ICS Calendar Attachment Workaround

[codemaker]

I have found a work around for blackberry .ics file integration. Skip to the end for the work around, what follows is my journey to this revelation.

It started when I noticed that meeting requests sent from our zimbra calendar at work as ics files were properly imported into the blackberry calendar, but if I forwarded the same meeting from the calendar to my blackberry it would show up as an unreadable attachment. This puzzled me greatly, so I googled and found nothing useful except reports of ics not working with the blackberry. I knew this was wrong because the meeting requests were in ics format (I received the emails on my pc as well). So I searched the forms here and was met with the same disappointing reports of "no ics support", and unanswered threads.

I knew there had to be something different between the forwarded ICS files and the ones generated with meeting requests, so I inspected the raw source of the emails and the raw ics files. Eventually I discovered the problem.

The Solution

Basically, in order for the blackberry to import the appointment the ICS file must contain a "METHOD:REQUEST" line. That is it. Normally forwarded ICS appointments will have METHOD:PUBLISH. Here are the steps to fix an ICS file.

1. Download the ICS file to your PC
2. Edit the ICS file using a text editor and add METHOD:REQUEST (or replace METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REQUEST)
3. Forward the modified ICS file to your blackberry.
4. Success!

This process is tedious to do for each and every ICS file you receive, so it may just be easier to import the file with outlook and sync with your blackberry. I don't sync with outlook so this was not an option for me.

This would seem to be a bug/omission in the blackberry software. ICS files with METHOD:PUBLISH should have the option to be imported into the calendar. Does anyone know the best way to take this up with RIM?

[ioomul]

Originally Posted by codemaker

2. Edit the ICS file using a text editor and add METHOD:REQUEST (or replace METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REPLACE)

You want to say to replace METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REQUEST ?
Can you tell me if this works also if you try to download the ics file from internet using the browser?

I tried but I cannot make it work using download or email attachment.

Thanks in advance.

[codemaker]

Yes, that should say REQUEST, not REPLACE. Sorry about that.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[codemaker]

OK. It's fixed now.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[zeezz]

Originally Posted by codemaker

OK. It's fixed now.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

thanks for this post. it sheds some light on ics for my blackberry bold, greatly appreciated.

[regedanzter]

Thanks for the tip on the REQUEST verses PUBLISH section. I took this a step further and created a quick way to get a properly formatted Black Berry meeting request ICS file.

If you get an ICS attachment on your blackberry that you cant open then just forward it to ics@quickreply.info

You will get an auto reply back asap with a modified ICS file that you can open on your blackberry.

The only thing modified is METHOD:PUBLISH is changed to METHOD:REQUEST

[kevnews]

i am having troubles implementing this, and desperately need help!

i want to be able to import a calendar event (created by my server side software, which i wrote) onto my blackberry. i can do this either by:

1) navigating to a link and having the web server spit out the appropriate contents; or,
2) creating an email attachment.

i can do either, but both fail.

here's what i'm doing:

For the web download approach, I have tried using 2 different mime types:

content-type: application/x-rimdevicecalendar; charset=ISO-8859-1;
content-type: text/calendar; charset=ISO-8859-1;

in both cases the bberry reports it is invalid content.

When I send the email attachment, i tried both of the above mimetypes for the attachment type, and have a body "minimal text" with a null (or minimal) altbody.

Still the attachment is not recognized as a valid type.

The content of both the web page download or the attachment is the same, of course. I don't see anything wrong with it, and it has the required mods as described in this thread.

any thoughts appreciated!!!!!! data contents below. thanks in advance! i have spent about 5 hours on this already.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//tester.code//tester@codemonger//EN
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:REQUEST
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20100103T033000Z
DTEND:20100103T043000Z
DTSTAMP:20100102T182949Z
ORGANIZER;CN=:MAILTO:myemail@foobar.com
UID:1da843ff83ee09e04ad745a7053bb66cdbb3f0a5-event@tester.com
CLASS:PRIVATE
CREATED:20100102T182949Z
SUMMARY:Meeting request my testing app
DESCRIPTION:test2
LAST-MODIFIED:20100102T182949Z
LOCATION:aasdf
SEQUENCE:0
TRANSP:OPAQUE
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

[sesinger]

Kevnews, did you find a solution for this? I have a similar problem with calendar entries I download from Marriott's web site. They save properly into Outlook, but won't sync to me BB. Every other calendar entry sync's fine.

[Y_me]

Thank you, I was looking for something like this a few months ago, but didn't find it. I possibly used a different search term and this seems to work great.

Thanks again

[GeoffP]

If you are on Exchange 2007/2010 you may have to ask your administrator to allow external domain appointments to be treated as internal by following this blackberry technical document. It basically asks the exchange server to treat Publish (public/internet appointments) to be treated as Requests (private internal appointments) which will also set the tentative.
KB20866-Meeting invitations received from external domains show as regular email messages on the BlackBerry smartphone

I believe this is how Blackberry chooses to handle the appointment in their OS. They could handle the appointment the way a Droid, iPhone or even the Outlook Desktop client does by allowing the accept/reject/tentative to appear without automatically setting the appointment as tentative, but they don't so it is handled like any other internet message.

[MMG3K]

Hello,

I use Thunderbird and a blackberry 9700 V5.0.0.862.
I had 3 Icalx Calendar that I needed to secure (to cut the story short, I could not find how to change the passwords on the Icalx account). So I created new calendars on my website in a separate folder with a dedicated FTP access. Amazingly enough, they did not had any input method. So I added METHOD:REQUEST in which stays as it is and I just need to forward the ics file to myself and it goes directly into the calendar of the mail account that gets the file.

Next step for me is to find how to get the ICS files wirelessly from the blackberry or connect the calendar to it. I guess I can update the ICS file by inviting my self...

Martin

[supraking]

How in the do Blackberries not support ICS/iCal files in 2012? Is this a joke? This is a business tool and I can't add an appointment to my calendar?

Ridiculous. If anyone has a workaround that doesn't involve jumping through hoops (like the email to ics@quickreply.info -- which didn't work) please let me know!

[ThaRu]

Hey guys,

I have a workaround that you can do on your blackberry without a computer.

1. Use a third-party-mail-client like LogicMail (free) to download the ics-attachment to your BB.

2. Locate the file with the BB-file manager and rename it to a .txt file

3. Use a third-party-text-editor like BBNotePad (free), open the .txt-file

4. Replace the METHOD:PUBLISH with METHOD:REQUEST (like "codemaker" found out, thanks again!) and save the file.

5. Rename it back to a .ics-file

6. Mail this .ics to yourself and you're all set :-)


In my opinion it's unbelievably ridiculous that RIM is not willing to implement the support of .ics-files on blackberry!
And the missing support of vcard 3.0 is just a shame!

Where is the "WE NEED TOOLS NOT TOYS"-attitude?
I am really disappointed, it's nothing than a lame marketing-slogan...

Thorsten Heins, before you release BB 10, give us an update that fixes these issues, so we can use our BBs as a TOOL!