Zulu - Recurrence
From 360Works Product Documentation Wiki
- Recurring events are partially supported with Apple Calendar integrations, and fully supported with Google and Exchange configurations. Recurring events are difficult to manage without a calendar interface, and Zulu uses the RRULE and EXDATE properties from the CalDAV specification to accomplish this. You can see more examples of RRULE here: 3.8.5.3. Recurrence Rule
Again, Recurring events are very tricky to deal with, and should probably be managed in the calendar application you are integrating with. This page is meant as a guide for those who want to better understand how recurring events work and want to manage them from FileMaker.
Contents |
Recurring Event Components
RRULE
- The RRULE defines how the recurring event should iterate, and is best documented in the original spec, shown here: Recurrence Rule
- You can see more examples of RRULE here: 3.8.5.3. Recurrence Rule
- In FileMaker, the RRULE is stored in the parent event in the recurrence field.
EXDATE
- EXDATEs are children of a recurring series that have been deleted.
- These manifest as EXDATEs in the ICAL_DATA field for Apple Calendar, and the "exdates" property for Google and Exchange
- EXDATEs are a date-time property for standard events with times, and a date only property for all day events.
- You can read more about EXDATE documentation here: Exception Dates
- EXDATEs are stored in the parent record in the recurrence field.
Overrides
- Overrides are children of a recurring series that have been modified. They are still part of the series, but they do not obey the RRULE as some property has been modified.
- These are the most complicated thing to deal with in recurring events.
- In FileMaker, these will be represented as a new record for the event, but they will have a recurrence-id that links them back to the parent in some way.
- In most cases, it will be easier to write an EXDATE to the parent event to delete the event you want to override, then create a new event that represents the override.
Recurrence in Apple Calendar
Zulu has partial support for recurring events in Apple Calendar. These are the abilities and limitations:
- If you create a recurring event in Apple Calendar, you will see the RRULE show up in the iCAL_DATA field in FileMaker.
- You can delete occurrences from Apple Calendar, and you will see EXDATEs show up in the ICAL data
- However, if you try to modify an occurrence, the event will revert back to the series definition. Overriden events are not allowed in Apple Calendar integrations.