Changing exceptions of a recurring event

Feature Requests
#1

I’m starting this thread to get some feedback and have a little brainstorming on exceptions of recurring events in the calendar application.

Some background about exceptions:

  • when you create a recurring event, and you add an exception (one of the occurrence is replaced by an incidence with different time or summary or whatever), if you delete this exception you end up with no occurrence at that date (this is the same as deleting this single occurrence).
  • you cannot edit the list of deleted occurrences. If by mistake you end up deleting an occurrence and you want to revert later on, it’s not possible by modifying the parent incidence.

These two points are not peculiar to SailfishOS, they are the same in NextCloud web interface also or the OpenXchange one. I’m not using Android, do anyone know if it is possible to do this on another system or with your favorite application (including desktop ones) ? In my personal use cases, I think it’s not convenient not being able to undeleted a deleted occurrence. For instance, we have a weekly meeting. On one date it is cancelled, but some days later, it is set again. It would be nicer to undelete it than to create from scratch a new specific even for this date…

I would like to change this and would like to discuss about the possible ways to solve the above two points :

  • when you delete an exception, the occurrence it was replacing could come back. I tested this on device and the feedback is strange somehow, because, in the month view for instance, you long tap on the exception and choose delete. Then, immediately after, the exception disappears and is replaced by the normal occurrence on that day. So it seems at first sight that you didn’t delete anything… And this is not solving the second point issue, that it’s not possible to revert a deleted occurrence.
  • I’ve tested also to add a third button in the existing page displayed when modifying a recurring incidence, something like “edit this occurrence”, “edit the series” and “edit the series exceptions” (of course this third button is not shown when there is no deleted exception). Choosing the latter open a page with the list of deleted occurrences for this recurring event. Tapping one closes the page and reenables the deleted occurrence. Efficient but not very intuitive…

Would you like to see this feature in SailfishOS, would it be usefull ? How would you like to see it UI-wise ?

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#2

I really like the second idea personally. Having a page that just summarises the recurrences for a given event would be helpful in itself (e.g. “Event occurs every Thursday.”, “List of deletions”, “List of additions”), but then being able to edit them from there would seem pretty quick and clear to me.

3 Likes
#3

I would definitely like to see such an option (the « edit the series exceptions », which could also just be named « edit exceptions »).

I have never seen such a feature on calendar applications, but I have always wondered why such a feature is not proposed, as it seems very basic and necessary.
My guess is that most calendar apps try to follow the outlook way, which does not propose this feature, and do not try to think out of this box.

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#4

Nice to see someone interested in this feature, in addition to @flypig : -) Since it will not only be for my own usage, I’ll rework on this and try to propose something, both in QML bindings (to expose exception list and deleted occurrences) and in the calendar application.

I’ll report here when this will be advanced.

2 Likes
#5

I had one ‘I’m a lazy pogrammer’ thought. Why not just deal with this in the ‘view’. Set a flag, cancelled (which can apply to ANY event). Render it crossed through in the calendar and be done with it. This pushes the problem of the model to the side. Then you only have to display ‘ancillary’ information which requires minimal logic. What am I missing?
Oh, I’m assuming this is about the jolla calendar app?

#6

@dcaliste I must have missed when you first posted this, so I’m glad you got more feedback a year later :slight_smile: Your second suggestion sounds good to me.

Also, I like what @flypig said about a summary. That would fit on the details page for the event, wouldn’t it?

For events deleted from the series, @poetaster’s suggestion also seems good and would provide a natural place for the undelete action. But how does the filtering-out of deletions actually work? I.e. will the view see the deleted events, or has some proprietary code already removed them. (Maybe even the view is proprietary, haven’t checked.)

I can see a challenge here, not a problem with your ideas, but rather related to my normal usage.

Since I can only set one reminder and/or can’t control the snooze time, I tend to edit many - perhaps most - events in my calendar as soon as the alarm goes off. So every past event and the current one will all be removed from the series and inserted as individual events, if I understand correctly. Over time this will result in a long list of exceptions for my weekly Monday meeting.

Therefore, I’d like to add that the list of edited or deleted events could use some formatting to make it easier to navigate. Italic text for past events, bold for today’s event(s) maybe?

Perhaps the list could even be trimmed to show current and future events only. Right now I don’t think I’d need to undo changes made to historic events.

#7

Forgot:
@dcaliste, thank you for your work on the Calendar app. I appreciate it tremendously. Calendar has become so much better since I first started using SFOS.

1 Like