373761 - [Proto] Attendee invitation status is not accessible

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Calendar :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

The organizer can define the list of attendees. This list is shown either in the 'invite attendee'-dialog or in the main event dialog as hyperlink once at least a single attendee exists. Unfortunately, the organizer can't access the information regarding the individual participation status of each attendee.

Bug #361977 adds the summary view of an event. This dialog pops up in case an attendee receives an invitation, where she can change the participation status. The only missing piece of information is that the organizer can't see this information.

Comment 1

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

Attachment: patch v1

This patch implements a simple solution to this problem. Clicking on the attendee-hyperlink in the dialog shows a popup-menu with all attendees and their participation status. Selecting one of the attendees from the popup opens the mail compose window automatically filled with the mail address of this attendee.

Comment 2

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

This should also take the 0.7 train.

Comment 3

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

Attachment: patch v2

This patch allows the organizer of an event to access the participation status of each of the attendees. This was already documented at [1] a while ago but I didn't came to it until now.

I updated the patch and also added the previously missing options "Send mail to all attendees" and "Invite Attendees" (directly from the popup). I'm well aware that I'm relying on Thunderbird's services in order to actually send the mails, but I would like to add the Sunbird version in a separate bug that's not blocking the release. This patch introduces the function "SendMailTo()" in calUtils.js which would just need to talk to the system mailer in order to make this work for Sunbird.

[1] http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:SMB_Event_Dialog#13._.22Attendees.22_Hyperlink

Comment 4

[Pete Riley]

A couple of thoughts:

1) Any time that Lightning sends an email after the initial meeting invitation, it might be better to prefix the subject with "Re: " and to follow it with the same subject that was used in the original meeting invitation.  Some email clients use the "Re: " + the subject to thread messages.  This might make it easier for the attendees to organize all of the emails that are related to this meeting.

2) It would be nice if the popup also had a command to send an email to all attendees who have "tentative" status or who haven't replied to the original meeting request (but not those who already accepted or declined).  This would make it easier to quickly contact the procrastinators. :)

Of course I'll file new bug requests for these if you think that I should.

Comment 5

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Attachment: Fallen's patch v1

This patch incorporates Pete's suggestions and also allows usage of these functions from sunbird via external url loader. The system default mail client will then be used.

I do have some concerns of what happens if there are many attendees. I haven't tested, but from what I remember from nsIScrollWhatever, the small arrows show up if there are too many items. The problem that we might have, is that the menuitems below the separator will always be at the bottom. This may mean that you have to scroll down through all attendees before you can access the menu items.

Comment 6

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Attachment: Screenshot

Comment 7

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

What I forgot to mention, I moved the itip/imip strings into a separate file and put in into a common file. To be honest I only needed one string also for sunbird, but I thought it was better to keep the strings in one place.

Comment 8

[Christian Jansen]

Thanks for adding Pete's RFEs to the patch.
It looks really great.

It might be better to change the order of the items to:

Invite Attendees...
------------------------------------
Compose Mail to All Attendees...
Compose Mail to Undecided Attendees...
---------------------------------
[Status icon] Attendee A
...

This would fix the problem with long attendee lists....

Would it also be possible to turn the "Attendee Name (and e-mail)" into  mailto: hyperlinks? This would allow user to contact attendees with a single click. The Subject should also be "Re: $EVENTNAME"

Comment 9

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Attachment: Fallen's patch v3

(In reply to comment #8)
> It might be better to change the order of the items to [...]
Done, works fine. I tested with many attendees now.

> Would it also be possible to turn the "Attendee Name (and e-mail)" into 
> mailto: hyperlinks?
Works when clicking on the menu item. No hyperlink as discussed on IRC.

> The Subject should also be "Re: $EVENTNAME"
This reduces the patch size greatly, which is good. I just thought we might want to keep the original event title, but codewise I do prefer what you suggested.

I noticed that with a large number of attendees (119 in my case), trying to compose a mail to them via context item fails for sunbird. This is worth a follow up bug, since it works fine for 74 attendees. It might be related to the fact that rfc 1738 only allows one recipient in a mailto: url.


Note also that the screenshot seems to be a bit older. I called the second item "Compose Mail to Tentative Attendees", as according to the wiki specs.

Comment 10

[Christian Jansen]

Could you please add a seperator

Invite Attendees...
------------------------------------
Compose Mail to All Attendees...
Compose Mail to Undecided Attendees...
---------------------------------
[Status icon] Attendee A
...

ui-r=christian with that change. Thanks :-)

Comment 11

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

Comment on attachment 276475 [details] [diff] [review]
Fallen's patch v3

>+function sendMailToAttendees(aAttendees) {
>+    var toList = "";
>+    var item = window.calendarItem;
>+    ...
>+    // Set up the subject
>+    var emailSubject = calGetString("sun-calendar-event-dialog",
>+                                    "emailSubjectReply",
>+                                    [item.title]);
You're using 'window.calendarItem' to read the title string from. This refers to the item as it came into the dialog, before any modification took place. In order to get the current state of the item you need to write
      var item = saveItem();

Compose Mail to All Attendees...
Compose Mail to Tentative Attendees...
Invite Attendees...
---------------------------------
[Status icon] Attendee A
...

This is how the menu looks with this patch, which is different from what Chrisitian asked for. First, 'Invite Attendees' should move to the top plus a separator. Second, 'Tentative' should read 'Undecided'.

Apart from that, the patch works like a charm -> r=mickey with above comments being addressed.

Comment 12

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Ok, issues taken care of. I also fixed a missing variable declaration that caused a strict warning on the way.

Checked in on HEAD and MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH

-> FIXED

Comment 13

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

Comment on attachment 276402 [details]
Screenshot

Patch already checked in with issues from Christian's comment#10 resolved.

Comment 14

[Omar Bajraszewski]

Verified with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7pre) Gecko/20070824 Calendar/0.7pre and lightning 2007082405