Reminder pop-up for exchange calendar items does not work

[Kuropka]

Binary package hint: evolution

Hello,

after upgrading to current Ubuntu 7.04 Beta I noticed that no reminder pop-ups appear for calender items, which are stored in the exchange server, even though they have an alarm set (e.g. 15 minutes prior the appointment).

Best regards,
Dominik

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Do you have evolution running? Or do you just use the desktop and the calendar applet?

[Kuropka (d2)]

I have evolution running. I am not sure what the "calender applet" is, but on my desktop also the time and date is shown in the upper right corner. When clicking on this, a calender including all tasks (including exchange stored ones) is showed. The information field of this tool shows the name as "Uhr" (English translation: "clock").

[Kuropka (d2)]

This bug unfortunatelly still appears with the finally released Ubuntu Version 7.04 from last week.

[Richard Wilbur (richard-wilbur)]

I confirm this bug's presence on a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop (x86_64 SMP, my work machine) that is fully updated. Event notifications/alarms work for the Personal calendar but not the exchange calendar even though they are both selected in preferences->Calendar and Tasks->Alarms. What information would be helpful in solving this bug?

I used to count on notifications from my Exchange calendar events under Ubuntu 6.10 when I was using a different machine. This is pretty unhandy as I kept expecting it to work and checking the configuration after I missed the notifications.

[Richard Wilbur (richard-wilbur)]

Following comments in another bug discussion, I ran <code>cd; gconf-editor</code> and noticed that apps->evolution->calendar->notify->calendars == [] while apps->evolution->calendar->display->selected_calendars == [1177098729.11452.8@rwilbur-desktop,1177098903.11452.24@rwilbur-desktop]

So, I thought I might as well try to populate the notify->calendars[] list with the names of the calendars as they appear in display->selected_calendars[]. First, I tried to copy and paste text from the "Configuration Editor" window without success. Then I typed the names into a text editor and then right-clicked on notify->calendars[] and selected "Edit Key". Finally, I clicked "+Add" for each calendar name and pasted the text in from my text editor window, clicked "OK", and then "Quit". I restarted Evolution, created a test appointment on the Exchange calendar to occur in 17 minutes and happily received a notification in 2 minutes (15 minutes before the appointment)!

Now, the remaining question is, "Why does the local Personal calendar give alarm/notification/reminder without being listed in notify->calendars[]?" Even more troubling, "Why aren't any calendars listed in notify->calendars[] when two are selected in the preferences for both display and notification?"

[Ben Williams (benw)]

Just another tip: Richard's solution didn't work for me but then I opened up Edit->Preferences->Calendars and Tasks->Alarms and unchecked and rechecked my calendars. All of my queued up alarms popped up at that point and now all of my alarms work fine.

[Richard Wilbur (richard-wilbur)]

Ben, thanks for the tip. I rebooted some time after I wrote the last comment to let a kernel update take effect. Upon reboot the gconf settings were still there but I no longer received notifications/alarms. I was disappointed until I just looked at your tip and tried deselecting and reselecting my Exchange calendar for alarms in preferences and it immediately responded with an overdue alarm.

Strange that I could see the appointments but not receive any notifications as if the events weren't being put into the notification queue when the Exchange calendar connection was initially established.

[Kuropka (d2)]

I observed the same here. If I start Evolution after reboot, no exchange pop-ups appear. After unchecking and rechecking my exchange calendar in Edit->Preferences->Calendars and Tasks->Alarms, the pop-ups appear. However this is not of persistent nature. After the next reboot by default no exchange pop-ups appear as long as I do not uncheck and recheck my exchange calender again.

So we make progress... but the current solution is still annoying.

[Uzla (ado)]

2 Kuropka said on 2007-06-10

Confirmed. It is affecting me exactly in the same way (Ubuntu 7.04, Evolution 2.10.1). Checking /unchecking make it work untill next reboot.

This stops me for migration whole company from Windows to Linux.
Hope it would be fixed soon.

Thanks.

[nerile (nerile)]

I can also confirm this bug, but unfortunately neither of the workarounds work for me. I have edited both the calendars and selected_calendars in gconf-editor and done the unchecking/checking in Evolution preferences. After setting apps->evolution->calendar->notify->calendars in gconf-editor, it DID work briefly, but only until reboot. Now I cannot make it work at all.

[nerile (nerile)]

Also, I am running Kubuntu 7.04 and Evolution (and related packages) 2.10.1-0ubuntu2

[Forest (foresto)]

I'm having the same problem, also on fully updated Ubuntu Feisty. Here are a couple of upstream bugs that look relevant, but don't seem to be getting much attention:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420207
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436628

[Kuropka (d2)]

Unfortunatelly this is still an issue with Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon Beta :-(

[Ari (ari-reads)]

I also had the exact same problem after I updated to 7.10. I tried Richard solution above, logged out then back in, still no luck. Then I tried Ben's, and now life seems good again. Perhaps both Richard & Ben's tips are applicable here

[Jesse Gilles (jesse-gilles)]

I am running 7.10 and also still have this problem (had it in 7.04 too). I have found the only reliable way to get alarms is to forcibly shutdown the evolution components when restarting evolution. evolution --force-shutdown; evolution. If I do this, I seem to always get alarms and my appointment list for that day. I close evolution at the end of the day and when I start it again the next day, I run it with --force-shutdown first. Also, I would like to add that I had this problem with local calendar items too -- not just items in Exchange calendars. This is a serious usability issue.

[Francesco Locunto (franceloc)]

Please see my post on this thread:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/147163

to resolve this problem (I hope, at least for me (Gutsy) it works perfectly ;))

If that workaround works for you too, please let me know.

[Francesco Locunto (franceloc)]

Just one note: I only use local calendar items (which suffers of the same problem), so test if it works for exchange calendar items too.

[Jesse Gilles (jesse-gilles)]

I tried out this workaround and it works for me (with Gutsy). I only added '--sm-disable' to the Evolution Alarm Notify command under the "Startup Programs" tab of the Sessions preferences. Now I get calendar alarm notifications for both local and exchange calendar events.

[Jorge Castro (jorge)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Hardy Heron. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at [WWW] http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Ben Williams (benw)]

I installed Hardy Beta in a VirtualBox VM and left Evolution running pointed at my Exchange server for a few days. All alarms showed up correctly. This one appears to be fixed in Hardy.

[Jesse Gilles (jesse-gilles)]

I tested this with hardy last week as well and I did get alarms for exchange calendar appointments, provided evolution was running. If evolution was not running, I only got alarms for local calendar appointments.

[BeefGeek (beefgeek)]

I have Hardy Heron running in production now, installed from scratch by CD. I still have the same lack of Evolution calendar reminders as I've had for some time now. This bug is not fixed for me.

[BeefGeek (beefgeek)]

One additional comment; when I go into "gconf-editor" and look at "apps>evolution>calendar>display" there actually is NO entry for "selected_calendars" at all (yet it does display my exchange calendar with no problem). It goes straight from "month_vpane_position" to "show_categories". So I'm unable to even try Richard's idea from above since I'm not sure where to find what my calendar's name is.

[Steinar Bang (sb-dod)]

I have Hardy Installed from scratch, and no evolution calendar reminders.

evolution 2.22.1-0ubuntu3.1
evolution-exchange 2.22.1-0ubuntu1

I had flaky calendar functionality in Gutsy and Feisty, but none at all in Hardy.

[BeefGeek (beefgeek)]

I have figured out a work around to this problem in Hardy that would probably work in prior versions too.

I saw in prior posts it was mentioned that you should have your calendar name in gconf-editor under "apps>evolution>calendar>notify" in the "calendars" key. However I noticed that there was nothing in mine. It was empty "[]". So as an experiment I just right clicked on the calendars key and selected "Edit" and added a value to it of "Calendar". This happens to be the name of the calendar under the exchange section of my Evolutions calendars (see attached images).

As soon as I did this and restarted Evolution my pop-reminders began working for my Exchange calendar appointments. And they have continued working after every reboot. I have not had to go in and re-enter anything, or restart anything since then. THAT part has worked flawlessly ever since.

[Steve Steiner (ntwrkguru)]

^^ Worked for me! Thanks so much. This has been a problem ever since upgrading to 8.10.