iCal integration since update OK?

[nuke]

Hi.

Just a quick question to the community. I was about to do the upgrade/crossgrade from Sugar 6.5.15 to 7.0.1 (OK I’m a bit slow but been too busy).

Apparently there are a bunch of people who have found problems with the iCal integration upon updating to Sugar 6.5.16.

So my question is if you guys on 7.0.1 have found this too? If I loose ical integration, I’ll be dead in the water. This is a critical requirement for us.

Thanks in advance for sharing!
(And Happy 2014! to everyone!)

[Will]

Hi nuke,

It seems there hasn’t been a fix for iCal. We would not recommend upgrading to SuiteCRM 7.0.1(until a fix is released) if this is going to cause issues.

Thanks,

Will.

[MikePlatt]

Nuke…I’m in same boat, running 6.5.1 something. Did you figure out a workaround?

-MP

[nuke]

Hi Mike,

I got so busy I couldn’t do the upgrade from Sugarcrm 6.5.15 so I can still connect to iCal. You may be able to do a downgrade but that will likely include doing a sql dump of the database and reimport if they have done any changes to the underlying database structure.

There are a few discussion on forums.sugarcrm.com to the iCal issue but no solutions as of last Friday. So I’m sitting tight at 6.5.15.

BTW, @Will would I be able to jump to Suite 7.0? Is it based on 6.5.15 rather than 6.5.16?

Thanks.

[Will]

Hi nuke,

Yes, SuiteCRM 7.0 is based on SugarCRM 6.5.15.

Thanks,

Will.

[mettlerr]

Will,

The problem seems to be, that the resulting ics file from SuiteCRM does not end the BEGIN:VTIMEZONE block properly. A END:VTIMEZONE is missing at the end, before the first event entry starts.

I’ve tried downloading the ics file, and adding the END:VTIMEZONE, and was then able to successfully import the calendar into the Calendar app on my Mac.

Regards,

Roland

[Will]

Hi Roland,

Is this an upgrade safe change?

Thanks,

Will.

[mettlerr]

Will,

I did not change anything in SuiteCRM, I just tried to edit the .ics file manually after I’ve downloaded it. SuiteCRM still does generate .ics files with the missing timezone end-tag, as I did not change anything on the server side.

I also would not know where to change this behaviour on the server side, I just noticed what the problem is.

If anybody has the knowledge to implement a fix in an upgrade safe manner, I’m sure everybody depending on the iCal integration functioning properly would be glad, if you could share it with us.

Thanks,

Roland

[suiteric]

Hi Will:

Can you clarify for us?

We’re just starting out with 7.0.2, which is based on 6.5.16.

I think this thread is saying both that SugarCRM 6.5.16 creates faulty .ics export and that SuiteCRM 7.0.1 does also. Is that the right reading?

Does this problem affect the proper functioning of Suite’s calendar in 7.0.2? Does it affect subscribing the SuiteCrM calendar to other ical devices? We tried subscribing on an iPad with several events entered into the SuiteCRM calendar. The links verify and seem ok but we don’t see any events in the iPad calendar.

Finally–I may be missing it somewhere, but I don’t see anything that explains how to import an ics to Calendar. The other modules all have ‘import’ options. And Googling ‘suitecrm import ics’ does not yield anything. We will use an ics file exported from Vtiger 5.4.0.

Thanks

[nuke]

Hi suiteric

I haven’t updated yet since I haven’t been able to confirm that 7.0.2 fixes the ical issues. Will should be able to clarify this for us soon, I’m sure.

As to how this works, I don’t import anything. I’ve subscribed to the Suite/SugarCRM calendar using Busycal. I think that Calendar would be similar. In Suite/SugarCRM you’ll find the link in the preference for the user. From Calendar, you use the “New Calendar Subscription” and paste the link you find in Suite/SugarCRM. This will show up in the list of Subscribed Calendars.

I have never needed to export ical events from Suite/SugarCRM for import as I’ve always got the most recent events & todos showing up via the subscription.

Hope this helps.

[suiteric]

Hi nuke.

" In Suite/SugarCRM you’ll find the link in the preference for the user. " I don’t see a “preferences” section anywhere.

Regarding imports: I need the import info for our migration from vtiger.

Thanks.

[nuke]

Click the link on your name in the top right of the screen. Then you will be in the preferences. Click on the “Advanced” tab and at the bottom you will see “Calendar Options”. Here you will find iCal Integration URL. Copy and paste that link into Calendar - Subscribe. (I think it is under the File menu).

[suiteric]

Will,

I may be missing it somewhere, but I don’t see anything that explains how to import an ics to Calendar. The other modules all have ‘import’ options. And Googling ‘suitecrm import ics’ does not yield anything. We will use an ics file exported from Vtiger 5.4.0.

[nuke]

Just wondering if the SuiteCRM 7.1 update fixed the iCal integration issues. Can someone confirm?

Thanks.

[nuke]

I guess SuiteCRM is at 7.2.1 now. Anyone test and confirm that iCal integration has been fixed?

I did find this at Link:

2014-01-22, 06:21 AM
psuter
Re: Can’t Sync iCal and google calendar after patch 6.5.16

After a long time away from SugarCRM i decided to give it another try. I just installed 6.5.16 a few days ago and ran into the same problem.

I have found the source and fixed the problem for me. maybe someone can post this to the bug report as a possible fix.. as always there are several ways to fix this and it is up to the devs of this module how they want to implement the solution..

There are two issues at hand:
1.) in modules/iCals/iCal.php on line 523 the timezone string that has previously been created and converted into an ical string via the function vCal::create_ical_string_from_array() is taken apart again in order to convert it back to an array. however, this is done using explode which does not take all the encodings into account which have been done during the conversion with the above function. Instead of using explode, the reversing function of vCal::create_ical_string_from_array() should be used which I have found to be vCal::create_ical_array_from_string()

2.) the vCal::create_ical_string_from_array() function calls vCal::fold_ical_lines() internally. this causes lines that are longer than 75 octets to be "folded" (split into two lines). according to the comments in the source of modules/vCals/vCal.php this is in respect of the RFC rules, however, nobody seems to like this folding technique as google does not parse it correctly and also an online iCal validator i have used to debug this does not like it either. So at least for creating our ical outputs we should not do this line folding. Maybe this is needed for the vCal exports?

(My) Solution:
in modules/vCals/vcal.php i have modified the create_ical_string_from_array() function and added an optional second parameter $no_folding=false which defaults to what the function did before (it folds long lines) but it can be set to true in order not to fold long lines. i've added a condition handling these two cases. the function which starts at line 286 now looks like this:
Code:
    public static function create_ical_string_from_array($ical_array,$no_folding=false)
    {
        $str = "";
        foreach ($ical_array as $ical) {
            if($no_folding){
                $str .= $ical[0].":".self::escape_ical_chars($ical[1]) . self::EOL;
            } else {
                $str .= self::fold_ical_lines($ical[0], self::escape_ical_chars($ical[1])) . self::EOL;
            }
        }
        return $str;
in modules/iCals/iCal.php i then added ",true)" to all calls to the create_ical_string_from_array function. so a line that looked like this:
Code:
$str = vCal::create_ical_string_from_array($ical_array);
now looks like this:
Code:
$str = vCal::create_ical_string_from_array($ical_array,true);
again, i did that to all occurrances of create_ical_string_from_array() in iCal.php

last but not least we need to get rid of that explode() call in modules/iCals/iCal.php on line 523:
Replace these two lines (line 523 and 524)
Code:
        $timezonestr = explode(":", $this->getTimezoneString(), 2);
        $ical_array[] = array($timezonestr[0], $timezonestr[1]);
with this line here:
Code:
        $ical_array = array_merge($ical_array,vCal::create_ical_array_from_string($this->getTimezoneString()));
after applying the above changes, importing it to google calendar as well as using various iCal import tools for android and the above mentioned iCal Validator all worked flawlessly. Hope this helps you guys and hopefully even the Dev's to implement a fix soon.

Once again I want to mention, that my experience with SugarCRM is only about an hour worth of playing around with it. I have no idea about testing my changes and even verifying that it works with everything that is supposed to be exported to ical and vcal. It just happened to fix my issue with two test events that i had created to try out SugarCRM CE

regards
Pascal

[nuke]

Hello. Can anybody comment?

Without iCal integration working, I can’t move to SuiteCRM. I’m still stuck at the last version where this worked (Sugar 6.5.15).

There are more and more Macs showing up in corporate world and if we can’t sync or see SuiteCRM in the built in calendars, we’re sunk.

Appreciate any update on this topic.

Thanks in advance.

[Matt]

the ical issue introduced by sugar 6.5.16 was fixed in Suite 7.1.0

[nuke]

Thanks for getting back to me, Matt. I’ll upgrade over the next week.

[Timo12357]

Could you publish a fixed iCal.php somewhere. Fixing an existing iCal.php with the advice above exceeds my competences, sorry

[Timo12357]

Here is how got iCal one way sync to work again

a) installed version 7.0.2 alongside the current version
b) in 7.0.2 replaced modules/iCals/iCal.php with https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chandon/sugarcrm_dev/master/modules/iCals/iCal.php
c) in 7.0.2 replaced modules/vCals/vCal.php with https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chandon/sugarcrm_dev/master/modules/vCals/vCal.php
d) changed file owner to apache:apache and rights to 755
e) copied iCal intergration URL to Evolution, no username, no email adress, tested and confirmed iCal to work
f) copied the updated vCal.php and iCal.php to my working version
g) confirmed iCal sync from SuiteCRM -> Evolution calendar now works

Please note: I have tried this update several times before with the working version of SuiteCRM without success. For some to me unbeknown reason doing it this way, i.e., via an old 7.0.2 version brought iCal back.

For what it is worth.

Timo

Updated files were found at

https://github.com/sugarcrm/sugarcrm_dev/pull/220/files