[Phpgroupware-developers] Re: New feature for phpgw cal - accept/ decline invitation by clicking an link within the notify-email

[Dave Hall]

Hi Christian,

Comments below

On Fri, 2006-10-06 at 11:42 +0200, Christian Rost wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> our phpgw customer is interested in a new feature for the calendar app. If 
> you're invited to an
> appointment, you'll recieve an email with details of the appointment you're 
> invited to. So far,
> to accept or decline the invitation you've to open the calendar app, select 
> the appointment and
> make your choice. Our customer wants a link to be added to the email 
> notification, with which
> you can accept or decline the invitation by simple clicking in the 
> appropriate link.
> 
> Thomas and I thought this through and want to check it with you, so it can be 
> added into phpgw
> lateron. Because the invitee isn't looged into phpgw when he clicks on the 
> link within the
> email, we need something that works without authorization. We have to add the 
> link at that
> point, where the email is generated. At that point of time we're still within 
> phpgw and can
> access all information regarding the invitee and the owner of the 
> appointment. We can assemble a
> string with all necesassary information, code it in some really secret way 
> and attach the coded
> string to the url.
> 
> When the invitee clicks the link, the coded data is submitted to an php 
> script. The script
> decodes it and changed the status of the appropriate invitation. So far 
> theree seem to be no
> problems from our point of view. It gets a bit nasty when regarding a bonus 
> feature - email
> notification of both side about the status change. We can code it anew, but 
> it would be great if
> we can use the one from phpgw.
> 
> Any comments regarding the notify-email links and any ideas regarding the 
> bonus feature are welcome.

I have good news for you :)

In head this is already possible.  The user clicks on the link in an
external mail app, it will notice they are not logged in, prompt for
user/pass combo, once they are logged in they will be sent off to the
original link :)

For the bad news.

I HEAD calendar uses contacts not accounts.  So you are likely to have
some issues to deal with when merging your code in.

The upside of this is that we could offer accept/decline links for all
participants, albeit through another interface.

As for the status notifications back to people, that shouldn't be too
hard to do.  There is already preferences to control notifications, if
it isn't supported, adding the support for on accept/decline shouldn't
be too hard.

Please consider targeting this code at head rather than 16, as it will
make it easier to manage in the future.

> PS: Because I don't want to annoy you more than neccessary ;-)), 
> would it be better to mail this kind of stuff to the develloper
> mailing-list?

Yes :)  I have moved the discussion there :)

Cheers

Dave

-- 
Dave Hall (aka skwashd)
API Coordinator
phpGroupWare
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w phpgroupware.org
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