I've been planning online meetings from Europe with participants worldwide and I regularly send out .ics calendar invitations. However, I've noticed some patterns with attendees outside of the US and Europe. For example, many don't respond to the invites and just show up or don't show up at all. Some make timezone errors, showing up at the wrong time despite the calendar being able to show the correct time for them. Also, when I add links to the calendar event after sending invitations, they often don't see these updates, relying instead on the initial email details. So, I'm starting to wonder if people outside the US and Europe are not using their calendars as much. Is there a different calendar format that's more widely accepted in other regions?
2 Answers
In my experience, security protocols require us to use encrypted email links, and many people avoid Microsoft products altogether. This may lead to less interaction with .ics invites since they're not using standard programs that support them.
It seems like many people don’t really use .ics files effectively. Some systems don’t integrate well with .ics links, so that could cause issues. It might be that people are less familiar with them or just don’t prioritize calendar invites in some regions.
But I thought .ics worked fine with most email clients like Gmail and Outlook, so that seems strange!