Exchange 2010 Web Services - creation of an all day event appointment

Question

I got in trouble with creation of an all day event appointment using Exchange 2010 Web Services (EWS) .

According to existing requirements to create an All day event appointment object needs to have specified start and end time (i.e. 10/20/2011 12:00:00 AM), and also timezone.

But my application converted to use EWS instead of WebDAV sets start and end time converted to GMT (Greenwich) time which then sent to Exchange server.

Such technique worked perfectly with WebDAV. But with EWS I get weird result: appointment spans on 3 (three) days, and is NOT All day event appointment !!!

My mailbox timezone set to Pacific Standard Time (using OWA interface), and Exchange server Date and Time also set to Pacific Standard time.

Appointment start and end times are set to “2011-10-20T07:00:00.000Z” and “2011-10-21T07:00:00.000Z” respectively. In terms of local time these times are “10/20/2011 12:00:00 AM” and “10/21/2011 12:00:00 AM” respectively (considering Daylight Saving time).

If IsAllDayEvent property of appointment object set to False – appointment created correctly – not as All day, starts at 10/20/2011 12AM and ends at 10/21/2011 12AM, and occupies only one day – October /20/2011 in Outlook Calendar.

But If isAllDayEvent property of appointment object set to True (everything rest remains the same) – appointment starts at Oct/19/2011 9:00:00PM, ends at Oct/21/2011 9:00:00PM, and is NOT All day.

It might be that I’m doing something wrong, but based on described above following question raised for me:

• does EWS support Greenwich Time for All day events?
  If yes – what might be my mistakes?

I appreciate any suggestion. Sincerely Andrew

Answer 1

Ran into a similar problem where my all day event was being created from 4pm the previous day to 4pm the specified date of the all day event (I'm currently in pacific standard time -8 so appears to be a UTC bug on the exchange server side).

When calling Appointment.save, use the optional second parameter, SendInvitationsMode.SendToNone, e.g.:

a.save(new FolderId(WellKnownFolderName.Calendar), 
    SendInvitationsMode.SendToNone);

If you prefer XML see Envelope/Body/CreateItem/@SendMeetingInvitations:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"
    xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
    <soap:Header>
        <t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2007"></t:RequestServerVersion>
    </soap:Header>
    <soap:Body>
        <m:CreateItem SendMeetingInvitations="SendToNone">
            <m:SavedItemFolderId>
                <t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="calendar"></t:DistinguishedFolderId>
            </m:SavedItemFolderId>
            <m:Items>
                <t:CalendarItem>
                    <t:Subject>From Java EWS</t:Subject>
                    <t:Body BodyType="HTML">the body</t:Body>
                    <t:Start>2014-01-03T00:00:00Z</t:Start>
                    <t:End>2014-01-04T00:00:00Z</t:End>
                    <t:IsAllDayEvent>true</t:IsAllDayEvent>
                </t:CalendarItem>
            </m:Items>
        </m:CreateItem>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>