Re: [Evolution] Time Zone curiosities with EWS

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

> I tried with an Exchange 2013 server, and the OWA is quite confusing.
> I created an all-day event in the Evolution, then watched it in OWA
> and it spent two days, instead of only one, but clicking the event it
> properly said that it's an All Day event for the one particular date.
> I changed the duration of the event to exactly one day in the OWA UI
> and then saved it in the Evolution. There is no start/end time change
> in the saved component, thus maybe it's an odd thing in evolution-ews
> properties.
>
> That said, maybe it's not a bug in the OWA, but the OWA is just more
> strict with respect of the properties being set to certain values than
> the Outlook itself is. I know the Outlook is more forgiving.

I use one Exchange calendar via EWS - it's a shared calendar, so any
"oddities" are going to get grouched about!  If I create an all-day
event in Evolution a few seconds later it will be shown as 1am to 1am
in Evolution.  However that same event will be shown properly in
Outlook/OWA.

Looking at the event in Evolution, there is no timezone information
available. (Which seems to be correct according to the RFC.)

In Outlook, there is timezone information on the event - the all day
event created by Evolution is set to GMT; a similar one created in
Outlook has a timezone of Europe/London.

My feeling is that Evolution doesn't send any TZ information, and
Exchange therefore assumes GMT and puts that info on the calendar
event.  Evolution now sees that TZ information is set, obeys that TZ
and displays it one hour out.  Similar all day events set in a Google
calendar *doesn't* have any TZ information on it and they are displayed
correctly.

Here are the critical bits of the ical dump of the event created in
Evolution (it was created as an all day event on Aug 20:

    BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
    TZID:Etc/GMT
    X-LIC-LOCATION:Etc/GMT
    BEGIN:STANDARD
    TZNAME:GMT
    DTSTART:19700101T000000
    TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
    TZOFFSETTO:+0000
    END:STANDARD
    END:VTIMEZONE
    BEGIN:VEVENT
    SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-US:Pete @ Home
    DTSTART;VALUE=DATE;TZID=Etc/GMT:20150820
    DTEND;VALUE=DATE;TZID=Etc/GMT:20150821
    END:VEVENT

By comparison, here is the same info from an event created using
Outlook for Aug 21:

    BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
    TZID:Europe/London
    X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London
    BEGIN:STANDARD
    TZNAME:BST
    DTSTART:19681027T000000
    TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
    TZOFFSETTO:+0100
    END:STANDARD
    BEGIN:STANDARD
    TZNAME:GMT
    DTSTART:19711031T030000
    TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
    TZOFFSETTO:+0000
    END:STANDARD
     .... Lots of other TZ info ...
    BEGIN:VEVENT
    DESCRIPTION;LANGUAGE=en-GB:\n\n
    SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-GB:Pete @ Home
    DTSTART;VALUE=DATE;TZID=Europe/London:20150821
    DTEND;VALUE=DATE;TZID=Europe/London:20150822
    END:VEVENT

So what to do about it?  It may be that Exchange is not following the
standards properly - but that is obviously something you have to work
with.  So I can see two possibilities:

 1 - Save TZ information with an all day event, even though it's not
part of the standard 

or

 2 - Display the all day event as an all day event and ignore the TZ
information sent by Exchange (this is what Outlook/OWA does).

Whatever happens I think it's about time it was sorted out and I don't
think the bug should be closed.

P.