Create and Send ICS Calendar Invites with Flow 02-04-2020 11:22 AM

[aprildunnam]

In this video I show how you can use Microsoft Flow to create and send out ICS Format Calendar invites.

Here's the link for the ICS File Format: https://github.com/aprildunnam/Flow/blob/master/ICSFormat

watch?v=DU_d71ykRJA

[rjhale]

Thanks.  That looks like really useful information. 

We've kind of given up on our plan of sending ICS files when a SharePoint list is updated because we were having a really difficult time figuring out how to handle recurring events.  I couldn't find a way to pull the recurrence pattern from the SharePoint list/calendar we were testing with.  Without that information it's impossible to tell exactly which days the recurring events should fall on.  

[JR-BejeweledOne]

Here is some information you may want to check into.   This is a site around the iCalendar standard.  There is some information here on UID's being included in your ics file.   Especially if you are sending these to people outside of your company or group.

https://icalendar.org/

[rjhale]

This is very useful information, and I really like the concept better than creating an event and adding the users as attendees.  

@aprildunnam do you know if there is a way to create the ics file in such a way that it creates a tentative appointment automatically on the user's calendar?  Right now, it sends the ics as an attachment, but in the Outlook desktop client there doesn't appear to be any easy way to add the event to your personal calendar. Ideally, they would receive the email and ics attachment, the event would be added to their personal calendars as a tentative appointment, and then they would just need to accept it.  Even if they didn't accept it, at least it is on their calendar.