core#4849 Shorten all Event iCal descriptions to match Add event to Google Calendar

[shaneonabike]

Overview

See issue #4849

Before

iCal events have long descriptions

After

iCal events are shortened with a link to the event

[civibot]

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[shaneonabike]

This was originally setup here #28566, but in a cleanup it looks like I accidently nuked my branch eek.

I recreated my merge request again.

@colemanw requested that someone in the community maybe weigh in whether it's useful or not to have the full description.

@eileenmcnaughton tagged @jusfreeman to see if they might use it

cc @samuelsov @mlutfy

[eileenmcnaughton]

Hmm - still something wrong on tests on that style one

[shaneonabike]

Hmm - still something wrong on tests on that style one

Yes I saw that too but it looks like Jenkins is exploding when it's trying to copy over some style stuff to test I "think". Unless I misread.

[agileware-justin]

@shaneonabike the Google Calendar has a shorter description because the entire calendar information needs to be included in the URL. For compatibility with Internet Explorer / Edge the URL needs to be within their URL character limit, 2083 characters. That's why ICAL and Google Calendar are different.

Unfortunately, people use those web browsers.

[agileware-justin]

Apologies in advance.

I have a feeling that there will be some negative feedback about shortening the iCal information, as we do have customers that include a lot of details about how to join by MS Teams, Zoom etc. which they want to be in peoples calendar.

Maybe provide a setting to enable or disable the iCal shortening option.

[agileware-justin]

Would be good to refactor the getCompleteInfo function to use APIs as well, if you have the inclination, https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/master/CRM/Event/BAO/Event.php#L742

[shaneonabike]

Hi @agileware-justin

Don't apologize I knew it would be a hot topic, and ironically this came out of a client request whom was putting lots of details in the description but didn't want that in the iCal. You points are also super valid, and thanks for the explanation on the shorten reasoning. I had forgotten about Zoom related information appearing in the iCal, which for sure is super long. It begs the question whether :

• We should provide another field (when they click include iCal) that provides iCal specific details
• We provide a checkbox to shorten it -- assuming this would appear when you check off the Show Calendar Links option

I could see a scenario where someone wants specific information in the iCal that isn't in the actual description on the main event page (like Zoom stuff). Lastly, maybe event a hook to modify the event before iCal could be interesting, but I feel like making a custom extension just to mod the description seems like overkill.

I'm open to whatever suggestions and to make this work for everyone.