Re: [Evolution] scheduling resources with the exchange connector

[Jules Colding <colding omesc com>]

On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 07:12 -0500, Peter Van Lone wrote:
> On 9/11/06, Jules Colding <colding omesc com> wrote:
> > An evolution-brutus (e-b) account can coexist with an evolution-exchange
> > account. As for whether the scheduling of resources will work...
>
> interesting ... I would assume that both will try to retrieve email,
> calendar, etc ... I suppose then there is a way to specify which
> component should be responsible for what part of the message store?

Not really. There is the problem of two component accessing the same
mailbox, but e-b is expecting the mailbox to be shared by simultaneously
accessing/modifying clients so e-b should be able to handle the
situation with "grace". I don't know if evolution-exchange would get in
trouble though... 


> > Resources, in MAPI, are just another kind of attendees to a meeting.
> > Resources are BCC'ed while real attendees are addressed directly or
> > CC'ed if they are optional.
>
> do you believe that this distinction (BCC vs TO or CC) is sufficient
> to cause appointments items to be placed onto the calendar
> automatically? Or, is yet something else going on (something outside
> of the MAPI spec)? 

Everything related to how MAPI objects are interpreted are a client
question. There is no such thing as a MAPI spec for handling calendar
items. It is all up to the client application how to do it. Getting the
calendar right is therefore a question of knowing how Outlook does it.


> How does the resource get included in the "place"
> field, or how do other invitees know that the resource has been
> included, if the resource is BCC'd?

I assume that Outlook would know to add the resource properly to
outgoing messages even if it is initially created as a BCC recipient.
You only need to do it this way to make sure that (possibly shared)
events, as created by Evolution, are seen correctly by Outlook.


> > e-b has full support for reading this into
> > Evolution, but I haven't got the time yet to enable Evolution to write
> > this information into Exchange.
>
> I will invite a resource but include it as a BCC -- just to see if
> this alone will trigger the calendar update.

I'm fairly convinced that you need some client side magic as well...


Best regards,
  jules