Timezone tag not included in .ics publish

[blueguitarbob]

Hi Dan,

Could you include the timezone tag (X-WR-TIMEZONE) in the .ics calendar header? Google calendar needs it to correctly calculate times for subscribed calendars.

I have been having problems with Google calendar sync, which I attribute to Google calendar not VueMinder. I just wanted a one-way sync to make my events show in Gcal, so they show up on my Android phone. So, I decided to implement that using by publishing .ics files to my public Dropbox folder, and then subscribing to those .ics files in Gcal. It works very well.

However, the event dates in Gcal were off by 6 hours. I discovered that Gcal thought all the subscribed calendars were timezone 0 (GMT). I'm in the Central time zone, so that's a 6 hour difference.

Looking at the .ics files that VueMinder publishes, there's no timezone tag (X-WR-TIMEZONE) in the header. Gcal uses that tag when first importing an .ics file to set the timezone for the calendar. Without it, Gcal assumes all calendars are GMT.

Using a text editor, I inserted the following into the .ics file right after the calendar name:

X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Chicago

Then, I imported each file into Gcal. The times are correct. The tag is eliminated when the .ics file is republished, of course, but that doesn't matter to Gcal. It only reads the timezone when first importing the .ics file. The timezone remains the same, even when VM re-publishes the .ics file.

However, it would be nice if VM just used the timezone tag in .ics files. Here's some more info about the tag:

http://svn.webempoweredchurch.org/issues/1415
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar

[VueSoft]

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll see if I can get this into the next release. In the meantime, try unchecking the "Convert event times to Universal Time (UTC)" box in the Publish tab of the Calendar Properties window. Your local timezone will be used, which I think should work as long as Windows is using the same timezone as your Google Calendar.

[blueguitarbob]

In the meantime, try unchecking the "Convert event times to Universal Time (UTC)" box in the Publish tab of the Calendar Properties window. Your local timezone will be used, which I think should work as long as Windows is using the same timezone as your Google Calendar.

I tried that at first, Dan. It didn't change anything. I agree with you, though, that it should have worked. Gcal uses a frustrating cache scheme when importing .ics files, which may have been getting in the way. Actually, I find a lot of Gcal to be frustrating.

The problem stems from the fact that Gcal assigns a timezone to each calendar imported by URL the first time it is imported. The timezone on imported calendars is not editable, unlike calendars created directly in Gcal. The only way I was able to get the timezone created correctly was to manually insert the tag into the .ics file.

[VueSoft]

Thanks for the information. I'll let you know when an update is available.

[VueSoft]

The next version (9.0) has been corrected to include time zone information in the published ICS file. A beta is available, if you'd like an early look. It can be downloaded here:
http://www.vueminder.com/forums/phpBB3/ ... ?f=5&t=707