow, I think that the issue never disappeared (still there with Fedora 37, Firefox 102.10.0 (64-bit)), it's just that it appears differently depending on the person/company sending the invitation (my company is using Google Calendar, and I get Teams invitations from different customers).

I can only guess that it depends on the configuration of the person sending the invitation:

  • some invitations lose their links in Thunderbird and in Google Calendar's web view (they're the worse kind because I lose completely the ability to join the meeting if I've not somehow saved the initial invitation e-mail)
  • some invitations keep their links in Google, they just don't appear in Thunderbird
  • and sometimes, seldomly, they appear in both (so seldomly that I can't remember when I last saw it)

I haven't yet recognized a pattern to these different behaviors.

I can confirm that the issue is still present in 102.12.0, 64 bits (on Windows 11).

Maybe it happens if the invitation was accepted by using Google webmail instead of Thunderbird.

Info:
Events with a working Teams link do have an "Edit" button.
Eventes without a working Teams link don´t have an "Edit" button.

(In reply to cooperbang from comment #13)

Maybe it happens if the invitation was accepted by using Google webmail instead of Thunderbird.

I almost never accept invitations in Google, almost always in Thunderbird itself, and I have the issue anyway, also in latest Fedora version of Thunderbird (102.12.0)

I have two meetings in front of me, coming from the same company, same organization, same country, only two different people. One has links visible in Google Calendar, one hasn't, both don't show links in Thunderbird.

I've compared the source of the invitation e-mails and don't see major differences, with two exceptions so far:

  1. the Teams boilerplate is in one case in German (no links), in another case in English (links)
  2. the English version has the strange separator with asterisks and tildes *~*~[... etc ..]~* (10 asterisks, 9 tildes) I've already seen in Google Calendar invitations, the relevant links to the invitation are below this line.

Possible Workaround:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1666296

Maybe a stupid thing but when looking at the same invitation in my google calendar, all links to teams-meeting seem to be OK (after restoring the event in google cal...). Then when I edit my google cal invitation and remove the first bracket (<) just before the teams-link in google cal event and save the event, everything will be OK in Thunderbird as well. So that seem to do the trick! Of course having this automated would be great...

Some Microsoft Teams invitation links are broken in Google Web Calendar too (they have missing <br> tags).

Attached image link.png —
Attached image no_link.png —

I have same issue with Thunderbird (latest version and below) regardless of platform (either MacOS or Linux) with Teams invitations. I never see links to the meeting. There is copy-paste of invite as I see it in event's details and even in email invite and you see that all links in the Description field are lost:

Title: <event title>
Location: MSTeams
When: <date>
Organizer: user <e@mail>
Description: (multiline below)
Dear All,
To follow up on the proposal regarding the solution, we would like to invite all colleagues to attend the meeting as follow:
Topic : Discussion & demo of the solution proposal
Date-Time : Fri, 07/07 – 10.00 && 11:00 GMT+7 (Jakarta Time)

Thanks for your attention.
Br,
Rovshan

________________________________________________________________________________

Microsoft Teams meeting
Join on your computer, mobile app or room device
Click here to join the meeting
Meeting ID: xxx xxx xxx xxx
Passcode: xxxxxxxxx

Download Teams | Join on the web
Learn More | Meeting options

Attendees: <the list of attendees>

Please attach a test case (you can edit it for anonymity) as .eml

Keywords: testcase-wanted

That shows links to join for me.
Are you doing something special like not showing the content as html?

The links to join are available in the email. And visible in Google Calendar online. But not in the (automatically created) calendar event in Thunderbird. The description of the event is copied below. It looks like all the links that are included in hyperlinks but displayed as some other text (Reunión de Microsoft Teams) are only visible as plain text in the calendar, without including the link address.

--

Dear all,
As discussed in our last Steering Committee meeting, here are the scheduled monthly appointments for the meetings in July and August.

I am sending the invitations to the regular SC attendants, but if any partner would like to include anyone else as a regular attendant, please let me know.
For occasional attendance, you can forward the invitation to those you would like to attend a specific meeting.

With kind regards,
Laura

Laura Arnalte Mur

DECS – Departamento de Economía y Ciencias Sociales
Department of Economics and Social Sciences
Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Valencia – Spain
Tel. (+34) 96 387 70 00 Ext.: 74708

Sign up for our newsletter: https://visionary-project.eu/newsletter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/visionary_eu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/visionary-project-eu/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fvisionary-project.eu%2F


Reunión de Microsoft Teams
Únase a través de su ordenador, aplicación móvil o dispositivo de sala
Haga clic aquí para unirse a la reunión
ID de la reunión: 312 882 492 486
Código de acceso: a4dnnx
Descargar Teams | Unirse en la web
Infórmese | Opciones de reunión


For comparison, here is what the description looks like in Google Calendar:

Dear all,
As discussed in our last Steering Committee meeting, here are the scheduled monthly appointments for the meetings in July and August.

I am sending the invitations to the regular SC attendants, but if any partner would like to include anyone else as a regular attendant, please let me know.
For occasional attendance, you can forward the invitation to those you would like to attend a specific meeting.

With kind regards,
Laura

Laura Arnalte Mur

DECS – Departamento de Economía y Ciencias Sociales
Department of Economics and Social Sciences
Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Valencia – Spain
Tel. (+34) 96 387 70 00 Ext.: 74708

Sign up for our newsletter: https://visionary-project.eu/newsletter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/visionary_eu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/visionary-project-eu/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fvisionary-project.eu%2F


Reunión de Microsoft Teams
Únase a través de su ordenador, aplicación móvil o dispositivo de sala
Haga clic aquí para unirse a la reuniónhttps://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ODNmYjY1YWQtM2Q1My00Mjc2LTkxMmUtYzk1ZWZhOWIyYjkz%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22be4655df-ac73-401f-a7ae-198c3b72d0c6%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225921a526-fef2-4670-8f1d-466d139686dd%22%7d
ID de la reunión: 312 882 492 486
Código de acceso: a4dnnx
Descargar Teamshttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/download-app | Unirse en la webhttps://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-teams/join-a-meeting
Infórmesehttps://aka.ms/JoinTeamsMeeting | Opciones de reuniónhttps://teams.microsoft.com/meetingOptions/?organizerId=5921a526-fef2-4670-8f1d-466d139686dd&tenantId=be4655df-ac73-401f-a7ae-198c3b72d0c6&threadId=19_meeting_ODNmYjY1YWQtM2Q1My00Mjc2LTkxMmUtYzk1ZWZhOWIyYjkz@thread.v2&messageId=0&language=es-ES


The issue here is that Teams puts out links in their invites in a form something like the following:

Click here to join<https://teams.microsoft.com/foo-bar-baz>

When Google Calendar sends us an event description, it includes HTML tags in a manner that doesn't comply with the iCalendar spec and also will include URLs as plaintext that it will render as links in its interface. In order to try to match the display of event descriptions in their interface, we do some parsing of the HTML and search for URLs (see https://searchfox.org/comm-central/source/calendar/base/modules/utils/calViewUtils.jsm#388), but at present that call will see <https://teams.microsoft.com/foo-bar-baz> as a bogus HTML tag and strip it out.

Summary: MS Teams invitation description displayed without hyperlinks in event → URLs stripped from MS Teams-created events in Google calendars

Thunderbird 115 also is affected by this bug.

Hey Sean, that's a great angle how to fix the bug. Thank you for the analysis and the great idea.

There's another angle:

When Google Calendar sends us an event description, it includes HTML tags in a manner that doesn't comply with the iCalendar spec

One way would be to add special code to Google Calendar and to get the HTML description that Google sends us, in their custom format, and to also send it back to Google in the same format. Basically convert between Google's way to set HTML description, and our standard-conforming way, and to do the conversion at the point where we're talking to the Google Calendar server. That would isolate the rest of the code from it. It would also mean that we can exchange HTML descriptions with Google calendar.

It would be good to fix this bug in both ways, i.e. 2 fixes.

I'm not sure how far it is related but a colleague managed to create a Google Event which shows a similar behavior:

  • the event is a series created before I was added to it
  • the invitation text is "rich" with a bullet list and named links (a la <a href="https://example.com">text not looking like an URL</a>)
  • the links have disappeared from the Google Calendar and Thunderbird (only the names remain)
  • but when I get a meeting reminder and open the series, the links are there (they're not there if I open the individual invitation)

I wasn't able though to recreate the behavior between my private and working accounts (but, writing these lines, I realize that I might not have tested properly the series aspect).

NOTE: a workaround on how to open the series (and get access to the links) without having a reminder at hand would be appreciated.

Severity: -- → S4
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Keywords: triaged
Priority: P1 → P2

Confirming this is still happening in 115.8.1

This is a deal breaker and is preventing me from moving off of outlook. Many of my clients send me teams meetings and I cannot just use Thunderbird to accept all invites and sometimes need to use my mobile email to add it to my calendar there. Once it is in google calendar first, the sync removes the links when brought down to Thunderbird.

Subscribing and hoping for a quick fix. Would love to trash Outlook!

Whiteboard: [parity-outlook]

Can you attach a sample as .eml?
Feel free to forward me one as attachment as well.

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #32)

Can you attach a sample as .eml?
Feel free to forward me one as attachment as well.

I'm not sure what that would show you. When an email comes in to TB from my email server the links are there and get added to my calendar without issue if I accept the meeting in TB.

The issue is when I get the same email on my mobile for example and accept there where the invite is dropped into the same google calendar. If I open the calendar item in google calendar app (web or mobile doesn't matter) the links are there. When I next open TB and open the same event in TB, the links are not there and only the link text is still there like in the examples above from other users.

If there is a way for me to export or get you a copy of a calendar event that was brought into TB in the method giving me the issue, please let me know step by step as I am new to TB and don't know all of the workflows for exporting or sharing things in this app yet.

Thanks!

You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.

Attachment

General

Creator:
Created:
Updated:
Size: