vCalendar - show as (Free/Busy/Tentative/Out of Office)

Question

I sent a vCalendar message to Outlook which results in a new Event in Outlook Calendar. How to set "Show As" field? (Free/Busy/Tentative/Out of Office)

Answer 1

Which status field do you mean? Do you mean when replying to a meeting request or when sending information about a meeting?

Either way, the answer is in the vCalendar standard document. I think you mean the STATUS field. Wikipedia has an example of this field as:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
CATEGORIES:MEETING
STATUS:TENTATIVE
DTSTART:19960401T033000Z
DTEND:19960401T043000Z
SUMMARY:Your Proposal Review
DESCRIPTION:Steve and John to review newest proposal material
CLASS:PRIVATE
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCalendar#vCalendar_1.0

The standards document for the format is: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt

You might also try creating an event in outlook, saving it as a vCard, and then opening the vCard in notepad. This will show you how outlook saves the information.

The documentation leads me to believe that you can only set a Busy or Tentative status:

4.8.1.11 Status

Property Name: STATUS

Purpose: This property defines the overall status or confirmation for
the calendar component.

Value Type: TEXT

Property Parameters: Non-standard property parameters can be
specified on this property.

Conformance: This property can be specified in "VEVENT", "VTODO" or
"VJOURNAL" calendar components.

Description: In a group scheduled calendar component, the property is
used by the "Organizer" to provide a confirmation of the event to the
"Attendees". For example in a "VEVENT" calendar component, the "Organizer" can indicate that a meeting is tentative, confirmed or cancelled. In a "VTODO" calendar component, the "Organizer" can indicate that an action item needs action, is completed, is in process or being worked on, or has been cancelled. In a "VJOURNAL" calendar component, the "Organizer" can indicate that a journal entry is draft, final or has been cancelled or removed.

Format Definition: The property is defined by the following notation:

 status     = "STATUS" statparam] ":" statvalue CRLF

 statparam  = *(";" xparam)

 statvalue  = "TENTATIVE"           ;Indicates event is
                                    ;tentative.
            / "CONFIRMED"           ;Indicates event is
                                    ;definite.
            / "CANCELLED"           ;Indicates event was
                                    ;cancelled.
    ;Status values for a "VEVENT"