Meeting invitations

Collabase sends each participant a calendar invitation by mail, as an .ics file their calendar app understands. Collabase stays the place where the meeting is managed: the time, the participant list and the answers are what Collabase says, and calendars receive a copy.

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Send the invitations

For a series, the first invitation contains the whole series. Announcing one date of a draft series announces the later dates with it.

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What people receive

The mail is sent from your instance’s system mail address, the one set under Admin → Settings → Mail. In the calendar entry, the meeting’s organizer is named as organizer. Each member gets the mail in their own language; external people get it in the organizer’s language. The calendar entry carries the title, time, duration, place or video link, the organizer, and the names and addresses of the participants. It never contains the agenda or notes.

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Answer an invitation

Members answer in Collabase, either on the meeting under Will you attend? with Accept, Maybe or Decline, or with the links in the mail. A link from the mail opens the meeting after sign-in and saves the answer. You can change your answer at any time. Organizers see the answers under Participants: a summary such as 4 accepted · 1 maybe · 1 declined, the answer next to each person, and No answer from 2 for those who have not answered.

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Answers of external people

External people cannot sign in, so they have no view of the meeting, its agenda or its note. Their calendar reply reaches the organizer by mail. To record it, open the menu next to the person and set Answer (entered by hand).

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Keep calendars up to date

Collabase works out what each calendar holds and sends only what is needed. A person added and removed again before the mail went out gets nothing.

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Cancel or delete a meeting

To cancel, open the status menu at the top of the meeting details and choose Cancelled. Add an optional Reason, then confirm with Cancel meeting. Everyone who received an invitation gets a cancellation in their calendar. A draft was never sent, so cancelling it notifies nobody. Delete meeting removes a meeting with its agenda, outcomes and decisions for good. It is available only for drafts and cancelled one-off meetings:

• A planned meeting sits in people’s calendars. Cancel it first, then delete it.
• A meeting that took place stays, with its decisions and outcomes.
• A date of a series is cancelled, not deleted.

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When a mail does not arrive

Collabase tries each mail up to three times. If a mail still fails, organizers see These calendars did not get the latest mail on the meeting, with the affected addresses. Check the address, or the mail settings under Admin → Settings → Mail. Hide this notice removes the warning once you have dealt with it. Bounces that arrive later, such as a full mailbox, are not reported back to Collabase.

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Subscribe to your meetings

The calendar subscription puts all your meetings into Outlook, Apple Calendar or Google Calendar as one subscribed calendar, called My meetings. It is personal: each member creates their own. What the subscription contains:

• Meetings you are invited to, from 90 days back to a year ahead. Drafts are left out; cancelled meetings appear as cancelled.
• Title, time and a link to the meeting. No place, no agenda and no other participants.
• Your access is checked on every refresh. When you are removed from a meeting, it disappears with the next refresh. How often that happens is set by your calendar app.

If you also receive the invitation by mail, the meeting appears twice in your calendar: once from the invitation and once from the subscription. Hide one of the two calendars if that bothers you. Administrators who run their own reverse proxy should keep these addresses out of the access logs. See Calendar subscriptions in access logs.