Entourage and data exchange

[bohboh]

I need to write an application that allows events to be imported into various applications.

One of those applications is entourage.

Does anyone know what format i can use to import calendar events into entourage?

Example, in Outlook the format is vcs (and then ical) and on osx it is ical. I cant seen to find any information on entourage, TIA.

[trevor]

Outlook 2003 and Entourage 2004 use the same vCalendar format for calendar notifications. Here's an example:

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	id 1HavMu-00014u-26
	for name@domain.com; Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:01:20 -0400
User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.3.3.061214
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 09:01:13 -0600
Subject: Example Meeting Notice
From: Name <name@domain.com>
To:  Name <name@domain.com>
Message-ID: <C23FB159.1B49C%name@domain.com>
Thread-Topic: Example Meeting Notice
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Content-type: text/plain;
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2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Thursday, April 12, 2007
Location: Office ABC



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--B_3258954080_19583409
Content-Type: text/calendar;method=REQUEST;
	charset="US-ASCII";name="meeting.ics"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Entourage Mac 11.0 MIMEDIR//EN
METHOD:REQUEST
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Mountain Time (US & Canada)
X-ENTOURAGE-TZID:2
X-ENTOURAGE-CFTIMEZONE:US/Mountain
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZNAME:Standard Time
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=11
TZOFFSETFROM:-0600
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
DTSTART:20071104T010000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZNAME:Daylight Savings Time
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=2SU;BYMONTH=3
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0600
DTSTART:20070311T030000
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:DB920907-D7FA-11DB-A3F1-000A95AF26FC
X-ENTOURAGE_UUID:DB920907-D7FA-11DB-A3F1-000A95AF26FC
DTSTAMP:20070321T232300Z
DTSTART;TZID="Mountain Time (US & Canada)":20070412T140000
DTEND;TZID="Mountain Time (US & Canada)":20070412T150000
LAST-MODIFIED:20070409T150100Z
SUMMARY:Example Meeting Notice
LOCATION:Office ABC
ORGANIZER:MAILTO:name@domain.com
SEQUENCE:0
ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;RSVP=TRUE;CN="Name";PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION:MAILTO:name@domain.com
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INTENDEDSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-ALLDAYEVENT:FALSE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-INSTTYPE:0
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:REMINDER
TRIGGER;RELATED=START:-PT00H15M00S
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR


--B_3258954080_19583409--

vCalendar Overview: http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcaloverview.html
Wikipedia entry on vCalendar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCalendar

Trevor

[bohboh]

Blimey, near immediate response. thanks

So it is safe to only supply event data in the vcalendar format to ensure backward compatibility with older versions of software AND entourage?

I notice from the sites you posted that icalendar is regarded as the new and shiny vcalendar format. To ensure a wider acceptance amongst users with old and new and differing applications, stick with vcalendar?

[trevor]

I *think* that supporting only vCalendar should work, but supporting both vCalendar and iCalendar would work better for end users and make everybody happy.

iCal Help says, "iCal uses a format called 'iCalendar' to display and exchange calendar information. iCal can exchange calendar information with several applications that support the iCalendar format. iCal can also import information stored using the older "vCalendar" format. "

From this, it sounds very much like you'll have to do an extra import step to use vCalendar format, whereas iCalendar format is native to iCal.

Perhaps someone that uses iCal as their calendar can chime in with their experiences with vCalendar format. I don't use iCal.

Trevor

[bohboh]

I could provide both since there wont be much extra work as a result of them being very similar.

My issue is that my users are very inexperienced and if i have 2 links, one saying "Download Icalendar" and one saying "Download vcalendar" would cause some confusion for them.

Are you aware of any sites that download into icalendar and outlook etc? Wondering how they have managed to bridge both.

[trevor]

Perhaps instead of having links "download iCalendar" and "download vCalendar", you could have links with names like "download calendar data for Outlook, Outlook Express, and Entourage", and "download calendar data for iCal and Mozilla Sunbird"?

Sorry, I don't know of any sites that download into iCalendar and Outlook. Perhaps someone else does.

Trevor