477573 - Icon for recurring event

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 203018

(Calendar :: Calendar Frontend, enhancement)

Description

[Benoit.Schmid]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008121622 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: build 2008091718

Would it possible in Lightning (with wcap plugin),
to have a icon indicating recurrent event.

There is one bell event for alarmed event.
It would be very nice to have such info
for recurrence.

Our primary motivation, for that, is that we are synchronizing
the calendar server with SyncMl devices like Nokia phones with
the Synchronica gateway.
If a specific recurrent event is modified, two events
with the same uid are stored in the wcap server.
Then the synchro server only use one "event" and
it is partially synchronized.

One workaround that we have provided to our vips' secretaries
is to delete the specific occurrence and to create
a classical event.
The problem is that they are sometimes not aware that the event
is recurrent (if you move it or if you edit directly the summary).

Thanks in advance for your answer.


Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
When you look at the calendar, reccurrent events have an icon as the bell for alarmed events.

Comment 1

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

I can see the need for this in your specific usecase.

But IMO we shouldn't clutter our UI with stuff that only makes sense for a fraction of our userbase. 

If you have a pretty active schedule, with lots of events with reminders, this will seriously impede the user's ability to see the event titles, when you another icon on each event box next to the alarm bell (especially in the week/multiweek/month view).

Therefore I would recommend that this should be implemented as an extension, not in the base product. 

Philipp, Martin, what do you guys think?

Comment 2

[Benoit.Schmid]

First of all thanks for your fast answer.

1. On a Nokia phone or outlook, this is a basic feature.
   (But I agree that copying other products is not always good)

2. Why would the bell be integrated and not the reccurent?

3. This icon could be configurable (preference to would
   enable or disable this icon addition in the calendar.
   Then it would not seriously impede the user's ability 
   to see the event titles

Comment 3

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Normally I'd resolve as duplicate of Bug 203018 but I'll await the started discussion.

Comment 4

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Philipp, Martin, what do you guys think?

My personal opinion is that an icon for recurring events is more useful to me than an icon for alarms.

Having such features as an add-on to gather more feedback would be definitely better than just implementing it in the core product, especially considered that such small UI changes have a significant impact on the user experience (e.g. cluttered calendar multiweek/month view with non-readable event titles).

And I agree it is a duplicate of bug 203018!

Comment 5

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> 1. On a Nokia phone or outlook, this is a basic feature.
>    (But I agree that copying other products is not always good)

Right.

> 2. Why would the bell be integrated and not the reccurent?

We've seen numerous people miss their appointments, because a reminder did not come up and they were not aware that their event did not have an alarm set (The bell was added to remediate that). That was important to us since missing appointments is considered dataloss for us.

> 3. This icon could be configurable (preference to would enable or disable 
>    this icon addition in the calendar. Then it would not seriously impede 
>    the user's ability to see the event titles

We generally do not look favorably on adding preferences for such UI. Our 
product should just work in general. Most users do not use the preferences 
dialog or aren't even aware of its existence.

But like the others said, this is a duplicate of bug 203018. Marking as such. We can continue the discussion there.