iPhone 3G sending calendar invites possible?

I'll also voice my opinion that this needs to be added. I moved from the Tilt to the iPhone and am happy I did. However it would be nice to have the new event with invitation ability added to the phone. Especially for those that also use this as a business phone.

I can't see any calendar invite on my iPhone 3G (2.1) (.ics file is attached but I can't even see the contents and even less to answer). It is hard to believe that functionality is not supported!!!

Please Apple (or anybody else) tell me that I am mistaken and what should I do to fix the problem!!!

Thanks to everybody for addressing this issue. Please add me to the list of frustrated iphone users. Not being able to invite or accept invitations in a non exchange environment is amazing to me. I moved from a Motorola Q that was not a great phone but still able to accomplish this basic functionality. I'm with the previous posters hoping somebody at Apple reads these posts and will see how much this is needed. Everytime I get an invite I think about switching back to a windows based phone...

I'm a HUGE Apple fan. Even spent over a decade of my life working at Apple. But the "Apple does not comment on future products or features (or complaints)" is kinda cocky. In the old Apple days no one would have EVER said that. It might be nice to say "hey, thank you for your feedback. We'll pass it along." Anyhow, enough griping.. I do hope that Apple is looking into being able to send calendar invitations from the iPhone. I love my 3G but this is a huge handicap. I hope it's being considered as a priority. If you want business folks to adopt the iPhone you need to allow us to conduct business with it! Thanks for your consideration and hopefully passing along the obvious huge desire/need to your developers to PLEASE add this feature to the phone's functionality.

Ditto! I cannot believe we don't have a solution to at least read the ics attachment. I recognize that there isn't a user accessible file system but some of the applications in the app store allow ftp transfer of files to store on the iPhone and those files are then accesible by other apps on the phone so it seems feasible that there would be a conduit for storing the file and using another app to open it and at least read it. It's not the optimal solution but would allow me to get my appointment details while on the road. Another solution would be to have a PC based app that I could leave running at home that automatically opened and copied calendar invites and forwarded them to my phone as plain text inside the message. If anyone has a solution along those lines please let me know becasue the price of a small pc to process invites is nothing compared to the frustration of not knowing about a pending meeting.

I just got my iPhone 3G and have some questions about the Exchange calendar invite, etc. that I don't know if any one answered in this string:

1) Does anyone know of a way or fix to how I can "Cancel" a meeting that was sent out to multiple folks? I cancel meetings, move meetings on the go all the time and could do it with my Windows Mobile 6.1 device, but can't figure out on iPhone

2) Does anyone know how to add attendees to a calendar invite or is this something that is not possible? Seems odd that the "Attendees" box shows up when it's synched fom a meeting event on my PC, yet I can't add Attendees from my iPhone.

Thanks!

Love the iPhone. The longer I have had it for, and the more I wish to use it for business and productivity. I find that longtime standard features from other PDAs and Mobiles just seem to be missing.

So I will add a ditto to the frustration at the iPhone not being an effective PDA for business use.
Doubly since I pay for two mobile me accounts, that just don't even come close to google...but are needed for the "push" capabilities.

_Ical - Iphone short comings._
1. The inability to create a meeting and add invite attendees from within iCal on iPhone leaves me at a loss for words. To have to create a meeting then wait to get back to your mac, just to then to be able to send an invite is beyond me...
2. Simply functionality like being able to create an appointment direct from your contacts.
3. The inability to google map from within the iCal appointment.

There are few more gripes too... suffice to say that I have supplied feedback. Judging by the length of this thread it will be long while until this changes.

Finally I wonder about those who work at Apple, some if not most, must be using Apple products. How does one Apple Exec sitting with another Exec in the Apple coffee lounge invite him to a personal out of hours appointment there and then with his iPhone and iCal?

I have an IPod Touch and love it and am thinking of going from a blackberry to the IPhone. As a photojournalist I receive my assignments this way. If Apple fixes this problem I will be at the store tomorrow to get an Iphone. It not I am not sure I want to do the Upgrade without being able to read calendar invites. Apple please fix this problem.

I feel the same pain and disappointment. I have been a longtime user of PDA devices going back to the original PalmPilot. There is basic functionality that is missing in the iPhone. The handling of calendar events as mentioned above, the snoozing of calendar events and spellchecking in the e-mail client. Until Apple addresses these issues, they will never capture the business and enterprise market dominated by Blackberry.

please send your feedback to http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html. if the suggestions are communicated in mass, perhaps Apple will address these issues.

HTML e-mail and slick applications are nice, but the business fundamentals need to be included that are covered by RIM and Blackberry.

This is so weird; if we cant respond to an invite on the phone, why is there even a need for an Invitation Inbox in the calendar?

I'm not sure they are very interested in the business and enterprise market, which is fine.

Craig Baron wrote:
I'm not sure they are very interested in the business and enterprise market, which is fine.

I totally disagree. I don't think they would create a web page that declares "The best phone for business. Ever." if they weren't interested.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/

The inability to open simple .ics attachments is a very strange decision though. I've got a lot of customers who have been using a service for a couple of years that alerted them to upcoming meetings. Some of the ones who don't use Exchange decided to get iPhones recently and are finding out the hard way. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a simple solution.

Cheers.

Message was edited by: mickeydee

I just want to chime in on this thread. I just bought an iPhone and somehow assumed that Apple would have done something much better with calendaring. It is really the biggest gap in the whole Apple story for me.

And it isn't just MS that does this -- the "Lightning" add on for Thunderbird handles invitations just that way you'd expect.

Does this mean we all need to jailbreak our phones and install open-source software for them to work properly?

(BTW the main reason I didn't go with Android rather than iPhone was because of the spotty coverage of T-Mobile. Apple needs to really jump start development if it hopes to keep whatever lead it has in this area).

Well, when I get a calendar invite through email, I don't get 'accept, decline or tentative'. I can see the .ics file, and the meeting updates to my calendar automatically, without me doing anything... what gives?

Is there a 'auto accept invitations' setting somewhere?

Anyone else in the same situation?

I use Gmail, and my calendar synchs via ExchageSynch

I'm in full agreement with y'all. If my old Window Mobile Treo could invite/accept meeting request then the iPhone should as well. I love my iPhone but not being able to use this simple functionality is a pain. Example: My wife and I use to sync our busy calendars by sending each other events(Family & Friends functions, Dinners, Lunch, b-day parties, etc), so we don't double book events. We're always arguing over the lack of communication with one another. This would serious save us a lot time. HELP US APPLE!!!