iCal Outlook TZIDs

[nickamckenna]

Hi All

I am having a hard time with a web app. To cut a long story short, I
would like to send an iCal meeting invitation to Outlook users. All I
want to do is specify the timezone in the iCal message and have Outlook
work out the timezone difference (including Daylight Saving Time).

For example, my app generates a meeting invitation for 3pm EST and it
needs to go to someone using BST. I would like to specify 3pm EST in
the iCal attachment and have Outlook at the attendees end convert from
EST to BST (including adjustments for DST).

My questions are:

1. Will Outlook do the DST / timezone calculation for me?
2. What are the valid TZIDs for Outlook? The iCal RFC explicitly
refuses to define them.

Many thanks for your help!

Nick.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Outlook should handle the time zone conversion automatically. Try it!

If you want to see what time zones Outlook itself produces in iCal items, save an appointment as .ics. There is no definitive list that I know of.

 

[nickamckenna]

Hi

Many thanks for the reply. I tried saving the item as .ics and it
presented the time in the file as Zulu time rather than local... I find
it a bit strange that Microsoft don't publish the TZIDs that are
supported by Outlook. At the minute, I can't even try to set up a
non-Zulu TZID as I don't know what to call it!!!

Does anyone know of a such a list of supported Time Zones? Is it
possible to extract from Outlook in some manner or other?

Many thanks,

Nick.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Why do you need to do that? Just use Z time and Outlook (and I imagine all other iCal clients) will convert it to the user's local time.

 

[nickamckenna]

Here is the long story...

We have a web app that is required to automatically create iCalendar
requests and email them to all the attendees. This is a global app, so
each attendee could be in a different timezone. The administrator will
enter the time that the meeting begins in the local time of the meeting
location (so for the Pacific coast, the time will be entered in PST).
In an ideal world, I would simply set the time zone to PST and the
invitation would be sent. The UK people would have the meeting time
adjusted by the time zone difference and by one hour for British Summer
Time, the Pacific people would not need an adjustment etc etc. It is
perceived as unreasonable to have the user enter all times in Zulu time
or to have them select the time zone and daylight saving adjustment for
each attendee (the user in the UK is not going to know the rules for
Israeli DST!!!)

Unfortunately, to do this I have to know about the different time zones
that Outlook supports so I can specify it in the iCalendar file!

My alternative is to have our appliation do the time zone and DST
adjustment so that I can present the appointment in Zulu time in the
iCalendar file. Whilst the time zone adjustment is easy, the DST
adjustment for a global app is a pain! The rules are many and varied...
I would like to avoid doing this in our app, which is why I'd like to
impose on Outlook. However, without a list of TZIDs, I am stuck!

I am also trying to acheive the same thing using Exchange Server and
WebDAV, but I eventually run up against the same problem...

Is this not a common problem in global apps, or am I missing something
fundamental here? Any ideas?

Many thanks,

Nick.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What about testing with the time zones in the database at http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm? The open-source tool at http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/prod/dialspace/town/pipexdsl/s/asbm26/vzic/ might also be useful.

 

[nickamckenna]

Hi Sue

Many thanks for the info - it looks like exactly what I am looking for!
I will let you know how I get on.

Nick.