Send an actual outlook meeting request without using Outlook

Question

So, Using rails/ruby & linux I want to be able to send an actual, authentic Outlook-style meeting request. Authentic in that it should behave like a meeting request behaves when sent from Outlook.

Note that I don't mean sending an iCal/vCal as an attachment to an email - I can already do that. The issue with the iCal route are:

• In Outlook, you have to open the .ics attachment (double-click) to get the meeting details & accept it
• If the email recipient is the organiser of the meeting (ical organizer email == current user email) then that user can't add the meeting to their calendar (Outlook helpfully thinks that as you're the organiser, you already know about it)
• On an iPhone (I know...) emails with attached icals DO NO show up in the list of invitations you've received. Everyone here who uses an iPhone looks in this list for invitations they need to accept, so mine need to show up there too. Outlook meeting requests show up in here.

So does anyone know how to send an outlook meeting request from rails??

UPDATE I thought it would be helpful to describe what I want to achieve:

3 people: [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

On the rails app James arranges a meeting with Alice, and invites Bob along as an attendee. The rails app should now send a meeting request (with James as the organiser) to James, Alice and Bob (as an attendee), such that all three of them can easily add this meeting to their Outlook calendar (at this point I do not care about declines/maybes). Additionally, Bob uses his iPhone linked via ActiveSync to an Exchnage account, so this should work for him as well.

UPDATE 2: Here's the content of my ics file (this is attached to an HTML email) which is emailed to [email protected] (organizer) plus the attendees. Everyone needs to be able to add this to their calendar:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:REQUEST
PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby
BEGIN:VEVENT
ORGANIZER:[email protected]
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
DESCRIPTION:QBR meeting\nWe will discuss the following:\n\nLocal Market\nBusinessPlanning\nProduct Range\nMarketing & Retailing Activity\n
DTEND:20130914T154500Z
DTSTAMP:20130911T140600Z
DTSTART:20130914T134500Z
CLASS:PRIVATE
LAST-MODIFIED:20130911T140600Z
LOCATION:Somewhere in a far off land
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Meeting with The Wizard
UID:MEETING71
URL:http://internal.company.co.uk/meetings/71
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

When that email appears in my (james) outlook, There is a .ics attachment (the email is otherwise a regular HTML email). Opening the attachment I get told that, as the meeting organizer, I do not need to reply & there is no "accept" or "add to calendar" option

UPDATE 3:

This is what I'm now sending:

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:02:52 +0100
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: Meeting with Someone Interesting
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/calendar;
 charset=UTF-8;
 method=REQUEST;
 name='meeting.ics'
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby
BEGIN:VEVENT
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
DESCRIPTION:QBR meeting\nWe will discuss the following:\n\nProfit\nProfit &
  Loss\n
DTEND:20130913T113000Z
DTSTAMP:20130911T133500Z
DTSTART:20130913T093000Z
CLASS:PRIVATE
LAST-MODIFIED:20130916T150200Z
LOCATION:Someplace
ORGANIZER:[email protected]
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Meeting with Someone Interesting
UID:MEETING69
URL:http://10.0.0.29:3000/meetings/69
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Answer 1

Do not send the iCal file as an attachment. The data above must be the only MIME part in the message and its content type must be text/calendar

MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: test
To: <someuser@dom,ain.demo>
Content-Type: text/calendar;
    method=REQUEST;
    name="meeting.ics"

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:REQUEST
PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby
BEGIN:VEVENT
ORGANIZER:[email protected]
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
ATTENDEE:[email protected]
DESCRIPTION:QBR meeting\nWe will discuss the following:\n\nLocal Market\nBusinessPlanning\nProduct Range\nMarketing & Retailing Activity\n
DTEND:20130914T154500Z
DTSTAMP:20130911T140600Z
DTSTART:20130914T134500Z
CLASS:PRIVATE
LAST-MODIFIED:20130911T140600Z
LOCATION:Somewhere in a far off land
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Meeting with The Wizard
UID:MEETING71
URL:http://internal.company.co.uk/meetings/71
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR