Improvements for Free/Busy UI [$315]

[georgehrke]

Improvements to be added:

• [ ] Modify event time from within Free/Busy view
• [ ] Add / Remove attendees from within Free/Busy view
• [ ] Show role of attendee

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There is a $315 open bounty on this issue. Add to the bounty at Bountysource.

[wargreen]

Sorry for reuse this issue, but is it possible to get only the the busy / free information (in a public cal, for e.g.) ?

[Laykou]

Hi, is there any progress on this? Where is the work now and what is needed to be done to have implemented free/bust feature? Thank you very much. We would really like to see this feature :) 👍

[MariusBluem]

No progress on this yet. Milestone is theoretically assigned (1.8.0) but if you want to step in and help coding - you are very welcome 🙈 @Laykou

[Laykou]

Thanks. Can you give some quick links to relevant files/ code or anything to know where to start looking? :)

[jancborchardt]

@georgehrke @tcitworld do you have any work in progress or pointers? :)

[georgehrke]

No work in progress so far.

First part of the work would be the logic part:

• dig into the CalDAV standard to see how FreeBusy requests for different users are made
• take curl (or any other tool to send http requests) to check if these requests are implemented in the Nextcloud CalDAV server
• if no: start implementing it in the server
• afterwords implement a FreeBusy service (similar to https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/blob/master/js/app/service/calendarService.js) that sends CalDAV requests to the server to gather FreeBusy data.

[tcitworld]

take curl (or any other tool to send http requests) to check if these requests are implemented in the Nextcloud CalDAV server if no: start implementing it in the server

As far as I can remember it didn't work out of the box with Thunderbird/Lightning or Evolution clients.

[talmage]

This feature is a valuable one. I am willing to pay someone to implement it.

Without a free/busy implementation that Outlook can use, my wife won't share her calendar with me. She won't use Nextcloud calendar.

My wife needs to show her co-workers when she's away from the office on personal matters without revealing the matter. She can do that with Outlook by marking events as "private". She would keep her personal calendar on Nextcloud, where mine resides, if Nextcloud offered free/busy info that is compatible with Outlook.

[silverhook]

I’m willing to throw some coins at this as well.

[tcitworld]

@talmage @silverhook You may use Bountysource to post a bounty on this issue : https://www.bountysource.com/issues/39954053-free-busy-support

[silverhook]

@tcitworld, just threw some coin into the BountySource kitty, to get the ball rolling.

Here’s a live preview of how much is stored there right now:

[talmage]

Thanks @tcitworld! I added to the bounty.

[raoulbhatia]

On September 14, 2017 1:38:41 PM UTC, David Talmage [email protected] wrote:

Thanks @tcitworld! I added to the bounty.

-- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/39#issuecomment-329484536

I've added some as well. Thanks!

DI (FH) Raoul Bhatia M.Sc. E-Mail. [email protected] Tel. +43 699 10132530

[NoPerfect]

In the DaviCal this is issue too: https://gitlab.com/davical-project/davical/issues/69 But "Free/Busy" status available directly (example link): http://calendar.davical.local/freebusy.php/username/home

I cant see free or busy my friends for evil plans!

[jospoortvliet]

So the Nextcloud server supports free/busy, it now "just" needs to be shown in the UI and then 🥇

🐩

[immae1]

how far is the status of this ? Because I want to use the nextcloud calendar in my iCal client on my Mac. Or will it only available in the webclient view? Many thanks

[georgehrke]

@immae1 The Nextcloud CalDAV server will support FreeBusy beginning with Nextcloud 13. That means you will be able to use FreeBusy with Thunderbird, Apple Calendar, etc. very soon.

The web client (=> FreeBusy in your browser) is currently scheduled for Calendar 1.8.0 later this year.

[scm1599]

Great that the FreeBusy support has been realized with Nextcloud 13. How to configure that in Outlook 2016? What to put into the free/busy-options?

Perhaps one of the following lines? https:// ... /3rdparty/sabre/vobject/lib/FreeBusyData.php https:// ... /3rdparty/sabre/vobject/lib/FreeBusyGenerator.php

[georgehrke]

@scm1599 Please ask that the developers of the outlook connector plugin you are using.

[scm1599]

Thanks Really? I think Outlook needs to directly communicate with the FreeBusy-Server of Nextcloud 13.

By the way, I use the Outlook CalDav Synchronizer http://caldavsynchronizer.org

[georgehrke]

We provide CalDAV Free/Busy scheduling as standardized in https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6638

I don't have a Windows machine, so I can't tell you what options to use in Outlook. But as it's a CalDAV feature, you should reach out to the developers of the Outlook CalDav Synchronizer plugin.

Perhaps one of the following lines? https:// ... /3rdparty/sabre/vobject/lib/FreeBusyData.php https:// ... /3rdparty/sabre/vobject/lib/FreeBusyGenerator.php

That won't work, because you can't call these files directly.

[scm1599]

OK, Thanks

[andre5tz]

If you use CalDav Syncroniser: You find the settings for private events in CalDav Syncroniser -> Syncronisation Profiles (Advanced Settings) -> Event Mapping Configuration -> Privacy Settings. The Flag "Map Outlook Private flag to DAV CLASS:CONFIDENTION instead of PRIVATE" seems to work fine.

[scm1599]

Thank you. The 'Event Mapping Configuration' is an interesting option. However, Outlook needs a web-link to the free-busy-server configured in the free-Busy options in the Outlook configuration. The big question: Which link to configure in Outlook. The link must point the Nextcloud-server that provides the free-busy information.

[scm1599]

Does anybody have an idea?

[Mannshoch]

MS-Outlook and Free/Busy: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/291621/how-to-use-the-internet-free-busy-feature-in-outlook

[Mannshoch]

Also Intersting how to use it in Outlook: For Microsoft Outlook 2010 or later versions:

1. Click the File tab, and then click Options.

2. On the left pane, click Calendar.

3. Click the Free/Busy Options button, click the Permissions tab, and then click Other Free/busy.

4. Under the Internet Free/busy section, in the Search locations box, type the fully qualified path of the location that you want to search for the free/busy information. You can use any valid URL format, such as: http://... , file://\... , or ftp://... .

   Outlook supports %NAME% and %SERVER% substitutions.

   The following is an example of how to use these substitutions: ftp://%SERVER%/Freebusy/%NAME%.vfb

   In an Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) address, Outlook replaces %NAME% with all the characters before the at (@) symbol and replaces %SERVER% with all the characters following the @ symbol.

5. Click OK to exit.

[FreeMinded]

I'm confused after reading through this thread. Is the Free/Busy information already available from a Nextcloud 13 Server? If yes, what is the URL to be used?

[punk-t]

I'm very confused too. In fact I didn't find a valuable solution by now. Visibility of any single date can be edited, but no default visibility on a per calandar basis. Assuming you have a calendar with a huge ammount of entries and you share this calendar, any details are visible by default and you need to edit every single entry, right?

[scm1599]

I'm also confused. Nextcloud definitely supports free/busy as a feature for the "Self-Hosted Nextcloud 13": https://nextcloud.com/pr20180206/ Here it says: "... was updated to support free/busy scheduling in native calendar applications ..."

Outlook also supports this feature, as 'Mannshoch' explained above.

Why is it so difficult to use it?