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.