Semantic Calendaring - Templating

Historically, Calendar User Agents (CUAs) have provided minimal support for templating supported iCalendar objects (notably VEVENT), such that sensible defaults are applied. For example, Microsoft Outlook supports the creation of both Appointments (for individual events) and Meetings (for group events), providing slight changes in the user interface (UI) to support creation of different VEVENT objects.

Similarly, you may find when you create an "All Day Event" the Time Transparency property will often default to TRANSPARENT, whereas an event with a time component defaults to OPAQUE.

These are all behaviours implemented independently by different CUAs, but a more consistent approach to templating can be achieved with the help of additional properties.

CONCEPT

The CONCEPT property was recently introduced to assist with more fine-grained classification of iCalendar object types. For example, a VEVENT object is used to represent meetings, observances, appointments, etc., but without additional properties it can be difficult to identify the purpose of a VEVENT object.

Semantic Calendaring proposes some initial CONCEPT definitions, including assumptions that can be made regarding each of the defined concepts. For example, an Observance SHOULD always have time transparency of TRANSPARENT as it does not consume any time in a calendar.

STRUCTURED-DATA

The STRUCTURED-DATA property was added to support embedding additional structured information to support enhanced interoperability between CUAs. With agreement on what structured data formats SHOULD be supported, a greater usefulness may emerge.

JSON-LD

JSON Linked Data is commonly used to define page metatadata on the World Wide Web, such that search engines can more accurately index and classify pages. Through embedding JSON-LD in iCalendar objects that same benefits relating to search indexing may be realised.