Cannot send ics attachment and have it display as invitation in Gmail

[gcatto]

Issue Summary

I have been trying to get including an ics attachment working for Gmail, so that it shows up as an invitation that the user can accept, reject, etc. I've been trying to use issues such as #217 (and others, from other sendgrid languages) to try to get this to work, but I have had no success. I was hoping someone could point me to (recent) examples or walk me through where I am going wrong.

If I include method: 'REQUEST in the .ics file and method=REQUEST in the attachment type, it does not show up in Gmail as an invitation at all.

If I remove those, it shows up but without the inline buttons to attend, reject, etc.:

Code Snippet

const msg = {
  to: '',
  from: '',
  subject: '',
  html: html
};

msg.attachments = [{
  content: Buffer.from(icsValue).toString('base64'),
  filename: 'invite.ics',
  type: 'text/calendar; method=REQUEST',
  disposition: 'attachment',
}];

sgMail.send(msg);

I am using adamgibbons/ics for creating the .ics file, and I am including method: 'REQUEST', and the output from running this is the icsValue in the snippet above.

Technical details:

• sendgrid-nodejs version: 7.0.0; also tried 7.1.1
• node version: 12.18.0

[childish-sambino]

JSON payload example here: sendgrid/sendgrid-ruby#298 (comment)

You should be able to generate a similar payload using this repo.

[gcatto]

Thanks for link. I tried to use and apply that is happening there to the nodejs case, but I don't seem to be having any more success.

const msg = {
  to: '...',
  from: '...',
  subject: '...',
  content: [{
    type: 'text/plain',
    value: text
  }, {
    type: 'text/html',
    value: html
  }, {
    type: 'text/calendar; method=REQUEST',
    value: icsValue.toString()
  }],
  attachments = [{
    content: Buffer.from(icsValue).toString('base64'),
    filename: 'invite.ics',
    type: 'application/ics',
    disposition: 'attachment'
  }]
};

sgMail.send(msg)

The email sends and comes through, but still without the Gmail invite UI showing up. The icsValue is the result from using the adamgibbons/ics library I mentioned above.

[thinkingserious]

Hello @gcatto,

Thanks for submitting a GitHub issue! We are very sorry that you are running into this problem. In order to better serve you, as this does not present itself as a library specific issue, we would like to ask that you reach out to our support team at https://support.sendgrid.com.

Thank you!

SendGrid DX Team

[rileyai-dev]

@gcatto Have you had any success? I'm stuck with the same problem...

[gcatto]

@GrapevineAI unfortunately no, I put the feature on the back burner for now.

[rileyai-dev]

😔
@thinkingserious Any clear example for this library? SendGrid's doc is usually great why such simple task is not properly documented?

[Metroxe]

Any update on this?

[Thakursim]

Any update ?

[easyadin]

did anyone manage to resolve this issue?