Calendar event cancellation fails for forwarded events

[lcpitkan]

Hi,

I'm using manually forwarded ics invitations (attachments) from Exchange as I can't connect to the server directly. If I'm a direct recipient, things generally work fine, but if forward an event, the cancellation does not match up.
I assume this is because after the forward I am added to the participants and the cancellation is sent directly (not forwarded). So the original event starts with "VL: " (Finnish equivalent to FWD) and the cancellation simply with "Peruutettu: " (cancelled).
I've attached a sample invite and cancellation pair, which do not match up in AquaMail. Nothing too confidential in these.
I already deleted the event, but can also look into a debug dump the next time I encounter this issue.

Additionally I've been having some issues with individual changes/cancellations for repeating events, but the root cause might actually be this same issue.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: I'm using manually forwarded ics invitations (attachments) from Exchange as I can't connect to the server directly.

Can you please elaborate on what that means?

What is type of your email account in Aqua Mail -- is it IMAP? Or also Exchange?

Re: Additionally I've been having some issues with individual changes/cancellations for repeating events, but the root cause might actually be this same issue

It would help to have sample data for these too.

Usually the app tries to match on the calendar's UID (should be the same for all events in the series and used to refer to it from the cancellation / change) and then tries to find the exact "occurrence" of the repeating event.

Finally, what is your phone's Android version?

[Kostya Vasilyev]

And on the sample that you posted -- the cancellation is for the whole series, can you please confirm that it's the intent?

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Hi,

I tried your ICS files:

* invite_3.ics (3.84 kB - downloaded 3 times.)
* invite_cancel.ics (4.13 kB - downloaded 2 times.)

- invite_3.ics got added into Android Calendar just fine, no problem

- invite_cancel.ics when opened in AquaMail showed that "this is a cancellation" and there was a "Remove" button which worked for me too, it removed (deleted) the event from the device's Calendar...

In other words, I'm -- so far -- unable to reproduce the bug report.

[lcpitkan]

Hi,

AquaMail gets the ics files as email attachments from an IMAP account. They are originally sent or forwarded from Outlook/Exchange.

Most of the time removing cancelled events works fine for me, but occasionally I get "The referenced event does not exist in your calendar" even though I can see it in the event listing in the same popup. This did happen for the single event invite cancellation pair I attached. Interesting that it works for you.

I have a couple of example cancellations now in my inbox, which do not match up with the events to cancel. These are for repeating events. I'm sending a debug log for one of these.

Possibly of note is that my Google calendar account has multiple calendars (personal, work), which are synced to the phone. But cancellations do mostly work for the calendar in question.

My Android version is 6.0.1.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Got your email and the log, thanks, but I do need the original "recurring master" .ics file too.

So actually I need two, for same event: one .ics for the original "recurring master" and the other .ics for the "cancellation of a specific recurrence" which Aqua Mail fails to match against the "recurring master".

Oh and it sounds like some (most?) of the time, Aqua Mail is able to process / find such matches, just not for all events, not every time?

[NINfan]

Same issue, but for an ordinary event. Admin put an event on my calendar. Emailed the cancellation. There's no "remove from calendar" option anymore. When I view the ics, it says the referenced event cannot be found in your calendar, but it's sure still there.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Same issue, but for an ordinary event. Admin put an event on my calendar. Emailed the cancellation. There's no "remove from calendar" option anymore. When I view the ics, it says the referenced event cannot be found in your calendar, but it's sure still there.

The original poster - @lcpitkan -- provided me with sample .ics files, and so far I wasn't able to reproduce (I did open the first event, saved it in the calendar, then opened the cancellation, and the app did find it).

Can you -- @NINfan -- provide us with exact original .ics files for the original event and the cancellation?

I'm also not sure what "Admin put an event on my calendar" means -- probably that the event was added "directly" into your Calendar, say via Google'e web site, etc.? In that case, there could be a mismatch in the UID  (unique identifier) of the event vs. the cancellation.

The UID is the only thing that's not supposed to change, anything else (title, location, attendees) can, and so Aqua Mail uses the UID when it looks for an existing event in the phone's Calendar. So may not be a bug in Aqua Mail.

[NINfan]

Sorry, I can't. It's confidential. I did just go back and look at it and it still shows that the event can't be found, but that's probably meaningless now since I manually deleted the event. Unless I don't understand how .ics files work.
Moreover, I'm not a fan of the new UI for events. It used to show the choices to accept, decline, etc. Right in the body of the emailed invitation, you could see it in the day's events, choose your option, then decide whether or not to send a reply, and it would automatically delete the invite email. I now have to open the .ics file to see anything. Why the extra steps?

[NINfan]

Also, in the prior release, when someone sent an updated invitation, e.g., a new location, new info in notes, etc., there was no way to accept the new invitation. I had to wait to be at my desktop to accept it from Outlook to update the new info in my calendar. Haven't had that situation yet in the new release, but it would be great to fix it if it still happens.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: Sorry, I can't. It's confidential.

If we can't reproduce an issue then we can't fix it.

Re: Moreover, I'm not a fan of the new UI for events.

There is no new UI for events.

Re: It used to show the choices to accept, decline, etc. Right in the body of the emailed invitation, you could see it in the day's events, choose your option, then decide whether or not to send a reply, and it would automatically delete the invite email. I now have to open the .ics file to see anything. Why the extra steps?

Two possibilities:

1 - Your account used to be set up in Aqua Mail as Exchange type (the UI mimics Outlook, including "delete after accept"), and now it's set up as IMAP (which doesn't provide calendar sync, so you get .ics attachments)

2 - It's still set up as Exchange, but the original event for some reason cannot be found by the app on the server.

Re: when someone sent an updated invitation

Still works same way actually.

Yes I understand that "something's changed for you" -- other than what I wrote above, if you re-installed the app, please check that it has the Calendar permission (phone settings -> apps -> tap into Aqua Mail -> check Permissions).

[NINfan]

So I uninstalled and re-installed, and it appears to be working now as it had before.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: So I uninstalled and re-installed, and it appears to be working now as it had before.

Good. Thanks for the follow-up.