Lotus Notes (Domino) Meeting Invitations from Mail to iCal

Question

I use an iMac at work and a MacBook Pro at home. They recently switched to a Notes-based calendar program at work, and since I don't have the Notes client installed on either machine (someone from our IT department has spent about four hours trying to install it on the iMac with no success) and the web application only works with IE 6, and there is no provision for synching the calendar with my PDA, when I heard that the e-mail meeting invitations could be imported into iCal, I was all over that.
When I opened iCal on the iMac I found that there was a "Work" calendar, and iCal's "Automatically retrieve invitations from Mail" box was checked, there were no entries in the Work calendar--or any other calendar.
When I initially looked into it, I found several threads (e.g. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5186410) in the iCal forum about time zones not being imported correctly (I wish my problems were that minor!) from Lotus Notes meeting invitations. But these threads showed vCal messages and mentioned error dialogs. I hadn't seen any dialogs, and my meting invitations are just plain text messages like this:
======================
Meeting Invitation: Norman Conquest has invited you to a meeting
Meeting Details
Subject: Let's Kill an Hour, Shall We?
Begins: 11/26/07 9:00:00 AM
Ends: 11/26/07 10:00:00 AM
Location: The Bored Room
Chair: Norman Conquest
Required Invitees: Upton O'Good, Natalie Attired, Hugh Mility, Justin Case
Optional Invitees:
To view all the details of the meeting and act on it if necessary, please
click the link below to view your calendar
======================
So I just assumed I was foiled again because the messages were not in the right format.
Later I happened to open my MacBook Pro, and, much to my surprise, I found that a small number of meetings had actually found their way into iCal, and in at least one case I know of, one has actually been rescheduled! I could hardly contain myself.
At first I thought the small number of meetings was simply due to the fact that I receive most of my work e-mail at work, on the iMac, so only those meeting invitations that I happened to open for the first time on my MacBook Pro had been imported. However, this turned out not to be the case, as I have observed many cases in which I have received new, unread meeting invitations on my MacBook Pro which have not been entered in iCal.
But what's really got me is that this whole process is so inaccessible! You'd think there would be preferences where you could tell Mail what kind of invitations to look for and tell iCal which calendar to put them in. But no. There's just one checkbox to turn the process on or off. You just check it and cross your fingers.
Just to deepen the mystery a little bit, I do know of one other Mac user who says his invitations are being reliably entered into iCal, and he can even reply to them. When I asked him for details he told me he just turned it on and it worked.
Is there anyone out there who can at least shed a little light on what I've observed, if not help me get this process working at least quasi-reliably? Is this process working for anybody else out there?

Answer 1

I use an iMac at work and a MacBook Pro at home. They recently switched to a Notes-based calendar program at work, and since I don't have the Notes client installed on either machine (someone from our IT department has spent about four hours trying to install it on the iMac with no success) and the web application only works with IE 6, and there is no provision for synching the calendar with my PDA, when I heard that the e-mail meeting invitations could be imported into iCal, I was all over that.
When I opened iCal on the iMac I found that there was a "Work" calendar, and iCal's "Automatically retrieve invitations from Mail" box was checked, there were no entries in the Work calendar--or any other calendar.
When I initially looked into it, I found several threads (e.g. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5186410) in the iCal forum about time zones not being imported correctly (I wish my problems were that minor!) from Lotus Notes meeting invitations. But these threads showed vCal messages and mentioned error dialogs. I hadn't seen any dialogs, and my meting invitations are just plain text messages like this:
======================
Meeting Invitation: Norman Conquest has invited you to a meeting
Meeting Details
Subject: Let's Kill an Hour, Shall We?
Begins: 11/26/07 9:00:00 AM
Ends: 11/26/07 10:00:00 AM
Location: The Bored Room
Chair: Norman Conquest
Required Invitees: Upton O'Good, Natalie Attired, Hugh Mility, Justin Case
Optional Invitees:
To view all the details of the meeting and act on it if necessary, please
click the link below to view your calendar
======================
So I just assumed I was foiled again because the messages were not in the right format.
Later I happened to open my MacBook Pro, and, much to my surprise, I found that a small number of meetings had actually found their way into iCal, and in at least one case I know of, one has actually been rescheduled! I could hardly contain myself.
At first I thought the small number of meetings was simply due to the fact that I receive most of my work e-mail at work, on the iMac, so only those meeting invitations that I happened to open for the first time on my MacBook Pro had been imported. However, this turned out not to be the case, as I have observed many cases in which I have received new, unread meeting invitations on my MacBook Pro which have not been entered in iCal.
But what's really got me is that this whole process is so inaccessible! You'd think there would be preferences where you could tell Mail what kind of invitations to look for and tell iCal which calendar to put them in. But no. There's just one checkbox to turn the process on or off. You just check it and cross your fingers.
Just to deepen the mystery a little bit, I do know of one other Mac user who says his invitations are being reliably entered into iCal, and he can even reply to them. When I asked him for details he told me he just turned it on and it worked.
Is there anyone out there who can at least shed a little light on what I've observed, if not help me get this process working at least quasi-reliably? Is this process working for anybody else out there?