Event Invitations in Outlook/Entourage calendar?

[Randy S.]

My job involves using MaxBulk to send out bulk mail announcements of the films, concerts and events presented in our performing arts center.

Is there a way to attach event invitations to a message the way Outlook/Entourage does?

My boss is asking me if it is possible to have MaxBulk Mailer do the same so that when our customers get our messages, they have the ability to add our events to their calendars.

Is this possible? How?

T.I.A.

Randy S.

Technical Manager
Mercyhrust College - Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center.

[stanbusk]

How does that event look like?

[Randy S.]

In MS Outlook or MS Entourage, your personal calendar has an option to "invite" another person to an event. You enter a date, time and description in the description just like normal. Then you click the "invite" button. An e-mail is sent. The person who reads it has the option to add that item to their own personal calendar so that they are reminded.

We use MaxBulk Mail to send out weekly newsletters that tell our customers about the movîes, music concerts, stage performances and lectures that we will be offering in the coming weeks.

We are actually getting quite a positive response to this. Our customers like to be reminded of the shows they want to see at our Performing Arts Center.

Several of our customers have suggested this to us. When we send out a bulk e-mail to our customers advertising a movîe, for instance, we would like the time and date of that movîe, along with a one sentence synopsis to appear in the person's calendar. (If they want it to.)

I have sent myself a message from Outlook and Entourage. The invitation just appears to be some code at the bottom of the message. But, when I tried to insert that code into the bottom of the bulk e-mail as it appears in MaxBulk Mailer, the code comes through just as plain text.

I'm missing some trick of encoding that causes Outlook/Entourage to trigger the calendar function.

What is it? Can I add that to one of my messages?

[stanbusk]

Is it HTML code? Can yoou paste a copy here?

[Randy S.]

I don't think it's HTML. As soon as I get a chance at work, I'll make a pretend event with Entourage and send myself an e-mail. Then I will "View" source" on the entire message and post the result here.

Stand by, please...

[Randy S.]

Hi again!

Below, you will find the source content of an e-mail sent out by MS Entourage (Mac) to invite another person to an event at our theater.

This is a sample event, not a real one.

The invitation is for an 8:00 P.M. presentation of "Gone With the Wind" on Wed. June 13, 2007. It includes a short synopsis of the movíe. (Copied from IMDB.)

The message source is as-is, just the way I received it through e-mail, except I edited out the personally identifiable information such as e-mail address and IP numbers.

Thanks again for all your help!

(P.S.: Why does the word "m-o-v-i-e" seem to get blocked out by the BBS software as a banned word?)

[stanbusk]

Ok. What it is supposed to happen when a recipient receives such message. Is the calendar updated automatically, does Entourage ask the user?

[Randy S.]

If the recipient uses Entourage or Outlook (or a compatible alternative, as the case may be) when they receive the e-mail they will see a message asking them if they want to add this event to their calendar.

If the recipient confirms, the event is added. Then, depending on how the user has his software set up, an alarm can be activated to remind him of the event.

[stanbusk]

Ok. I have tried to modify MaxBulk to support that unsuccessfully so far. I am able to reproduce the same message structure however Entourage simply shows the message, no alerts. I just wonder where is the problem.