419804 - Support sending of invitations to Thunderbird Address Book Mailing Lists

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 459021

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, defect)

Description

[Pierre-Luc Boucheron]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr-CH; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080218 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: Ligthning 2008021718

Hello,

I'm running TB 2.0.0.9 & Lightning 0.8pre (build 2008021718) on Linux and I am connected to a Sun ONE calendar server using WCAP transport.

I have also defined some Mailing lists on my TB Address Book.

My problem is when I use the auto-completion from TB address book to invite the mailing list to one an event it doesn't works.

To be more clear let's say that I have defined a Mailing List called My-GRP in my TB address book and this Mailing list contents 2 addresses: [e-mail] and [e-mail].

When creating an event and I start to type My-GRP to invite the list to the event, auto-completion from the TB Address Book occurs. However the attendees filled is in this form: "My-GRP <My-GRP>". The email address is incorrect and has not been replaced by the contain of the list (e-mail addresses [e-mail] and [e-mail]).

I am certainly doing something wrong but what ???

Another thing I have tried and it doesn't seems to work: entering email addresses for attendee in one line separated with comma. For example when I try to invite "[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]" it would be great that Lightning split this in 3 lines and make 3 different invitations for the 3 addresses. Actually everything after the first comma is removed... Any comments about that ???

That you very much for your answers.

I want also to thanks the whole Lightning team for the so great job done !!!

PL Boucheron
University of Geneva 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Have a mailing list define in TB address book
2.invite attendees in Ligthning with the name of the mailing list
3.save and close the event. After that the email addresses of the list are not replaced by the contain of the list

Actual Results:  
Error number: 0x804a023c
Description: Currently used when attendee or organizer specified does not have a valid email address.

The event is discarded and not inserted in my calendar

Expected Results:  
Add to the event attendees [e-mail] and [e-mail]

The same problem exists on Windows

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> When creating an event and I start to type My-GRP to invite the list to the
> event, auto-completion from the TB Address Book occurs. However the attendees
> filled is in this form: "My-GRP <My-GRP>".

That is correct to what I expect from current address book functionality.

> The email address is incorrect and
> has not been replaced by the contain of the list (e-mail addresses
> [e-mail] and [e-mail]). I am certainly doing something wrong but what ???
> Another thing I have tried and it doesn't seems to work: entering email
> addresses for attendee in one line separated with comma. For example when I try
> to invite "[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]" it would be great
> that Lightning split this in 3 lines and make 3 different invitations for the 3
> addresses. Actually everything after the first comma is removed... Any comments
> about that ???

Hmm, maybe this is wrong wrt how lightning is handling mailing lists. I'll leave it for a lightning dev to look at this more.

Comment 2

[Sven Giermann]

Attachment: Extension to expand mailing lists to recipients

Confirming bug.

This seems to be related to the fact, that lightning strips off the full-names of attendees when composing the mail!
I wrote the attached extension to expand Mailing lists to the effective recipients some time ago - it seems to ease the debugging in this.

For your example, the mail would be sent correctly, when you manually change "My-GRP" back to "My-GRP <My-GRP>"...

STR:
- install extension "PopMailListRecipients"
- invite group "My-GRP <My-GRP>" and compose invitation mail
- recipient "My-GRP" does not expand on menu item "Tools / Expand Recipients"
- change recipient to "My-GRP <My-GRP>" and select "Tools / Expand Recipients" again --> it does expand every list member with its address

Comment 3

[Sven Giermann]

Attachment: Add common name of attendees, when set

This would resolve this Mail List issue and also provide the full name of (real user) attendees to avoid possible high Spam Scores on some AntiSpam machines (recipients without real name).

Comment 4

[Pierre-Luc Boucheron]

Thanks Mark & Sven for your answers.

@Sven: your extension PopMailListRecipients makes a really good job for the mail.

What is really missing now is to have the same behavior in the window "Invite Attendees" (i.e. for the Lightning part).

What I have understand in your proposal in calItipEmailTransport.js modification is to have an expansion of the mailing list when sending email. Is it correct or  am I missing something ???

That's really a good amelioration but my problem is a little but more connected to the free-busy information: 

Actually only the name of the group ("My-GRP <My-GRP>") is showed and no information about the free-busy is available. What I want is a replacement of the whole mailing list and then to be able to have information for the free-busy status for the whole members of the list.

Do you understand my additional question ?

Thanks,

PL

Comment 5

[Sven Giermann]

(In reply to comment #4)
> What is really missing now is to have the same behavior in the window "Invite
> Attendees" (i.e. for the Lightning part).
> 
> What I have understand in your proposal in calItipEmailTransport.js
> modification is to have an expansion of the mailing list when sending email. Is
> it correct or  am I missing something ???

Yes, you are right. I just made it possible to invite groups - but still the group name is listed as attendee.

> Actually only the name of the group ("My-GRP <My-GRP>") is showed and no
> information about the free-busy is available. What I want is a replacement of
> the whole mailing list and then to be able to have information for the
> free-busy status for the whole members of the list.
> 
> Do you understand my additional question ?

Well, but I would suggest to make this configurable...
Maybe I can change my extension to work in the invitation dialog as well - I will check this soon.

I would not tend to expand mailing lists always, because it would sometimes be more handy to read "Attendees: Sales department, Marketing, CEO" instead of 20 members, each with Free/Busy information.
But it is indeed an acknowledged enhancement to expand lists on demand.

Comment 6

[Pierre-Luc Boucheron]

> 
> Well, but I would suggest to make this configurable...
> Maybe I can change my extension to work in the invitation dialog as well - I
> will check this soon.

Would be perfert ...

Any chance to have this extension or something near in next TB version ???

> 
> I would not tend to expand mailing lists always, because it would sometimes be
> more handy to read "Attendees: Sales department, Marketing, CEO" instead of 20
> members, each with Free/Busy information.

I agree with you: it makes no sense to expand by default Mailing list if you have many of them with hundred people in them. 

However when you plan a meeting it is really important to be able to use the free-busy informations ...

> But it is indeed an acknowledged enhancement to expand lists on demand.
> 

Perfect,

Thanks,

PL

Comment 7

[Sven Giermann]

Attachment: Update to PopMaillistRecipients to also work in Lightning/Invitation dialog

@Pierre-Luc:

I finally managed to resolve mailing lists inside the invitaions dialog, although it has to be made manually (not just simply call an existing function).

I also did not find a proper way to integrate into the dialog, since there are too less elements with ID set... You will find a button on the bottom of the dialog to expand ALL mailing lists in the input fields.

Further limitations:
- no check for duplicates
- mail list members are always inserted on the end of the list (better: keep the position, where the list was before)
- role and status are not copied from the list; so in fact they get lost through the operation, since the list is being deleted after expanding to its members

I also made some modifications to the dialog code itself to expand just a single list by double clicking on the person icon - but please test the extension first. I could imagine to go further to display the AB list icon instead of the person icon, when the input field contains a list. (Maybe later...)

Comment 8

[Pierre-Luc Boucheron]

Hello Sven,

> 
> I finally managed to resolve mailing lists inside the invitaions dialog,
> although it has to be made manually (not just simply call an existing
> function).


What a great work and so quickly: I'm impressed !!!


> 
> I also did not find a proper way to integrate into the dialog, since there are
> too less elements with ID set... You will find a button on the bottom of the
> dialog to expand ALL mailing lists in the input fields.
> 

This is a very good starting point 

> Further limitations:
> - no check for duplicates
> - mail list members are always inserted on the end of the list (better: keep
> the position, where the list was before)
> - role and status are not copied from the list; so in fact they get lost
> through the operation, since the list is being deleted after expanding to its
> members
> 

I have noticed 2 smalls problems:

1) after expanding the list to its members, the list name is not removed from the attendees list

2) The free-busy information for the list members is not immediately updated after the list expansion. You have to do some refresh operation (zoom in and out OR close the "Invite Attendees" window and reopen it)

> I also made some modifications to the dialog code itself to expand just a
> single list by double clicking on the person icon

This would be PERFECT

> - but please test the
> extension first.

DONE

> I could imagine to go further to display the AB list icon
> instead of the person icon, when the input field contains a list. (Maybe
> later...)
> 

I VOTE FOR IT !!!

Sorry for asking so much things but I don't have the competence to contribute to the code ;-(

Another novice question: what are the steps required to have those enhancements around the TB AB mailing list expansion (in mail and calendar) to be officially included in the Thunderbird & Ligthning distribution ???

Again Sven a very big thanks for your work,

PL

Comment 9

[cmtalbert]

Comment on attachment 306005 [details] [diff] [review]
Add common name of attendees, when set


>+            // Add common name when set.
>+            if (recipient.commonName.length > 0) {
>+                var rCn = recipient.commonName;
>+                if (rCn.indexOf(",") >= 0) {
>+                    rCn = '"' + rCn + '"';
>+                }
>+                rId = rCn + " <" + rId + ">";
>+            }
>+
This change looks fine, and I can verify that it sends the email to each of the recipients on the mailing list, so good work there.  But, we're not quite all the way there.  We also need to add the members of the mailing list to the Attendees on the calendar event itself.  For example, here is the generated ICS if I used a mailing list called foo with two members: [e-mail] and [e-mail]:

BEGIN:VEVENT
CREATED:20080302T005250Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20080302T005303Z
DTSTAMP:20080302T005303Z
UID:d3c20e74-07b2-8f47-a086-db10192c7467
SUMMARY:test
ORGANIZER;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT:MAILTO:
 [e-mail]
ATTENDEE;RSVP=TRUE;CN=foo;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT:foo
DTSTART;TZID=/mozilla.org/20071231_1/America/Los_Angeles:20080303T170000
DTEND;TZID=/mozilla.org/20071231_1/America/Los_Angeles:20080303T180000
X-MOZ-SEND-INVITATIONS:TRUE
SEQUENCE:0
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Note that neither my foo1 or my foo2 fictional people are listed as Attendees.  So, add that to your patch, and I think we've got a winner. I think the relevant code where you'd want to parse out the mailing list contents and create attendees from them should be here:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/calendar/base/src/calUtils.js#2180

Thanks for the patch.

Comment 10

[Sven Giermann]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Note that neither my foo1 or my foo2 fictional people are listed as Attendees. 
> So, add that to your patch, and I think we've got a winner. I think the
> relevant code where you'd want to parse out the mailing list contents and
> create attendees from them should be here:
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/calendar/base/src/calUtils.js#2180

A few thoughts, before I go on:
- Should the list members (recipients) always be expanded?
- Should this only be done when sending an invitation? You referenced to sendItipInvitation()... 

I thought it was better to have both abilities - to have a Mailing List in the attendees list OR to expand/populate a Mailing List to its members...

I could imagine the following use case for the second option:
There is a weekly meeting with the CEO and the whole Sales department. The free/busy information is not really relevant, because everybody is attending, if he is 'free'.
But it would be useful to send an invitation out, when the time or place changes  for one recurrence (in one week).
For this it would be easier to keep the List 'SalesDept' as attendee, because it may contain less or more recipients now, compared to one year before, when the event was created...

@Clint: what do you think about that?

Comment 11

[Pierre-Luc Boucheron]

Hi Sven,

First of all I just want to excuse myself for my response time. 

> 
> I thought it was better to have both abilities - to have a Mailing List in the
> attendees list OR to expand/populate a Mailing List to its members...
> 

The problem: it is impossible to create an event with a Mailing List in the attendees list with a WCAP calendar server. Remember my original message and my problem description:

**********************
*Steps to Reproduce:
*1.Have a mailing list define in TB address book
*2.invite attendees in Ligthning with the name of the mailing list
*3.save and close the event. After that the email addresses of the list are not
*replaced by the contain of the list
*
*Actual Results:  
*Error number: 0x804a023c
*Description: Currently used when attendee or organizer specified does not have
*a valid email address.
*
*The event is discarded and not inserted in my calendar
*
***************************

Otherwise for me: your use case seems OK ...

Thanks,

PL

Comment 12

[Bas van den Bosch]

(In reply to comment #10)

> A few thoughts, before I go on:
> - Should the list members (recipients) always be expanded?
> - Should this only be done when sending an invitation? You referenced to
> sendItipInvitation()... 

The RFC supports the MEMBER property i the attendee to attach a person to a group. 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-calsify-rfc2445bis-08.txt
(search for groups)

So, I think you should automatically expand the attendees until the MEMBER-parts are supported by Lightning. 

Comment 13

[Bas van den Bosch]

Pierre-Luc, Please don't set blocking-status. For now wanting 0.9? should be enough for now. Setting blocking is for release-drivers, see:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:For_Everyone:Blocking_Flags

Comment 14

[Pierre-Luc Boucheron]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Pierre-Luc, Please don't set blocking-status. For now wanting 0.9? should be
> enough for now. Setting blocking is for release-drivers, see:
> http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:For_Everyone:Blocking_Flags
> 

Sorry for that,

This is the first time I'm using bugzilla ;-( and I didn't knew the rules.

Ok but what does this mean ? Any chance to have this implemented in 0.9 ?

A working group is evaluating Thunberbird/Ligthning (based on servers actually installed) vs Lotus Notes client. In the comparison, this is one of the things that are missing with TB/Ligthning and I would have wish to fix this ASAP.

PL

Thunderbird Address Book Mailing Lists and Lightning 

Comment 15

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Clint, this bug is still waiting on your feedback to comment 10. Any update there?

Comment 16

[Bas van den Bosch]

In comment 10 Sven wonders wether to expand the mailinglist. I support adding the list but only after bug 428274 has been fixed to allow accepting events from a mailgroup. Seeing the discussions there I think this bug should depend on it.

Comment 17

[Sim]

Expanding the mailing list to individual addresses is also important for eGroupware. When I send the email to a Thunderbird mailing list (I manually change the address in the email so it works), the users can not add the event to their calendar because it says they are not invited.

Comment 18

[Bas van den Bosch]

Receiving invites from mailinglists has been fixed, as has responding. What issues are left with the latest nightlies? I think mailing to a group and receiving and processing responses is now poossible, isn't it?

Comment 19

[Pete Riley]

I would prefer that this functionality is a part of the Lightning core code.  Otherwise I see two problems:

1) We're dependent on Sven to keep the extension's code in sync with Lightning's code.  What happens in six months if Sven doesn't use Lightning anymore and doesn't have time to maintain this extension?  (I'm thinking of the recent user confusion caused by the SoGo extension that broke Lightning because of the recent changes to meeting invitations and organizers).

2) This "extension" is currently hidden in Bugzilla.  Is it reasonable for a normal computer user to have to use Bugzilla, find this bug among the thousands, determine the correct bug attachment to download, and rename the zip file to an xpi file in Windows Explorer before adding it to Thunderbird?

Comment 20

[Bas van den Bosch]

Of course, but what I meant was that i think this might not be needed anymore (though it could be handy to have to option) as we can process invites sent to mailing-groups now (the famous bug 428274). Still it might be useful to keep this in core code as you say. One thing with the extension, shouldn't the original entry be deleted after expanding the addresses? 

Comment 21

[Pete Riley]

(In reply to comment #20)
> i think this might not be needed anymore
As far as I can tell, we need the functionality in this bug if we want to expand mailing lists (in the Invite Attendees dialog) into individual people from our Thunderbird address book.  I guess you're saying the same thing, but that this should be an enhancement request instead of a normal bug (since all the related bugs have been fixed, as you said).

I think that this enhancement request (1) will make Lightning more compatible with other calendar programs that don't support mailing lists, (2) make it easier for us to see the free/busy info of attendees, (3) allow us to remove some members of the group from the invitation before we send it, (4) the attendees of a meeting won't change if I change the members of the mailing list in Thunderbird.  Etc.

> One thing with the extension, shouldn't the
> original entry be deleted after expanding the addresses? 
I'm not sure if you're asking me :) but yes I agree with this.

Comment 22

[Sven Giermann]

(In reply to comment #19)
> 1) We're dependent on Sven to keep the extension's code in sync with
> Lightning's code.
I'm always glad to see, someone takes care of my leisure time ;-)
And as everybody recognized, I didn't have much time last months...

> 2) This "extension" is currently hidden in Bugzilla.
I do totally agree: this was rather a proof-of-concept than a "real" extension.

(In reply to comment #20)
> One thing with the extension, shouldn't the
> original entry be deleted after expanding the addresses? 
If I remember right, this was a limitation because I did not modify the Lightning code itself. This should definitely be fixed when solving this bug "seriously".

Comment 23

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

Although this is unfortunate, I don't think this should block 1.0. I'm happy to reconsider if an updated patch is up for review.

Comment 24

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

Sven, please change the status to NEW if you no longer work on this issue. Thanks.

Comment 26

[d2_c2]

I wish someone would take this on, or remove the card icon from the GUI.  Although the auto fill in works, it is not intuitive by the layout and if you have a lot of groups, you don't always remember what to type.

Comment 27

[elektron]

Hello,

i'm using the following software combination:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; de-DE; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100914 SUSE/3.1.4 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.4

I created a mailing list in TB to be able to invite several person at once. Unfortunately, Lightning did not resolve the mailing list and throws the following error:

"Der Mail-Server antwortete:  <"AlleEmail-AdressenausMATK">: recipient address must contain a domain." 

After my best knowledge this bug, is the same as described here.

Comment 28

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

Patchwork is being done in bug: