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Re: Clarification for Free/Busy



V. Oliver wrote:

I am hoping that someone can clarify how to map from a VEVENT component's properties to what should be returned for a Free/Busy request.
RFC 2445 states unambiguously that TRANSP is the property that is to be used to return Free/Busy status. From "4.8.2.7 Time Transparency":
Description: Time Transparency is the characteristic of an event that
determines whether it appears to consume time on a calendar. Events
that consume actual time for the individual or resource associated
with the calendar SHOULD be recorded as OPAQUE, allowing them to be
detected by free-busy time searches. Other events, which do not take
up the individual's (or resource's) time SHOULD be recorded as
TRANSPARENT, making them invisible to free-busy time searches. 

SHOULD means you can break the rule if you want.
MUST means you can not break the rule and be compliant.

This seems clear until I read the description of the free busy time type parameter, FBTYPE (a parameter of FREEBUSY, which is a property of a VFREEBUSY component). From "4.2.9 Free/Busy Time Type" (fbtype):
Description: The parameter specifies the free or busy time type. The
value FREE indicates that the time interval is free for scheduling.
The value BUSY indicates that the time interval is busy because one
or more events have been scheduled for that interval. The value
BUSY-UNAVAILABLE indicates that the time interval is busy and that
the interval can not be scheduled. The value BUSY-TENTATIVE indicates
that the time interval is busy because one or more events have been
tentatively scheduled for that interval. If not specified on a
property that allows this parameter, the default is BUSY.
The above clearly states that there are four (4) levels of free/busy:
FREE
BUSY
BUSY-UNAVAILABLE
BUSY-TENTATIVE
What I'm missing is a way to map from an Event's TRANSP property which has only two states (FREE or BUSY) to these four states.

It is not a 1:1 mapping. That is a time can be marked as BUSY in the FREEBUSY reply
and not have an entry in the calendar. That is the issue at the heart of the debate about always
automatically returning the CALID busy time and not the CU busy time.

There is also the STATUS property that may help.

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