Support News

WiscCal: Better, Faster, Stronger

Posted: 2012-12-11 09:00:00   Expiration: 2013-01-28 13:00:00

Disclaimer: This news item was originally posted on 2012-12-11 09:00:00. Its content may no longer be timely or accurate.

Through our efforts in working with the software vendor for the WiscCal calendaring system, we have received a collection of fixes and improvements which address ongoing issues that our customers are experiencing with WiscCal. The patch was installed during our regular maintenance window on the morning of Tuesday, December 11. A thorough list of the issues that were addressed by this patch is detailed within.

Issues adding attendees to recurring events

An issue that many customers were experiencing was when adding attendees to a recurring series. If the attendee was being added to only some instances of the series (rather than the entire series), the attendee would receive an error when attempting to provide an attendance response. This has been fixed.

Excessive event response notifications

A bug with how Apple calendaring clients handle providing attendance responses to events was causing it to sometimes trigger event response notifications to the event's organizer repeatedly. The cause of this bug was addressed by the bug fix above; Apple clients should no longer generate excessive notifications with that cause.

Some CalDAV clients allowing attendees to modify event details

When connecting to a WiscCal calendar, some CalDAV clients would allow attendees to modify details of events that they should not have been able to. WiscCal will no longer allow these unauthorized changes to be made.

ShareURL "Public ShareURL" feature has been enabled for nearly all users

The ShareURL feature called Public ShareURL has been enabled for all users by default. See the following document for more details: [Link for document 27256 is unavailable at this time]

Resource owners not seeing full event details

Resource owners were unable to see the full event details of events their resource had been invited to that were "Private" or "Show Date and Time Only". "Private" events now display appropriately. "Show Date and Time Only" events continue to improperly display as "Untitled"; we are continuing to work with the vendor.

Auto-accept/decline settings not behaving as expected

If multiple users had configured auto-accept/decline settings and were invited to the same meeting, it could initiate unpredictable behavior, preventing proper responses from being saved.

Creating "Private" and "Show Date and Time Only" events in subscribed calendars

Users that were provided with Read+Write privileges to a calendar were able to create "Private" and "Show Date and Time Only" events in a calendar even if it was not their own. This is problematic, because they do not and should not have permission to view the full details of those events. The fix in place gives the user an appropriate error when trying to create a "Private Event". Creating events that are "Show Date and Time Only" is still being allowed; we are continuing to work with the vendor.

Providing Privacy and Sharing privileges to a domain

When assigning permissions for entire domains (e.g. mydept.wisc.edu), it was possible for a user to remove or lower their permissions to their account or a calendar they owned. This has been fixed.

Problems updating some migrated events

Some events were created in a way that was preventing them from being updated on the server. The patch addresses this problem. However, it should be noted that there are still issues with recurring events. The recommendation of the WiscCal team is to recreate migrated events: [Link for document 24849 is unavailable at this time].


Future Progress

We will continue to make improvements and address bugs that are affecting our WiscCal users. Working with the vendor to address our issues is a top priority. Please continue to help us by contacting the DoIT Help Desk when you encounter difficulties working with WiscCal.

-- The WiscCal Team

-- WiscCal: Jacob Fortune