Face to Face and iCal attachments

Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Peter Bowen -
Number of replies: 10

Hi Alistair,

I have a query on the iCal attachments. It appears that if a user signs up to a F2F session, they get the confirmation email, with no attachment. However, if someone signs another person up for a session, they  get the confirmation email with no attachment, plus the confirmation email with the iCal attachment. The same situation is for a cancellation.

Ideally, there would be a choice as to whether to use iCal (cannot find if there is) and would send just the one email with the attachment, regardless of a self enrol, or a manager enrol.

I am using moodle 2.4, and F2F 2013010400.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Peter

 

 

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In reply to Peter Bowen

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Alastair Munro -

Hi Peter,

When signing up for a Face-to-face session there is a drop down selector that allows you to choose iCal or not iCal. The issue you mentioned with getting 2 emails (one with just the confirmation and one with the confirmation with iCal attached), this is because of how Microsoft Outlook behaves. If you recieve a calendar event in Outlook it will automatically process it and delete the email so we send a second email so users have a record of this. I know this is not an ideal solution but we have no choice until either everyone stops using Outlook or Microsoft fix the way this works.

Cheers,
Alastair

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In reply to Alastair Munro

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Peter Bowen -

Hi Alastair,

Many thanks for the quick reply.

Amusing on the outlook thing - we presently use an email program other than outlook, however powers that be are forcing the change...

Umm - I have just tried it, and I don't seem to get any options when I sign up for the session. In saying that, I have a tendancy to do some customisation of code, so I will check to make sure that is not my fault.

CheersPeter

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In reply to Alastair Munro

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Peter Bowen -

Hi Alastair,

Yup - I had customised it - there was a requirement for them not to see - so that was definitely my fault. Still useful the explanation - it now helps my logic, and we will set them both as the same.

However maybe thought your end - if someone else signs a person up, it does send both, there is no front end to send text or iCal. (Easy enough to hack a change globally though.... :D )

Many thanks for your effort on this plug in - it is amazing how important it is to our organisation.

Cheers
Peter

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In reply to Peter Bowen

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Kyla Lacey-Davidson -

Hi Peter

Hope you don't mind me jumping in but I wanted to ask if you could please can you let me know what you changed to hide this option? Moodle's .ics files aren't working for us right now so I want to hide the option of being sent an iCalendar appointment...

Thanks!

 

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In reply to Kyla Lacey-Davidson

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Ian LeBlanc -

Hi Kyla,

Were you ever able to hide the option of being sent an iCalendar appointment?  Having the same issue as you over here.  Thanks! smile

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In reply to Ian LeBlanc

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Gwen Jefferson -

Hi Ian

I don't suppose you have solved this. Our Ical doesn't work either when opening in Outlook and it is causing some frustration


Gwen

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In reply to Gwen Jefferson

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Kyla Lacey-Davidson -

Gwen and Ian I am so sorry for not replying to this! I don't recall ever seeing a notification that you had replied.

Our provider did manage to switch this off but a recent upgrade has undone this and our providers don't seem to be able to switch this off. Even more frustrating is the fact that the Outlook calendar events are being sent out an hour out of time! Very confusing for our users and is apparently a global Moodle issue....??


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In reply to Alastair Munro

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Amber Lee Mogg -

We are developing a Moodle site where the primary use of the site is for the users to book their spots in face-to-face sessions and receive iCal attachments for their calendars.  We are in the beta stage of the release and have over 700 users currently and are ramping up to several thousand users in the near future.  During this inital phase we have come across two challenges and both are issues with the iCal attachments.

1) If the dates/times of a session are changed after users have signed up, there is no notification/email or iCal update to change the information in the user's calendar which could cause some issues for learners

2) If we have a session that spans over two days the iCal attachment only contains information for the first day of the session when the attachment is saved to the user's calendar

We would really appreciate any guidance that anyone has because this module is crucial to this project.

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In reply to Amber Lee Mogg

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Sudeep S -
Hello Amber

Did you resolve these. Both are indeed useful for us.

Sudeep

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In reply to Alastair Munro

Re: Face to Face and iCal attachments

by Chris Roper -

Re Outlook.

In Outlook2010, users can choose NOT to "delete email requests and notifications from the inbox after responding" by unchecking the option.

It is in File...Options...Mail...Send Messages.Outlook 2010 mail options

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