ThinkingRock Forum

I'd like to add an option that creates a "publishable" ical or vcal format file to Thinking Rock.

Basically, this is how I envision it working:

a) Any task that is scheduled (including any chase dates for items being chased) would be added to a specific file -- maybe call it "thinkrock.ics" or whatever. This file would live in the same directory as the .xml file.

b) Any time a task or chase item is updated, it's corresponding entry in the ics file is updated too.

c) That gives users the ability to "subscribe" to this file in iCal (on OSX), or in Mozilla Sunbird (Windows, OSX, Linux), or Korganizer or Evolution (Linux) or the new Windows iCal in Vista.

Users would then see their scheduled items or chase items in their calenders.

If you haven't looked at the iCal or vCal formats, they are really simple.... just XML files that have very simple data formats that would fit very nicely with your format in Thinking Rock (I looked at the XML file you produce just so I could understand what you were saving).

If you like, I could write up some specific information on the format of the file you'd output and give it to you if you think it would be helpful. I'm actually interested enough in this feature that I might write a separate utility myself to do this (basically just scan the .XML file and produce the ICS file from it, and have it run periodically).

But realistically, it would be much better to have this functionality inside Thinking Rock itself.

What do you guys think?[/i]

Thank you for offering your help. Jeremy (programmer) will have a look at ical functionality soon and he will contact you if he needs more information.

Claire

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Claire
ThinkingRock Analyst and Tester

I was wondering if there was an ETA on getting ical/vcalendar support (via export/publish, etc. or some other mechanism) in the next version, of if perhaps that might be some time in the future further out.

If it's not coming soon, I'll take a crack at building a small script that wil read the XML output of Thinkingrock and create the ics file that can be subcribed-to from iCal, Sunbird, etc.

I have been looking at this and I hope to squeeze it into the next release.

So far I have managed to use ical4j to create an .ics calendar file and populate it with all day as well as specific time events and To Do items.
I have then been able to import the .ics file into the iCal program.

I was thinking of creating a new .ics file every time the TR data is saved. The .ics calendar would be populated with:
- scheduled actions as events at scheduled date and time,
- delegated actions as events at follow-up date,
- Do ASAP actions as To Do items.

Is it ok (for synchronising with iCal etc.) to create a new file every time? This would be easier that updating for every change. I guess that as long as the identifiers are kept the same for each event it would be ok.

How do you synchronise to a file? I could only manage to import to file but not subscribe to it.

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ThinkingRock Developer

I'm no expert here, but I believe that in order to subscribe to a .ics calendar file, it must be published either to a sharing service like iCalExchange or some type of WebDAV repository.

Also, I seem to remember reading somewhere that Google's Calendar doesn't support the vTODO format for undated ical items so it may not be able to handle the Do ASAP tasks.

Hopefully, someone with some technical expertise in this area can help out some more.

Wow, sounds great -- good work!

Yes, creating an ICS file every time that TR saves is just fine -- you can rebuild the entire ICS file and that's perfectly OK.

Subscribing to an ICS file via the Publish/Subcribe mechanism is actually pretty simple.... you can do it locally or remotely (e.g. have the file reside locally or upload it to a remote host so it's accessible everywhere).

On OSX, to do it, you can enable Personal Web Sharing (which is really just Apache), ditto on Linux.... on Windows (of course you can run Apache too, with mod_dav, which gives you webdav extensions), I believe there is a similar capability built-in to IIS, but I am not sure about doing it on just Windows XP without installling Apache.

I think for power users that want to do this, the Publish/Subscribe model works best -- it requires a little setup on their part, but that's ok -- it gives them the flexibility of potentially having that calendar available (with appropriate security) anywhere they go, and it also makes for effortless synchronization with handheld devices like Palm, Windows Smartphones, etc.

For users that have no access to a WebDAV server, or who can't follow a (occasionally) obtuse set of steps to install one locally or on their network, then they can either (a) use one of the sharing sites on the Internet (e.g. .MAC, etc.), or they can (b) just use the Import functions in their favorite calendar program (even Outlook can do this now, so just about everyone has access to that).

If other users are interested, I can write a brief set of FAQs for Windows, Linux, and OSX on how to get Subscribe/Publish working for the major applications.... the way that I see them, that would be:

OSX: iCAL and Entourage, plus Sunbird
Linux: Korganizer (KDE) and Evolution (Gnome), plus Sunbird
Windows: Outlook, Sunbird

Bottomline, though: THANK YOU! Your responsiveness is really great, and highlights the benefits of adopting a tool that is designed and built by a small group of developers -- you're iterating quickly in response to feedback and you've got nice short development/release times to keep the project moving.

If you need help testing this, by all means please email me and I'd be happy to build test cases, sample files, etc.

That would be a great help and thanks for the info.

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ThinkingRock Developer