Hello all,

After wasting too much time on this problem, I decided to share with the community the solution I used to correct the "not supported calendar message.ics" bug.

When this problem happens

I was working on change request, and my needs was simple: when a change state go to "Scheduled" I want to send an email to some peoples to create an event in their Outlook Calendar.

To do it, I used the ServiceNow OOTB (Out Of The Box) Email Template named "change.calendar.integration" in my notification sended to the users.

Content of the Outlook Email

As you can see, the users receive the mail and the OOTB template did the job, an event is created.

But now, when a change is canceled, I want to CANCEL this event, it's really important to not leave a obsolete event in user calendar.

To do it, I used the ServiceNow OOTB (Out Of The Box) Email Template named "change.calendar.integration*.remove*" in my notification sended to the users when a change is canceled.

And here is the problem: when the email arrives in Outlook the content of the email template is not supported:

Content of the Outlook Email

How to solve it

After longs hours of search, I didn't found any solution for this bug. And since it's a ServiceNow OOTB feature I decided to create ticket to the support, but they don't found any solution too.

But finally, I found it.

The problem is in the mail content-type.

ServiceNow automatically set the content-type to "text/calendar; method=REQUEST;", but if we have a look at the template script we can see the line "METHOD:CANCEL", and that's why Outlook can't open the iCal script.

Here is the steps to correct it:

1. Go to the "System Mailboxs" => "Outbound" => "Sent"
2. Configure => Business Rules
3. Click "New"
4. Set it like that:
   Name: Change Header Cancel
   

Table: Email [sys_email]

Advanced: Checked

When to run =>

When: before

Insert: Checked

Filter Conditions =>

"Body text" - "contains" - "METHOD:CANCEL"

Actions =>

Set field values =>"Content type" - "To" - "text/calendar; method=CANCEL"
5. Click "Save"

And here it is.

Now, when you will use the OOTB Template "change.calendar.integration.remove", juste before sending the mail, the Business Rules will modify the content-type to "text/calendar; method=CANCEL" and Outlook will read the iCal script, like he did for the "change.calendar.integration" template.

The content appear perfectly, here you can't see the event because I deleted it by clicking on "Remove from Calendar" button.

Hope this will help all the people who was in the same situation than me !

Best regards,

Fabien