Closed Bug 407961 Opened 17 years ago Closed 10 years ago

Google sends Email reminders to all non-google attendees, 24 hours before the event

Categories

(Calendar :: Provider: GData, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: Fallen, Assigned: Fallen)

References

()

Details

(Whiteboard: [depends google issue])

Attachments

(4 files, 1 obsolete file)

New bug to round up discussion from bug 400808.

Google seems to be sending an email reminder 24 hours before the given event, accepted from an outlook 2007 client.

working: http://www.barklund.org/examples/2003_invite.txt
failing: http://www.barklund.org/examples/2007_invite.txt

The VALARM components in the invites should create a popup alarm and not trigger an email.

Morten, could you also attach the XML that is sent to google when the failing event is created?

PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION should translate to the google "invited" status, which I would not say should trigger any reminders unless sendEventNotifications is enabled.

The timezone part should not do anything to the alarm. 2007 is more correct w.r.t rfc 2445.
Morten's description is exactly what I'm seeing re: reminders.

IIRC, Google said I only had popup reminders, but I was getting email reminders anyway.  I'm working on reproducing the problem again for debugging.  

Regarding calendar.debug.enabled - where do I find the output (and the XML?)
> Regarding calendar.debug.enabled - where do I find the output (and the XML?)
You will find this in the error console (tools menu).


The Email the attendees are getting, just to make sure - is this specifically a *reminder* or an *invitation* ?
Attached file Reminder email β€”
I've attached the reminder email and the ICS that was attached to it.

The original meeting was created by me, using my corporate email, in the Outlook Web client, for tomorrow (12/12). The reminder came 24 hours in advance of the meeting.
Ok, this is definitely an invitation not a reminder.

Could you give me the XML? I think this is really a google bug, with the xml I think I have all the needed peices to investigate.
I posted on the google newsgroup at [1]. When you have the XML part, I'll also add that.



[1] http://groups.google.com/group/google-calendar-help-dataapi/browse_thread/thread/70d7bb92af35455e/
(In reply to comment #2)
> > Regarding calendar.debug.enabled - where do I find the output (and the XML?)
> You will find this in the error console (tools menu).
> 

I'm getting no XML in my error console. The setting is "calendar.debug.enabled" (boolean), correct?  I've set this property and restarted, to no avail. Thanks.
Sorry, the correct pref is "calendar.debug.log" (boolean)
Here's the debug output from when I responded to the meeting invitation:

Logging object...
action: Setting Upload Data:
content: application/atom+xml; charset=UTF-8
data: <entry xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:gCal="http://schemas.google.com/gCal/2005" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <category scheme="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind" term="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event"/>
  <title type="text">test for friday</title>
  <content type="text"></content>
  <author>
    <name>Jeff Crump</name>
    <email>jeffrey.crump@gmail.com</email>
  </author>
  <gd:transparency value="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.opaque"/>
  <gd:eventStatus value="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.confirmed"/>
  <gd:where valueString=""/>
  <gd:who email="jeff.crump@hds.com" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.attendee" valueString="Jeff Crump">
    <gd:attendeeType value="required"/>
    <gd:attendeeStatus value="accepted"/>
  </gd:who>
  <gd:who email="jeffrey.crump@gmail.com" rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.organizer" valueString="Jeff Crump"/>
  <gCal:sendEventNotifications value="false"/>
  <gd:when startTime="2007-12-14T10:30:00-05:00" endTime="2007-12-14T11:00:00-05:00">
    <gd:reminder minutes="15" method="alert"/>
  </gd:when>
  <gd:extendedProperty name="X-MOZ-LASTACK" value=""/>
  <gd:extendedProperty name="X-MOZ-SNOOZE-TIME" value=""/>
  <gd:visibility value="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.default"/>
</entry>
End object


ICS to be emailed: BEGIN:VCALENDAR

PRODID:-//Mozilla Calendar//NONSGML Sunbird//EN

VERSION:2.0

METHOD:REPLY

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:(GMT-05.00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-TZID:10

BEGIN:STANDARD

DTSTART:16010101T020000

TZOFFSETFROM:-0400

TZOFFSETTO:-0500

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=11

END:STANDARD

BEGIN:DAYLIGHT

DTSTART:16010101T020000

TZOFFSETFROM:-0500

TZOFFSETTO:-0400

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=2SU;BYMONTH=3

END:DAYLIGHT

END:VTIMEZONE

BEGIN:VEVENT

CREATED:20071213T145908Z

LAST-MODIFIED:20071213T145829Z

DTSTAMP:20071213T145829Z

UID:{7DDFEBEB-7D3F-4407-B05B-C26AA86551C2}

SUMMARY:test for friday

PRIORITY:5

STATUS:CONFIRMED

ORGANIZER;CN=Jeff Crump:MAILTO:jeff.crump@hds.com

ATTENDEE;CN=Jeff Crump;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT:MAILTO:

 jeff.crump@hds.com

DTSTART;TZID=(GMT-05.00) Eastern Time (US & Canada):20071214T103000

DTEND;TZID=(GMT-05.00) Eastern Time (US & Canada):20071214T110000

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INTENDEDSTATUS:BUSY

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1

TRANSP:OPAQUE

X-LIC-ERROR;X-LIC-ERRORTYPE=VALUE-PARSE-ERROR:No value for CLASS 

 property. Removing entire property:

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-OWNERAPPTID:-1

DESCRIPTION:\n\n

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-ALLDAYEVENT:FALSE

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-OWNER-CRITICAL-CHANGE:20071213T145910Z

SEQUENCE:1

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INSTTYPE:0

X-MICROSOFT-CDO-ATTENDEE-CRITICAL-CHANGE:20071213T145908Z

BEGIN:VALARM

TRIGGER;VALUE=DURATION:-PT15M

DESCRIPTION:Mozilla Alarm: test for friday

ACTION:DISPLAY

END:VALARM

END:VEVENT

END:VCALENDAR

Logging calIEvent:
	id:aafru78btq7p8gbofuninfru44
	editurl:http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/jeffrey.crump%40gmail.com/private/full/aafru78btq7p8gbofuninfru44/63333241167
	created:2007/12/13 14:59:27 UTC
	updated:2007/12/13 14:59:27 UTC
	title:test for friday
	content:
	transparency:OPAQUE
	status:CONFIRMED
	startTime:2007/12/14 10:30:00 /mozilla.org/20070129_1/America/New_York
	endTime:2007/12/14 11:00:00 /mozilla.org/20070129_1/America/New_York
	location:
	privacy:PRIVATE
	alarmOffset:-PT15M
	alarmLastAck:null
	snoozeTime:null
	isOccurrence: false
	Organizer: 
		ID: MAILTO:jeffrey.crump@gmail.com
			Name: Jeff Crump
			Rsvp: false
			Is Organizer: yes
			Role: null
			Status: null
	Attendees: 

		ID: MAILTO:jeff.crump@hds.com
			Name: 
			Rsvp: false
			Is Organizer: no
			Role: null
			Status: NEEDS-ACTION


[calAlarmService] considering alarm for item: test for friday
 offset: -PT15M, which makes alarm time: 2007/12/14 15:15:00 UTC
Philip, have you filed a bug with Google on this?
I wanted to test this myself before I actually file the google issue. Could you maybe send me a such meeting invitation to mozilla at kewis ch ? I tried to add the event with similar XML as above, and didn't receive any meeting invitations. The xml I posted is attached. The difference of course is that I faked accepting the meeting invitation by adding the event manually, but I hope to find out if that makes a difference by getting an invitation from you.

What I do find interesting is that google responds to this xml saying that the attendee is "invited" instead of the proposed "accepted", but this is another bug and I think that was already discussed on the newsgroup.

Also you could try the same on a fresh profile with a fresh installation of 0.3.1 if you haven't already.
Oops, too fast. This attachment also contains the response xml.
Attachment #294590 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #294591 - Attachment mime type: application/xml → text/plain
A test invitation has been sent.  Let me know if you don't get it. Thanks.
I'm not quite able to reproduce myself, but I did get your email invitation and also a reminder from google 24 hours before. I assume you accepted the event in your google calendar, which caused the mail to be sent?

I translated the meeting request you sent me into google xml and added the event to my calendar, but did not receive an email invitation. I also tried directly accepting the event via lightning. It could of course be that I just took too long since the event has already passed.

Just to be sure, please tell me the following settings in your Google UI:
* Automatically add invitations to my calendar
* Show events you have declined
* Default Event Reminders
* "Choose how you would like to be notified" settings
Thanks.  That 24-hour reminder is really the problem. Here are my settings:

> Just to be sure, please tell me the following settings in your Google UI:
> * Automatically add invitations to my calendar
Yes

> * Show events you have declined
Yes

> * Default Event Reminders
No reminders set

> * "Choose how you would like to be notified" settings
Nothing checked.
 
Just one thing to specify how to recreate. Philipp, I need to email adresses of your to enable you to see the consequences of this bug. The invite will then be sent to both, one of them has to accept via Thunderbird/Lightning/Provider/GCal and the other can just ignore the invite. But the latter email address will then be the only one receiving the reminder 24h before the event.

I could of course just sent to {foo,bar} at kewis ch if they both end up in the same place?

Also note, that the issue only occurs when sending invites from Outlook 2007.
I could now reproduce this by sending myself an invitation via WCAP server. I also recieved the reminder email from google, therfore I can debug this issue much easier. I hope this issue can be resolved soon now.
I have done some debugging and since nothing has happened in the newsgroup, I have filed the Google bug http://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=319
I've also been experiencing this with the Thunderbird/Lightning combination and I think I can see how it's happening:

When the event is added from Lightning it shows in the Google Calendar as being
created by me@gmail.com and the attendee list of non-gmail addresses is added as a non-responsive guest.  At the 24-hour mark a message is sent to all non-responsive guests inviting them to the meeting.

I have not dug into the API, but I'd like to clear this:  Is the invitation being sent because Google Calendar thinks I'm the event organizer?  Is there a way to add an event with the API so that I'm not the organizer and non-responsive guests won't be invited?

(This has been posted to google bug 319 as well as the google discussion)
Its not possible to set the organizer for non-primary calendars. Also, if the organizer is not known or specified, google defaults to the user being the organizer.
If I may add my $.02, there could be an "easy" workaround, until Google update their code.

It's a nasty hack, but here it goes: there could be a pref (say calendar.provider.gdata.googlehack) that, if set, enables code that strips away all attendees before inserting in Google Calendar. It might copy the names and adresses in string format in the Notes field, if that works, so that info wouldn't be lost.

This would work great for people like me, that really use Google Calendar as a copy to share my agenda with the outside partners who can't access our corporate calendar server.
Whiteboard: [depends-google-issue]
Until the google bug is fixed, I will be turning off attendee support by default, allowing users to turn it on using a pref. This is the only reasonable way to avoid angry users that have spammed their whole office with reminder emails.

I will file a followup bug for this.
Summary: Google sends Email reminders to all attendees → Google sends Email reminders to all non-google attendees, 24 hours before the event
(In reply to comment #24)

Thanks Philipp, your idea is the nicest possible way to work our way out of this impasse. Right now, I have to keep in mind to delete attendees from the appointments I import into Google Calendar unless I wish to spam them all. Since we regularly have longish lists of attendess this is quite tiresome, and moreover I sometimes forget.

Let's hope Google fix their bug soon.
(In reply to comment #24)
> Until the google bug is fixed, I will be turning off attendee support by
> default, allowing users to turn it on using a pref. This is the only reasonable
> way to avoid angry users that have spammed their whole office with reminder
> emails.
> 
> I will file a followup bug for this.
> 

Thank you!  Do you have any idea on when the next release might be?

The depending Google bug was marked as fixed. I'll be enabling attendees by default on trunk builds and would appreciate some testing afterwards. If this turns out to work, then I'll consider releasing 0.5.1 to enable this preference by default. I also think sendEventNotifications can be enabled by default now too.

The following scenarios need testing

* Events created by the Google User directly:
** The event contains only other Google Users
** The event contains users of Google Apps (i.e hosted accounts)
** The event contains other users (not Google, not hosted accounts)
** The event was created on a secondary calendar


This scenario might not work out, since Google Calendars don't show up in the list of calendars to accept to.
* Invitations, accepted to a Google Calendar, both pri and secondary:
** Received from a Google or hosted account
** Received from an other account

I'll post more if I can think of more, and also let you know when I have enabled the default prefs. Feel free to set up the prefs (calendar.google.sendEventNotifcations and calendar.google.enableAttendees) yourself though.


It would be interesting to know if attendees are spammed with invitations they should not receive, or event reminders they should not receive.
Whiteboard: [depends-google-issue] → [google-issue-fixed]
I've boldly enabled the prefs for 0.5.1 which was shortly released. This was done in bug 456865

-> FIXED
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Whiteboard: [google-issue-fixed] → [google-issue-fixed][gdata-0.5.1]
Assignee: nobody → philipp
Why is enableEmailInvitations still set to false?
I have been experimenting with the calendar.google.* settings but still I am unble to get my Google calendar to show up in the popup list of calendars after the Accept button is clicked on an invitation.

So what was the conclusion here? How do I enable accepting invitations???
TB3, Lightning 1.0b1.
Still sending out spam invites when Google calendar provider is used to sync. I import events from an ics file into the calendar. 
What is the exact resolution on this bug - please make it clear - how is it marked FIXED if the issue of spam invites to attendees still persists in certain situations? Also, core functionality of being able to accept email event invites and add them to google calendar is missing because of this bug resolution. This has to be fixed.

With the latest Android phones gaining in popularity, it is critical to have a robust google calendar sync.
I just checked out the Outlook to Google calendar sync tool from Google. This is working perfectly and does not seem to have the spam reminders issue.
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98563
So there *IS* an API that allows just importing events without sending out reminders.
(In reply to comment #31)
> I have been experimenting with the calendar.google.* settings but still I am
> unble to get my Google calendar to show up in the popup list of calendars after
> the Accept button is clicked on an invitation.
> 
> So what was the conclusion here? How do I enable accepting invitations???

Mattias, try to make all your local calendars read-only.

I had the same problem with TB3.0/Lightning1.0b1/GData0.6b1: when accepting an invitation, my Google calendar did not show up in the popup list of calendars, only my local calendars did.
I found out that for the popup list to show up, there must be (beside the correct calendar.google.* settings) more than one eligible calendar. For a Google calendar to be eligible for an event, it is necessary that the calendar's Gmail account be among invited attendees. I use a non-Google account for email, so in my case only local (non-Google) calendars were eligible, not the network (Google) calendar.
There is a fallback option, though. If there are multiple calendars schedulable but none of them eligible, the popup list shows up anyway, including ALL of them. Thus my workaround is to make all potentially eligible (local) calendars unschedulable (delete them or make them read-only). Then either a popup list shows up for all your non-eligible (network) calendars or the event gets scheduled right away (if there is only one).
So... what is ths status of this bug?

I just discovered that the only way to get the 'Accept/Decline' buttons to show in the TB interface for meeting invites is to enable the enableEmailInvitations pref - but will this still possibly result in spamming attendees unnecessarily?

If this is still broken, this just may be a deal breaker for our use of TB/Google Calendar for our offices...
I guess I should have said why I'm asking...

1. The pref is still disabled by default (which makes interacting with Google Calendars impossible), and

2. This wiki page that says:

"Attendees
I received an invitation from a friend. When trying to accept, my Google Calendars are not in the select calendar dialog, or no dialog is shown

Accepting an invitation onto your Google Calendar can cause extra invitations being sent out to each attendee. Due to some Google Calendar limitations when adding invitations to your calendar its impossible to allow this in a way that new users will not shoot themselves in the foot.

If you know what you are doing, you can still re-enable this behavior. See the FAQ question regarding options."

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:GDATA_Provider#I_want_to_stay_up_to_date_on_all_GData_Provider_bugs.21
Sorry, still a Google bug, I can't fix this reliably. Please direct anger towards the gdata issue mentioned in the URL field above.
Ok, thanks - but why is this bug resolved as FIXED if it cannot be fixed? Why not keep it open?
Not sure what my reasoning was, but I believe since its now the default that events cannot cause mass invitations, I've marked it fixed.
Well, imo disabling the pref is not an acceptable workaround, since it makes accepting invitations from others impossible when all you have is a Google calendar...

Can you please reopen it, and just make a note that its resolution depends on the google api bug being fixed?
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Whiteboard: [google-issue-fixed][gdata-0.5.1] → [depends google issue]
Phillip - have you heard anything from anyone at google about this in the last few months?

Unbelievable that they would mark the issue as fixed 2 years ago, and ignore the continuing complaints that it is not fixed...
Unfortunately I don't get any announcements from Google, I read these things in blogs and by coincidence.
See also bug 684482, which might supersede this bug
Status: REOPENED → ASSIGNED
Flags: wanted-calendar1.0?
Flags: tb-integration?
Flags: blocking-calendar1.0?
Resetting request flags as it does not make sense to do this for a Google Calendar Provider issue.
Flags: wanted-calendar1.0?
Flags: tb-integration?
Flags: blocking-calendar1.0?
I deleted an appointment, and then reaccepted an invitation, and that caused the invitation to be resent to everyone who got the initial invitation. The same happens when I accept an update. tb16.0.2, lightning 1.8 ubuntu precise.
Can someone please comment on Google's reply? https://code.google.com/a/google.com/p/apps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=317#c50

Does this mean the bug is really fixed on their end? Does it mean the remaining problem is a Thunderbird bug?
I'm pretty sure I have anything remaining for this bug fixed in version 1.0.2, could you please retest? If its still an issue please re-open.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago10 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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