We have a small problem with 'locked' calendar fields in our FileMaker solution.

Some of our appointments are locked using caculations in the field validation settings to prevent some users modifying approved appontments (the field validation returns false if the appointment has a status of approved, and the user does not have enough privileges to modify the field).

When trying to modify such an appointment using iCal, an error message is shown like "The server responded with an error. The request for xxx in myCalendar in account yyy failed." with the option to either "Stay Offline", "Revert to Server" or "Go Online", which is fine.

When modifying the same record from an iPhone, no error message is shown, and the calendar seems to stop working competely (I guess it goes offline). The only way to reactivate the calendar is to disable it, and then re-enable it again.

Is there a way to ignore these errors on the iPhone, and always "Revert to Server" ?

Alexander Veenstra

Hi Alexander,

Unfortunately no. Zulu uses Filemaker Server's XML Custom Web Publishing and using validation with CWP is always tricky. We don't have any control over the iCal messages themselves, so it's best to not let these validation errors occur in the first place if possible.

You are correct about the iPhone behavior, as basically the same thing is happening, but without the error messaging you get on the desktop.

If you need to have the validation on, then the only option would be to try and bypass the validation calc for someone coming in through CWP, i.e.

PatternCount ( Get ( ApplicationVersion ) ; "Web" ) = 1

This would, of course, allow them to edit the locked event then, so probably not what you want.

Another possibility would be to move the "locked" events to a different calendar (calendarlist) using filtering, and then only allow that calendar to be accessed via a subscription, so the events couldn't be edited at all, but that's all I can think of.

hth,
Jason