iPhone 3G sending calendar invites possible?

This is not possible. You can't create events with invitations. And you can't answer any invitation that is sent to you. You have to do this on a Mac or PC.

The same goes for MobileMe. No creation, no answering.

Is there any word out there as to whether this type of functionality is going to implemented in the future or not? Having to go to my Mac to create events with multiple attendees -- or to even just accept an .ics invitation that has been sent to me via email -- is a bizarre situation given the way the rest of the product works.

Frankly, I don't see why this functionality isn't here -- at least the ability for Mail on the iPhone to read an .ics attachment and import the info into the iPhone Calendar application. The "Calendar" section of the iPhone info page is misleading at best with regard to this functionality...

Has anybody heard anything?

Apple does not comment on future products or features (or complaints).

From the iPhone 3G manual:

"If you have a Microsoft Exchange account set up on iPhone with Calendars enabled,
you can receive and respond to meeting invitations from people in your organization.
When you receive an invitation, the meeting appears in your calendar with a dotted
line around it. The icon in the lower-right corner of the screen indicates the total
number of new invitations you have, as does the Calendar icon on the Home screen."

And:

"Tap Accept, Maybe, or Decline."

This means that answering invitations should work if you are connected to a Microsoft Exchange server.

It does not work if you're using MobileMe, because MobileMe is only "Exchange for the rest of us". And it does not work if you only use iCal with no server support. In short, if you are using iCal, you're out of luck.

Even if you use MS Exchange, you could only respond to invitations. You can't create them.

There's more. If you view an event on your iPhone, you can see the names of the attendees. You cannot see if they accepted the invitation because there is no status symbol. You can't see if you accepted yourself.

Have fun!

So in short, "no". 😉

Thanks Joern. Guess I'll be hoping for 2.1 to bring this functionality. (Also hoping MobileMe web app Calendar will allow you to add multiple attendees to events by that time...)

this is my one MAJOR gripe with the iPhone and I can't understand why Apple left the ability to send calendar invites out. Seems like a HUGE oversight to me. I create calendar events on my phone regularly and really miss the ability to send invites to the relevant people.

Apple - please add this functionality ASAP.

Does anyone know the logic behind why they left this functionality out?

This a pretty big pain. I too look forward to seeing this resolved. It can't be a huge deal. They have pretty much everything else working so I can't imagine it would be THAT hard to implement this feature.

It also seems like it would be easy and worthwhile to support handling .ics files from other services. For instance, I have Exchange sync set up for my work email, but also have my Gmail mail sent to my phone. When one of my friends sends me a Google Calendar invite, I should be able to accept/decline it just like an Exchange Calendar invite and have it show up in my calendar. There is currently no way to do this on the iPhone.

That is exact situation as well. I could do this on my blackjack and that is one of the worst pohoes ever (ATT replaced mine 3x due to warentee issues).

Afreet wrote:
It also seems like it would be easy and worthwhile to support handling .ics files from other services.

No kidding. After all this is kinda the whole point of the ics format in the first place.

It boggles the mind that Apple would consider releasing "calendaring" without the ability to invite others.

Then again, I am still bitter over the fact that MobileSilo requires one to forward all email to me.com for push to work. Sure, I can get IMAP from my phone directly but isn't the idea behind this the "one place" nirvana?

Message was edited by: WilliamOfMacdom

Why spend $100/year on MobileMe if your phone could ICS send/accept calendar invitations, iTunes could sync with Google Calendar, or if you had something like NemusSync that could dynamically network sync with Google Calendar.

Alternatively, if you had a cool phone running free(dom) software (aka, open source), then we (the programming community) could fix it.
http://code.google.com/android/

One workaround to this problem that I've found is to use OWA to schedule those meetings. OWA does seem to work fine through the Safari browser on the phone. You log in, go to your calendar, and create an event with invites. Assuming you are syncing your calendars to / from Exchange, the event should show up on your calendar on your phone next time it syncs. An added bonus of doing it that way is you can see availability for invitees and choose the best time for the meeting. I doubt that last bit of functionality will be available on the iPhone even if/when they add the capability to invite attendees to meetings from the calendar on the iPhone. I'm nearly certain you can not do it on BlackBerry, and I need to check if you can do it from a Windows Mobile device.

For those that don't know, OWA=Outlook Web Access (usually at mail.yourdomain.com or something like that). It gives you access to your Exchange server via a browser.

I've been using OWA while waiting for corporate to open up access to push to my phone. Unfotunately it's a completely graphical interface which is slow to load, especially if you are stuck with Edge.

I can't believe there is no way to send a calendar appointment through email. Also, I can't believe that there is a location field that doesn't link to the Google maps app. How useful would that be. So much is well though out here, how are these productive things missing?

I'm with you. Just moved from a Windows Mobile device to the 3G. Great phone but has some fundamental flaws for the business user. Not being able to create and sent meeting invitations from the phone is a big one.

Hopefully Apple monitors these forums and will address it in a near future release.

I just wanted to add my voice to the discussion to let Apple know that this is a big problem that needs a fix.