Gmail response to a zimbra appointment invitation does nothing.

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davidkillingsworth
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ZCS/ZD Version: 8.8.15.GA.3869.UBUNTU14.64-Patch 24

Gmail response to a zimbra appointment invitation does nothing.

Post by davidkillingsworth »

Hello,

I have an existing Zimbra 8.6 server on which users have historically not used the calendar function.

I have one user who wants to interact with external parties and create appointments in their zimbra calendar to keep track of meetings.

When we send an appointment invitation to an Exchange or Office 365 external user, they receive an email with a Accept / Decline button. If they choose Accept, the zimbra user receives an email notifying them and the zimbra calendar entry is updated to indicate that the external Exchange or Office 365 user will be attending.

If we sent the same appointment to a Gmail user, the gmail user receives and email and clicks Yes, Maybe, No. If they click on Yes, it adds the calendar entry to their Google calendar, but does not generate an email and the zimbra calendar entry is not updated as to whether that external invitee is attending.

Is this a configuration issue or known problem?

Thanks,
David
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Gren Elliot
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Re: Gmail response to a zimbra appointment invitation does nothing.

Post by Gren Elliot »

I've never had a problem inviting GMail user's to meetings and getting replies. Just tried that now and it worked - admittedly with Zimbra's 8.7.0 Web client.

How are you creating the invites? Note that whatever creates the invite should ensure that the ATTENDEE record in the invite corresponding to the GMail user has RSVP=TRUE

That is what tells mail systems receiving invites that a response is desired.
davidkillingsworth
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Re: Gmail response to a zimbra appointment invitation does nothing.

Post by davidkillingsworth »

Gren Elliot wrote: How are you creating the invites? Note that whatever creates the invite should ensure that the ATTENDEE record in the invite corresponding to the GMail user has RSVP=TRUE

That is what tells mail systems receiving invites that a response is desired.
Our server is 8.6.

We are using a web browser to create the meeting invitation. Go to Calendar, New Appointment, and then add the gmail address in the attendees list. Sorry, I should have specified.

I just tried this on another server that is 8.7 and it works as expected. I got an email indicating that the message was accepted.

The 8.7 server is sitting on the Internet on a VPS virtual machine with not firewall protecting it.

The 8.6 server is at a customer site that is protected by a firewall. Are there any special ports that are required to be listening / available for this to work.

The only other thing that I can think of are that on the 8.6 server, the end user that created the meeting on Zimbra never receives an email notification from gmail indicating that the attendee accepted. Maybe, my anti-spam settings are not allowing the message to get through.

Please let me know about any ports that are required. Otherwise, I will watch the logs and try an acceptance from gmail again and see if the message hits the zimbra server and gets rejected for some reason.
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Gren Elliot
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Re: Gmail response to a zimbra appointment invitation does nothing.

Post by Gren Elliot »

If you can send ordinary emails between the users involved, that is all that should be needed - no extra ports needed for calendaring.
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