Timezone/multiple events and geolocation @ iCalendar

[rvn]

Hello together!

I want to use iCalender to generate one file which consists of about 30 events.
But i’m facing three difficulties right now:

1. My input data and the output data differs regarding the start time. The difference seems kinda random to me and i’m not sure where to change/adjust that. I also can’t find any documentation about how the time has to be formatted, as e.g. the european time setting (CEST: 29.04.2023 19:30:00) was throwing an error with empty details:

Example

Input:

Output (Outlook):

Binary (not an expert, but it looks correct to me?):

DTSTART:20230421T193000Z
DTEND:20230421T000000Z

2. This is not a big deal and more experimental to me, but i’ve seen the possibility to use geolocation data. However, adding the field and providing latitude and longitude resulted in an error (with empty details):

3. iCalender is sending an E-Mail for each event, which were about 30 for me. Is it possible to have one event file, which consists all the 30 events?

Thanks a lot!

Information on your n8n setup

• n8n version: 0.222.3
• Database (default: SQLite): PostgreSQL
• n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main): default
• Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): docker
• Operating system: Debian 11

[rvn]

I think i’ve brought the (1) first part to work, even if i’m not quite sure why, as the values from DTSTART and DTEND still look weird to me.

I’m now using the following format:

The event.ics looks like the following:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:adamgibbons/ics
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:iekzfUDlPVyjQO1gbFSpO
SUMMARY:dummy text
DTSTAMP:20230419T112500Z
DTSTART:20230421T173000Z
DTEND:20230421T210000Z
DESCRIPTION:dummy text
URL:dummy text
LOCATION:München
STATUS:CONFIRMED
ORGANIZER;CN=Firstname Lastname:mailto:[email protected]
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
ATTENDEE;RSVP=TRUE;CN=Firstname Lastname:mailto:[email protected]
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Regarding (3), if iCalendar can’t merge all files into one: I thought maybe it is possible to do that within a extra node that can merge them e.g. like this service: https://icsmerger.com

Update: I’ve could bring it (3) to work the following way:

[Jon]

Hey @rvn,

With the timings have you set the TZ and GENERIC_TIMEZONE options for your container? It could just be that it needs setting to correct the time.

[rvn]

Hey @Jon!

actually i didn’t had it.

I’ve added the following within my docker-compose env:

  - GENERIC_TIMEZONE="Europe/Berlin"
  - TZ="Europe/Berlin"

/data # echo $TZ
“Europe/Berlin”
/data # echo $GENERIC_TIMEZONE
“Europe/Berlin”

So the following happend:

When i look trough the list i’ve spotted:

But that’s wrong as according to https://greenwichmeantime.com/time/germany/berlin/ it should be GMT+2, right?

Update: Just saw that i was already using GENERIC_TIMEZONE=Europe/Berlin inside my .env file

Anyway, it seems to work with the format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss:SSSz now:

Start
2023-04-29T18:00:00.000+02:00

End
2023-04-29T23:00:00.000+02:00

Outlook:

Thanks!