439561 - Exchange calendaring through IMAP

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: E-mail based Scheduling (iTIP/iMIP), enhancement)

Description

[David Cameron Staples]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008060309 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (20080505)

I have a relatively complicated setup necessitated by using Linux full time, in an environment where Exchange (and, practically speaking, Outlook) have been mandated.

The Exchange setup has the OWA interface and IMAP enabled, but not, it seems, WebDAV. I can happily read my Exchange emails through IMAP, so that's not a problem. The problem is that we are expected to use the Exchange calendaring function, and there is, apart from Evolution, no Linux tool which does this adequately, and Evolution keeps crashing on me.

I use a shared .ics file for my main local calendaring, shared between Lightning, KOrganizer and synced to my Palm, and when a meeting comes in it is added to this file painlessly. This does not, however, add the meeting to the Exchange calendar, so when my managers look at my busy/free view, it looks like I'm not doing anything.

I have found that there is a relatively simple way around this, though. The IMAP link to Exchange includes a folder called "Calendar". When, in Outlook or in the OWA, you accept a meeting, it will 1. move the meeting email into this folder where the Exchange Calendar will automatically pick it up, and 2. prepare a response to the initiator. (I haven't investigated what happens when you reject or 'tentative' a meeting, but I'm thinking it will be similar.)

It is the existence of a meeting email in this folder which determines a meeting's visibility in Exchange. I have found that when you receive a meeting request, to whatever address, that after (accept)ing it to add it to the local calendar, if you then copy or move that email to the Exchange/Calendar folder, that Exchange will see it as if you had accepted it through Outlook (as far as I can tell).

My suggestion is that Lightning Preferences includes a filter function on meeting/todo requests, like the filter dialog for emails, which enables particular actions on Accept, Tentative or Reject.

These could include filter on
* Initiator
* Attendee(s)
* Inbox
* Subject
* Location
* Importance
* ...

And actions could include:
* "Add meeting to calendar" as happens now, maybe with options forcing a particular calendar if required.
* "Respond to initiator", either with an appropriately formed Exchange-style reply, or the option of something bespoke
* "Add Category" to help automatic colour-coding &c
* "Copy/Move request to folder", and if the folder specified is the Exchange/Calendar folder, then it will be added to the Exchange calendar, and one more issue with Thunderbird not being an Outlook replacement will be addressed.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[David von Oheimb]

Meanwhile there is an excellent tool for accessing the Exchange calendar via OWA and the CalDAV interface of lightning: http://davmail.sourceforge.net/

Comment 2

[Paul Menzel]

The compatibility with Microsoft Exchange seems to have improved a lot in the last 15 years. It’d be great, if you could retest.