This issue and lack of response from Apple is driving me nuts. How they can break something for over a month and not even acknowledge and provide an update. This is basic functionality that has been around for years and they just broke it and do not care or seem to rush to fix it. If this was google or Microsoft who did this, everyone would be up to throats of those companies, but since it is Apple it seems like they are getting a pass on this. Is it because it is such a shi..ty system to begin with that no one actually using? I have no idea.
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iCloud calendar invitations issues
- Thread starter mlody
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Well, they didn't get a pass from me. I moved everything over to Google, and problem solved. I can't have calendars not working for even a day. It's incredible that they broke core basic functionality, as you say, in a public release.
As per my post on Dec 22, 2016, the problem has been resolved for my wife and I, and also a number of my friends with whom I've tested. If you're still experiencing problems, I strongly recommend following up or contacting Apple; get right past the initial line of tech support to level two techs/engineers, and discuss with them.
I have been dealing with a senior support tech for over a month on this case, and I go no where. The only thing I noticed is that when I send an invitation with a location, 95% of the time my family will get it, but when they try to do the same, it is %100 guarantee that it wont work.
This issue has MOSTLY been resolved for us. We can send invites with simple location and notes and they are received. If the location is a lookup (i.e. restaurant where system shows the address and I select it) then it is not sent.
I have to backtrack what I said before. Whereas I previously thought the issue was entirely resolved, I've now come across a scenario (again my wife sent me a calendar invite with an address, which ultimately I did not get) where it did not work. Again, taking the address out of the location field, just leaving the name of the restaurant, made the invitation go through.
I am going to be following up with Apple for status of this ongoing issue.
I am going to be following up with Apple for status of this ongoing issue.
I have been having the same issue for about 6 weeks. Also very frustrated. I've had a case open with Apple for a month. Their engineering team is still looking at my case specifically (it's my phone and my wife's phone when we add locations to Calendar events. Also happens when I send invites to friends with an address/location).
FYI: https://discussions.apple.com/message/31073653
[doublepost=1483760985][/doublepost]So I also have this issue and have isolated some conditions that cause it. For those that have intermittent success can you check if the times it failed you had any of there conditions? I have validated this with 2 engineers who got iCloud engineering involved but check this out - I gave them this data (and had also proved with their frontline techs that this was a problem on the server side but the iCloud engineers didn't read the notes correctly and waited another 3 weeks until I complained again to look into the issue.
Anyway please test these conditions. Tim Cook's office has been notified as well (I work in Silicon Valley and we have some mutual acquaintances who are very helpful).
So here is the sum total of the conditions I have found that prevent invitations from going out to meeting invitees (Please Note you just need to meet one of these conditions for the invite to fail. Oh and the minute you correct the condition)
1. Title field longer than 50 characters
2. Location field is longer than 50 characters
3. There is a “0” in the location field.
4. There is a “0” in the notes field
5. You exceed 49 characters in the notes field.
I'd be interested in what your failed invites meet any of these criteria.
My wife and I are having the exact same issue. A similar issue occurs when we attempt to add an event to our family shared calendar. If the event contains a map location, no notifications occur. Remove the map location and all is good. My guess is that this has something to do with the Calendar spam changes. Very frustrating because this used to work quite well and was great for sharing events between myself and my wife.
Maddening that all you folks are having the same issue and it emerged at the same time for my wife and I. I have worked with a second tier person at Apple Support for weeks now to no avail. He has now stopped answering my emails. Shame. We simply stopped putting in any address in the location field and it works fine. I add addresses later so I have them. Sometimes she gets an address update. Mostly not.
I am pissed beyond unreal. Apple broke this functionality almost 2 months ago and they still do not have a solution. What happened to "it just works" mantra?
I have worked with several 'senior' guys, but all they do is collect information (many time same information over and over) and supposedly forward to the 'engineering'. I am getting tired of repeating myself with the issue. Any component engineer with two idevices, or mac or a mix of both and two different icloud.com accounts should be able to reproduce this issue in less than 1 minute yet, I get asked all those stupid questions over and over.
See the parameters in my earlier post for the things that break invites. But wait there's more. See my next post
[doublepost=1484878422][/doublepost]
So it just got stranger. Now (sometimes) when my wife sends me an invite following all the parameter above it shows up as an email and NOT an invite on my calendar. If I accept the invite it still NEVER makes it to my iCloud calendar.
Sometimes if she take my name off the invite and then adds it back on I'll get the invite in my calendar but that seems to be inconsistent as well.
They have gone from the sublimely ridiculous to the completely ridiculous.
BTW I've started to hear from others that a class action lawsuit is brewing sound iCloud and this is becoming a key proof point for the case. Has anyone else heard from lawyers on this?
This is exactly the behavior my wife's account is experiencing. Only about half the invitations comes through as an actual invitation, rest of them comes via e-mail form.
Wanna see something even more crazier, then open icloud.com and log in there. you will see that some invitations have (report a junk) next to the person and the sender address is some garbage address, instead of an @icloud.com address, but others show proper @icloud.com address and (report a junk) is not there!
All I can say is that Apple majorly fu..ed up their mail servers. Either they are not running the same versions, or something else is going on within the mail cluster hence, some invites work, some dont, or they got something else goofy going on.
Fixed! Not sure what the Apple engineering team did, but the issue has been solved for my wife and I as of yesterday. How about everyone else?
I am asking Apple for more details on what the "fix" and/or the problem was — will share soon hopefully.
I am asking Apple for more details on what the "fix" and/or the problem was — will share soon hopefully.
After almost 2 months, I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday, I got a call back from Apple stating that things are working. I did few brief tests and indeed things were working. I am not saying they are 100% working yet, that it is promising.
In the next few days, I will do some more tests to see if this indeed works as expected and report back.
Thanks
In the next few days, I will do some more tests to see if this indeed works as expected and report back.
Thanks
Still erratic for me. I have calendar appt set from an event in an email. invitation doesn't get to invitee.
They said my account had been incorrectly flagged for spam. For now, it seems like a problem that has to be fixed on an individual level. Just keep hounding Apple tech support. I don't think it's a difficult fix for them to make.
Problem has been partially rectified. Now if I make appointment thru a website like opentable or create an even by clicking on a time in an email, the invitee never receives notification.
the issue seems to be fixed for my family. What a ****** service - it took Apple over 3 months to address it.
Heck, I'm still waiting for Apple engineering to fix the New Music Mx issue I reported on Jan 1.
I know this thread has been dormant for a while, but I wanted to update folks. I don't know about the rest of you, but basically what's been happening to us since about April '17 is that when an event has some of these parameters (like very long notes, url in the url field, etc.) the invitations now DOES go through [good], but I receive it as an Email as opposed to a Calendar in-app notification.
I know there's a setting in iCloud.com/calendar: Receive event invitations as: (*) In-app notifications OR ( ) Email to [icloud email address] to be used if your primary calendar is NOT iCloud. Obviously I have this setting set for in-app notifications, but I continue to receive email invitations whenever one of the parameters are met. And of course it flags the sender, which is some gibberish of letters-numbers@imip.me.com as a potential spam, which is nonsense because they're coming either from me or my wife.
Anyways, I called and spoke to a "senior" / "Tier 2" tech support at Apple today. He initially told me, "oh I use invitations, they work," but once I explained what is going on, he said, that "the techs are aware of the issue" and that "they're working on it" and that "receiving the invites via email is current workaround that the techs have set up." Don't know how much of that was lip service, but I wanted to pass the information along.
Is everyone experiencing the same issues still? Anyone have any other information?
@dreweastmead @Jjwmojo ?
I know there's a setting in iCloud.com/calendar: Receive event invitations as: (*) In-app notifications OR ( ) Email to [icloud email address] to be used if your primary calendar is NOT iCloud. Obviously I have this setting set for in-app notifications, but I continue to receive email invitations whenever one of the parameters are met. And of course it flags the sender, which is some gibberish of letters-numbers@imip.me.com as a potential spam, which is nonsense because they're coming either from me or my wife.
Anyways, I called and spoke to a "senior" / "Tier 2" tech support at Apple today. He initially told me, "oh I use invitations, they work," but once I explained what is going on, he said, that "the techs are aware of the issue" and that "they're working on it" and that "receiving the invites via email is current workaround that the techs have set up." Don't know how much of that was lip service, but I wanted to pass the information along.
Is everyone experiencing the same issues still? Anyone have any other information?
@dreweastmead @Jjwmojo ?
That explains why some of the invites my wife and I share with each other come through the Calendar app and some come via email. Thanks for the update.
From the testing I've done, it seems that if you send a simple event name "Dinner w/Mike" 7-9pm, it will go through. Adding a location doesn't seem to "break" the invite any more either. However, adding any kind of a url (I've tried something as simple as "www.abc.com") or adding a LONG/LENGTHY note in the Notes field, will cause the invite to go out as an email.
The CS/Tech I spoke with today, indicated that initially this wasn't a big issue with just a few complaints, but that over time Apple has received more complaints. I told him that my guess is 1 out of 100 bothers to call and complaint, they either don't have time or don't care enough to register a complaint/trouble ticket. It sounded like the more people contact Apple with this problem the more seriously they're going to take it. Frankly, even though I spoke with a "senior" person, and even though he told me he was logging my issue/complaint, I'm not 100% certain anything will come out of it. More calls with complaints will help though.
The CS/Tech I spoke with today, indicated that initially this wasn't a big issue with just a few complaints, but that over time Apple has received more complaints. I told him that my guess is 1 out of 100 bothers to call and complaint, they either don't have time or don't care enough to register a complaint/trouble ticket. It sounded like the more people contact Apple with this problem the more seriously they're going to take it. Frankly, even though I spoke with a "senior" person, and even though he told me he was logging my issue/complaint, I'm not 100% certain anything will come out of it. More calls with complaints will help though.