31 Using the iSchedule Channel to Handle iMIP Messages

Manually Accepting External Invitations

Meeting invitations from external organizers are sent to the user's mailbox. Mail clients, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, enable users to process these invitations and add the invitation to their calendar. How the invitation is added to the user's calendar depends on the specific mail client, but the invitation is not added until the user has manually read the email and accepted the meeting request.

Automatically Accepting External Invitations

You can configure your Calendar Server deployment to automatically process invitations coming from external calendar systems. To users, handling an external invite then appears just like an internal invite.

This capability involves an intermediary in the form of Messaging Server. You configure the Messaging Server MTA to process the calendar invite email (which is an iMIP message), extract the pertinent calendar information, then use the iSchedule protocol to add the invite to the attendee's calendar database. As a consequence, external event invitations automatically appear in the user's calendar without the need for a manual intervention, even when using a "non-calendar" aware client.

Once you have configured your deployment accordingly, users have a choice on how to process invitations. Users can either accept the "external" meeting invite directly from their calendar client (either desktop or mobile iOS CalDAV clients) or they can still accept it from their email client. That is, CalDAV clients now receive iMIP messages in their scheduling-inbox, and are able to process them just like regular CalDAV-based invitations and replies. Because the invitation is already in the user's calendar, invitation replies and cancel are also merged automatically. Thus, based upon the user accepting or rejecting the request, the calendar client merely has to update the attendee status in the invitation. That status change also enables Calendar Server to send a response to the organizer indicating the disposition of the meeting request. As the response is sent directly by Calendar Server, it does not matter how the user accepted the invitation (whether from a calendar client on a mobile device, desktop, or from an email client). Finally, because of the addition of meta data to the email message, the Convergence (web-based) client is able to display a scheduling-specific form to users that enables them to accept, decline, or indicate a "maybe" to meeting invitations directly from their email without having to switch to the calendar client.

Using the iSchedule Recipe to Automate Configuring the iSchedule Channel in Unified Configuration

Unified Configuration provides a recipe language and some stock recipes to automate certain configuration tasks (see "Using Recipes"). To set up the iSchedule channel, you can use a recipe called iSchedule.rcp, which automatically sets up the channel definition, job controller configuration, channel options, Sieve rule, and CONVERSION mapping.

To use the iSchedule.rcp recipe:

1. Run the msconfig command with the recipe name.

   MessagingServer_home/bin/msconfig run iSchedule.rcp
   

2. Respond to the prompts, for example:

   HTTP URL for iSchedule server: http://host1.example.com:8080/dav/ischedule/
   Destination channel for messages to check (<RET> if no more): ims-ms
   

   Use the iSchedule URL and destination channels based on your deployment.

   Note:

   Be sure to add the trailing forward slash (/) in the iSchedule URL, otherwise you will receive the error message "HTTP Error 401 Unauthorized."

3. If you are using a compiled configuration, recompile the configuration.

   MessagingServer_home/bin/imsimta cnbuild
   

4. Restart Messaging Server.

   MessagingServer_home/bin/stop-msg
   MessagingServer_home/bin/start-msg
   

5. Verify the Calendar Server configuration. See "Verifying the Calendar Server Configuration" for more information.

Manually Configuring the iSchedule Channel in Unified Configuration

The high-level steps to manually configure the iSchedule channel by using the msconfig command involve:

• Adding the channel

• Configuring the conversion mapping

• Specifying messages to be processed by iSchedule

To manually configure the iSchedule Channel, job controller master command, include_conversiontag MTA option, and conversion mapping:

1. Use the msconfig command in interactive mode to configure the iSchedule channel, the job controller master command for the channel, the include_conversiontag MTA option if you want to have a TAG= clause included in your conversion mapping probes, and the conversion mapping.

   MessagingServer_home/bin/msconfig
   msconfig> set channel:ischedule.official_host_name ischedule-daemon
   msconfig# set channel:ischedule.official_host_name.single
   msconfig# set channel:ischedule.options.handle-imip 1
   msconfig# set channel:ischedule.options.ischedule-url http://host:port/dav/ischedule/
   msconfig# set instance.job_controller.channel_class:ischedule.master_command IMTA_BIN:ischedule
   msconfig# set mapping:conversion.rule "IN-CHAN=ischedule;OUT-CHAN=*;TAG=*;CONVERT" NO
   msconfig# set mapping:conversion.rule "IN-CHAN=*;OUT-CHAN=*;TAG=ISCHEDULE;CONVERT" "YES,CHANNEL=ischedule"
   msconfig# set include_conversiontag 2
   msconfig# write
   

   Use the host name and alternately the port for the Calendar Server configured for the iSchedule database.

   Note:

   Be sure to add the trailing forward slash (/) in the ischedule-url, otherwise you will receive the error message "HTTP Error 401 Unauthorized."

2. Edit the filters block to specify messages to be processed by iSchedule.

   msconfig> edit filter
   

   The filter block appears in the editor that is the default configured for your login.

3. Add the following lines to create a filter that selects all the messages that have "text/calendar" MIME as an attachment:

   require ["mime", "environment"];
   if allof(environment :is "vnd.sun.destination-channel" ["ims-ms"],
   header :mime :anychild :contenttype :is "content-type" "text/calendar",
   NOT header :contains "X-Oracle-CS-iSchedule-Ignore" "Yes") {
   addconversiontag "ISCHEDULE";
   }
   

   iMIP messages generated by Calendar Server contain a "X-Oracle-CS-iSchedule-Ignore: Yes" header to indicate that the event was already added to the user's calendar. So, the Sieve rule should ignore those iMIP messages by not tagging them with an ISCHEDULE conversion tag. Failing to do so results in an iSchedule post of the event that is already present in the user's calendar.

4. Write the configuration and exit the msconfig interactive mode.

   msconfig# write
   msconfig> exit
   #
   

5. If you are using a compiled configuration, recompile the configuration.

   MessagingServer_home/bin/imsimta cnbuild
   

6. Restart Messaging Server.

   MessagingServer_home/bin/stop-msg
   MessagingServer_home/bin/start-msg
   

7. Verify the Calendar Server configuration. See "Verifying the Calendar Server Configuration" for more information.

Verifying the Calendar Server Configuration

To ensure that your Calendar Server configuration is setup properly, use the following steps to verify SMTP settings and iMIP email notifications. iMIP email notifications need to also be configured for internal users, that is, users on the same Calendar Server host. If necessary, restart the GlassFish Server container on which Calendar Server is deployed.

1. Check the SMTP configuration for the following settings.

   cd CalendarServer_home/sbin
   davadmin config list|grep smtp
   notification.dav.smtphost=host2.example.com
   notification.dav.smtpuser=user
   notification.dav.smtppassword=********
   notification.dav.smtpport=25
   notification.dav.smtpstarttls=true
   notification.dav.smtpusessl=false
   notification.dav.smtpdebug=false
   notification.dav.smtpauth=false
   

2. Check the email notifications configuration.

   davadmin config modify -o notification.dav.smtpstarttls -v false
   Enter Admin password:
   davadmin config list|grep imip
   notification.dav.enableimipemailnotif=false
   davadmin config modify -o notification.dav.enableimipemailnotif -v true
   Enter Admin password:
   

3. Check the whitelist configuration for the iSchedule port. The service.dav.ischedulewhitelist configuration option prevents denial of service attacks on the iSchedule port. See the discussion on enabling the iSchedule channel to handle iMIP messages in Calendar Server System Administrators Guide for more information.

4. If necessary, restart GlassFish Server. For example:

   /opt/SUNWappserver/bin/asadmin stop-domain domain1
   /opt/SUNWappserver/bin/asadmin start-domain domain1
   

Modifying iSchedule Channel Options

After you have configured the iSchedule channel, you might need to change iSchedule channel options as described in this section.

MessagingServer_home/bin/msconfig
msconfig> set instance.channel:ischedule.options.handle-imip 0
msconfig# write
msconfig> exit

MessagingServer_home/bin/msconfig
msconfig> set instance.channel:ischedule.options.ischedule-url http://host:port/dav/ischedule/
msconfig# write
msconfig> exit