Send Outlook Appointment via eMail Using PHP?

[cluettr]

Has anyone been able to send Outlook appointments via a PHP generated email? Not referring to the attachment you click on, but the actuall formated email that comes with the Accept, Tentative, Decline buttons at the top? I've looked everywhere on the internet and all the answers do not work or are simply trash.

[mauron]

Hi,

Maybe I'm coming a bit late. I found your question yesterday while I was searching a solution to this problem. In the meantime I managed to make it work. You have to put some headers in the e-mail message and then put the meeting data in iCal format in the body of the message. Here's the function I developed :

 function sendCal($dtstart,$dtend,$loc,$summary,$from,$to,$subject) {
  $vcal = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR\r\n";
  $vcal .= "VERSION:2.0\r\n";
  $vcal .= "PRODID:-//CompanyName//ProductName//EN\r\n";
  $vcal .= "METHOD:REQUEST\r\n";
  $vcal .= "BEGIN:VEVENT\r\n";
  $vcal .= "ATTENDEE;CN=\"Attendee1Name\";ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;RSVP=FALSE:MAILTO:Att1Mail@mail.com\r\n";
  $vcal .= "ATTENDEE;CN=\"Attendee2Name\";ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;RSVP=FALSE:MAILTO:Att2Mail@mail.com\r\n";
  $vcal .= "UID:".date('Ymd').'T'.date('His')."-".rand()."-domain.com\r\n";
  $vcal .= "DTSTAMP:".date('Ymd').'T'.date('His')."\r\n";
  $vcal .= "DTSTART:$dtstart\r\n";
  $vcal .= "DTEND:$dtend\r\n"; 
  if ($loc != "") $vcal .= "LOCATION:$loc\r\n";
  $vcal .= "SUMMARY:$summary\r\n";
  $vcal .= "BEGIN:VALARM\r\n";
  $vcal .= "TRIGGER:-PT15M\r\n";
  $vcal .= "ACTION:DISPLAY\r\n";
  $vcal .= "DESCRIPTION:Reminder\r\n";
  $vcal .= "END:VALARM\r\n";
  $vcal .= "END:VEVENT\r\n";
  $vcal .= "END:VCALENDAR\r\n";
 
  $headers = "From: $from\r\nReply-To: $from"; 
  $headers .= "\r\nMIME-version: 1.0\r\nContent-Type: text/calendar; method=REQUEST; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"";
  $headers .= "\r\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\nX-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0"; 
 
  mail($to, $subject, $vcal, $headers);
 }

Cheers
Fred

[Tobi]

There's an outlook addin available which automatically generates html-appointments. You can write your own templates to personalize them.
Take a look up to Appointmentstyler.

Greets Tobi

[abhi123]

Hi Mauron,

I have used your code and,it's awesome i have added a one more property in that and it's working fine for me.
$vcal .= "ORGANIZER; CN=\"Corporate\":mailto:Your@domain.com\n";

It's work great in Thundered bird (Client email), I'm getting all the response from the sender either he accept my Meting Invitation or Deny that.
But when I tested that in outlook everything is working Great expect that I'm unable to get the response email (either email receiver accept My request or Deny it).

It should be like that when a receiver accept or deny my request a reponse email should be send to the sender's email.

Please help me Thanks in Advance.

[ofiser]

It does not work here? Is there something special when sending to a POP3?

the only change I made to the script (see above) is

if(mail($to, $subject, $vcal, $headers)) {
echo("<p><center>Appointment sent!</center></p>");
} else {
die("Sorry but the appointment could not be sent. Please go back and try again!");
}

to be able to test the result of the mail sent out.

The mail function returns OK, but the correspondant does not receive a message. Anyone an excelent idea?