Users should be able to choose whether reminders are generated for events in the birthday calendar

[nursoda]

I'm not sure if it's correct in "server" component - but it does not only affect calendar or contacts, so it's either both - or "server", thus I report it here. Feel free to point me to re-insert it somewhere else.

Steps to reproduce
Import a vcf file that contains data that contains birthday data.

Actual behaviour
All birthday events in calendar are created with reminder (valarm).

Expected behaviour
The admin should be able to set not to create any EVENT for contacts -or-
The user should be able to opt not to create any EVENT for imported contacts -or-
The admin should be able to set not to create any REMINDER for contacts -or-
The user should be able to opt not to create remindes (valarms) while importing (contacts).

Server configuration
Debian jessie fully patched, Apache 2.4.10 prefork, PHP 5.6.24, MySQL 5.5.52, Nextcloud 10.0 (stable) freshly installed via Webinstaller.

[nickvergessen]

Well you can also just not sync that birthday calendar, to get rid of the events?

[nursoda]

True, thanks!

However, that's not the point, is it? I like to be able to see birthdays on all devices, yet not be reminded.

At least not in the middle of the night ;-) But that's a more general request for enhancement to be able to set a fixed time or time offset for default alarms of all-day events. Which in turn could be a per installation, per account or a per calendar setting.

[nickvergessen]

@jancborchardt can we have your input here?

[mnlipp]

It's indeed extremely annoying (actually was, see workaround at the end of this comment). I moved from owncloud 9.x to nextcloud 10.0.1 yesterday. I didn't experience this problem before. The reminder pops up every time when the SOGO connector (Thunderbird/Lightning) synchronizes the birthday calendar that is automatically derived from the contacts.

I'm not sure whether this is related to importing contacts, though. I had all my contacts in the database already. So I would rephrase the requirement as "Users should be able to choose whether reminders are generated for events in the birthday calendar".

(To avoid unnecessary searching: the corresponding owncloud issue is owncloud/core#26118. It refers to the Thunderbird problem with read-only calendars https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356002. There I found that I can turn off reminders for a specific calendar in lightning -- wasn't aware of that --, which solved the problem for me.)

[nursoda]

Yes, silencing a calendar in a user agent (here: TB) works, but it's the wrong way if you don't want/need reminders at all. Problem is that you need to silence ALL user agents. Using Business Calendar on Android for example, I can switch off the SOUND, but not the notification.

[nickvergessen]

Yeah, that's why the issue is still open ;)

[jancborchardt]

The user should be able to opt not to create remindes (valarms) while importing (contacts).

This seems to be the most sensible course of action. It’s definitely not an admin decision.

@georgehrke @raghunayyar @tcitworld we could have a default reminders setting for each calendar, including subscribed ones like birthdays?

[mnlipp]

I'm not sure if a default setting for each calendar is a good idea. The problem here arises from the special birthday calendar that is generated by the server. And for this generated calendar, it is reasonable to allow the user to control if alarms should be generated along with the dates.

For "ordinary" user maintained calendars it is not the servers job to modify them. It should take and preserve whatever clients send to it. Any different behavior makes things harder to understand.

Of course, I have to admit that if the default setting is to not add alarms to dates without alarms, then the proposed feature would do no harm.

[georgehrke]

For "ordinary" user maintained calendars it is not the servers job to modify them. It should take and preserve whatever clients send to it. Any different behavior makes things harder to understand.

The server is never ever going to change any events sent by some clients.

There is a CalDAV extension providing some mechanisms for defining default alarms for allDay and timed events (see https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-daboo-valarm-extensions-01.html#rfc.section.9)
This extension actually requires the server to add the default VAlarms, but it's only used by some Apple clients and also not implemented by the CalDAV server nextcloud uses.

We could use something similar for the birthday calendar though.
Users will be able to define a custom default reminder and the server will take that choice into account when generating the birthday calendar.

[nickvergessen]

@jancborchardt so where should we put this setting? Personal page? Contacts app? Calendar app?

[georgehrke]

I'd go for the calendar app.

[mnlipp]

I'd go for the calendar app.

From a user's perspective, I agree. It's the only place where the contact birthday calendar currently appears in the user interface. (And considering the requests to allow modification of color for this calendar just as with the others, it needs an "edit" dialog on the long run anyway.)

[georgehrke]

Instead of providing default alarms for each calendar, which most clients don't expect anyway, we should simply add a simple select to the calendar settings, that provides the following options:

• None
• 9AM on day of birthday
• 1 day before (9AM)
• 2 days before (9AM)
• 1 week before (9AM)

(This select will only influence the birthday calendar, having default alarms for ordinary events is a completely different topic)

[jancborchardt]

@georgehrke sounds good!

[enoch85]

@georgehrke

(This select will only influence the birthday calendar, having default alarms for ordinary events is a completely different topic)

I would actually want this feature for ordinary calendars. Should I open a new issue or is there one already regarding this?

[georgehrke]

I would actually want this feature for ordinary calendars. Should I open a new issue or is there one already regarding this?

What exact feature do you want? :)

I don't think we will go for a dedicated input for each calendar.
But I can very well imagine adding a user-based option for all (non-birthday) calendars.
One for all day and one for timed events.

This option should only affect events created in the calendar app though. As said above, the standard for adding alarms on the server is a very uncommon and used only by apple software (to my knowledge). Implementing it might cause very weird behavior in some clients.

[enoch85]

This is what I want:

None
9AM on day of birthday
1 day before (9AM)
2 days before (9AM)
1 week before (9AM)

Works for me. :)

But I can very well imagine adding a user-based option for all (non-birthday) calendars.

[georgehrke]

Okay :)
Can you please open a feature request in the calendar bug tracker?

[nursoda]

Unspecified: What shall happen if one already has birthday events and changes the general setting? Re-Create all birthday calendar alarms?

Anyone willing to set a milestone for this issue? ;-)

[nursoda]

Sidenote in case someone stumbles upon the mute issue also discussed within this bug: Read-only calendars do not contain alarms since NC 13, see #6903. Mind that e.g. mobile clients cache existing appointments. After I removed and re-connected my account, an event that has an alarm for the "read-only-user" did not have an alarm on my device.

[CNeutron]

Seems the issue is not mute, as 6903 only concerns shared calendars.
I hope that I'm not seeing something, could you please point me in the right direction on how to get rid of the annoying birthday alarms at midnight?

[georgehrke]

This issue is still open -> you can't select it yet.

[tsvallender-zz]

Hi, just run into this issue myself. I was trying to take a look at fixing it but am struggling to work out where the calendar is actually being generated? Is it in the contacts app and if so where? Pointers appreciated.

[tcitworld]

@tsvallender Hello,
Many thanks for being interested.
The part you're looking for is in the following file, I've highlighted where the alarm is being added:

server/apps/dav/lib/CalDAV/BirthdayService.php

Lines 291 to 295 in 4475658

	$alarm = $vCal->createComponent('VALARM');
	$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', '-PT0M', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));
	$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('ACTION', 'DISPLAY'));
	$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('DESCRIPTION', $vEvent->{'SUMMARY'}));
	$vEvent->add($alarm);

My personal opinion would be for this config to be handled in the Groupware user settings alongside availability settings (new in Nextcloud 23), instead of the calendar settings like said above.

We could use the setting introduced in nextcloud/calendar#3001 (basic setting for all calendars) as a default, but I would prefer birthday calendars having their own setting.

Unrelated:
The default alarm setting over CalDAV was removed for some reason from the draft-daboo-valarm-extensions draft, which became RFC 9074, however some projects seem to use it anyway. I'm tracking this in the wiki if anyone's curious.

[tsvallender-zz]

@tcitworld Thank you for the help! I'm not a PHP guy but I'm going to set up a dev environment and see how far I can get with this.

[cneukom]

Hi all,

I have started working on this issue (related PR: #33251).

The next step is adding the configuration option to the UI.

My personal opinion would be for this config to be handled in the groupware user settings alongside availability settings (new in Nextcloud 23), instead of the calendar settings like said above.

In my opinion, such a setting should be located close to the "Enable birthday calendar" option. So, I would propose one of the following:

1. Place the "Birthday reminder" select box in the calendar settings right below the "Enable birthday calendar" option.
2. Provide both settings ("Enable birthday calendar" and "Birthday reminder") in the groupware user settings and link to them from the calendar app settings. Here we could either:
   1. keep the option "Enable birthday calendar" in the calendar settings to provide a quick way of en-/disabling it,
   2. or we could remove it there and only provide the link to the groupware user settings.

I have a slight preference for the option 2.ii. What do you guys think? @tcitworld

[nursoda]

Thanks for your effort! I vote not to implement 2i as this leads to different howtos and users might expect it to be different and need to experiment instead of knowing straight away. I' also vote for 2ii, seems very clean. Also allows for (yet undeveloped) other apps to provide birthday calendar functionality. Only keeping it with the calendar app as in 1 seems wrong as it is a server feature. But there definitely must remain a link or at least an explanation that there is such feature and what may be configured where.

[insilmaril]

Suggestion looks good, thanks!

[b-pfl]

Just as an additional thought: As it turns out, the reminders are now also sent for regular calendar events, which is annoying if you use CalDav synchronization on your devices. So if there is a way to disable reminders, this should ideally be possible for all different types of reminders.
I also tend more towards 2ii.
Thanks for starting your work on this issue!

[cneukom]

Hey all,

So I have implemented option 2ii (see #33397 and nextcloud/calendar#4402), hoping to resolve this issue :)

Just as an additional thought: As it turns out, the reminders are now also sent for regular calendar events, which is annoying if you use CalDav synchronization on your devices. So if there is a way to disable reminders, this should ideally be possible for all different types of reminders.

Hmm, I'm not sure, if I understand you correctly. You are probably referring to the feature discussed in nextcloud/calendar#629... But as I see, there is already the option "No reminder", and it's chosen by default... Also, as stated earlier in this thread, reminders for regular events are usually created by the client, so it might be the case, that one of your clients adds these reminders (and you could probably disable them there).

[nursoda]

May all changes be made by just patching / without building? If not, I'll currently only be able to test a (test) release version.

[cneukom]

No, unfortunately, testing the changes in the calendar app requires you to build the calendar app. However, the only changes in the calendar app was the renaming of the link and the removal of the "Enable birthday calendar" checkbox in the settings panel. All the rest should be testable by checking out the feature branch of the server component (for checking the generated birthday events, you can use the latest version of the calendar app).

[Naginreed]

@tsvallender Hello, Many thanks for being interested. The part you're looking for is in the following file, I've highlighted where the alarm is being added:

server/apps/dav/lib/CalDAV/BirthdayService.php

Lines 291 to 295 in 4475658

	$alarm = $vCal->createComponent('VALARM');
	$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', '-PT0M', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));
	$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('ACTION', 'DISPLAY'));
	$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('DESCRIPTION', $vEvent->{'SUMMARY'}));
	$vEvent->add($alarm);

Did i unterstand that correctly that the workaround so far is to:

1. get rid of that 5 lines containing the $alarm string in the apps/dav/lib/CalDAV/BirthdayService.php
2. save the BirthdayService.php file
3. Go To "Calendar App" -> "Settings & Import" -> "Enable birthday calendar" and Uncheck the Box
4. Check the "Enable birthday calendar" again to let the server newly build the Birthday Events without Alarms
5. Resync on the other devices/apps which are read-only anyway for the birthday calendar? (therefore there should be no backsyncs or old entries left)

So far i got no errors or strange behavior on the server, caldav sync in outlook and DAVx5 Sync on Android
and all the events now dont have a reminder.
I get that this has to be done every update until the settings are permanently implemented, but anyone noticed any issues so far with a workaround like this?

[fblz]

It is almost one year since the patch was created by @cneukom.
The patch itself was not merged but part of it seems to have made it into the dav app as of NC25.
https://github.com/nextcloud/server/blob/v27.0.0/apps/dav/lib/CalDAV/BirthdayService.php#L455 now queries a user preference instead of being hard coded.
Despite this, I was unable to find a corresponding UI element to configure the birthdayCalendarReminderOffset preference.

Am I overlooking something here?

For the time being, I set the preference via SQL:
insert into oc_preferences (appid, configkey, configvalue, userid) values ('dav','birthdayCalendarReminderOffset','-PT0M','<USERNAME_HERE>');

With (some) possible values like this.

If you want to keep the alarm, but don't ring at 00:00 AM After every upgrade, in BirthdayService.php Change the line:

$alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', '-PT0M', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));

To ring at 9AM on day of birthday: $alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', 'PT9H', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));

To ring 1 day before (9AM): $alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', '-PT15H', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));

2 days before (9AM) $alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', '-P1DT15H', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));

1 week before (9AM) $alarm->add($vCal->createProperty('TRIGGER', '-P6DT15H', ['VALUE' => 'DURATION']));

[Gezzo42]

I was able to remove the reminder by using the following command with Nextcloud 25:
sudo -u www-data php occ user:setting <username> dav birthdayCalendarReminderOffset ""
Perhaps it's a bit easier as the variant using directly the database.

[dgsiegel]

I was able to remove the reminder by using the following command with Nextcloud 25: sudo -u www-data php occ user:setting <username> dav birthdayCalendarReminderOffset "" Perhaps it's a bit easier as the variant using directly the database.

Works great even on Nextcloud 28. Be sure to recreate the Birthday calendar (e.g. disable and re-enable it), as existing entries won't be updated.

[fblz]

The question is, when will the frontend component get the update?

[UlyssesZh]

sudo -u www-data php occ user:setting <username> dav birthdayCalendarReminderOffset ""

This does not seem to work with Nextcloud 30.0.0? I re-enabled the birthday calendar after running this, but the reminder is still at 9:00 on every birthday.

---

Edit: Never mind. It still works. Somehow I have to refresh the webpage.

[Larsn-Rinnstroem]

After using that command and re-enabling, the birthday calendar is a shared calendar from me with myself instead of being a stand-alone on the list with the other calendars. Is that on purpose?

[UlyssesZh]

Just refresh the webpage, and the "shared" label will disappear.