Bookings providing 2 different links depending on the format in the calendar invite.

Scenario  - a user has a bookings page that allows 3rd parties to book meetings. These are not internal 3rd parties, but external ones using a variety of email platforms. The end user clicks the book meeting link and it creates a meeting invite in the client's calendar, and sends an email to them and the calendar to accept the meeting.

That invite actually contains two things - one is the BODY of the invite with a "join the meeting now" link, and the second is an ICS file to add the meeting to one's calendar.   Depending on what the user does next the meeting either will or will not initialize on their end when they join it.  In this scenario the end user (the person booking the meeting is using GOOGLE MAIL and GOOGLE APPS.  In the past (As in up till 3 weeks ago) - BOTH of the following conditions worked.  That is no longer the case.

Scenario one:

The user ACCEPTS the meeting which is added to their calendar automatically. This works.

These are the links in the google calendar. One was achieved by ACCEPTING the invite when it initially appears (this one) and that link works correctly.  I have deliberately obscured the beginning of these links to not allow them to be clicked.

https:// www.google.com /url?q=https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%253ameeting_NWVkMTViZTItODMxMS00ZjI2LWExZGUtNjIzNzQ4NjdlNzEx%2540thread.v2/0?context{Context string here}id%2522%253a%2522{Very long OID here}&sa=D&source=calendar&usd=2&usg=AOvVaw2mcJjIjCalwfCqShy4AWdh

If on the other hand the user clicks "Add to calendar" in the google interface it seems to use the attached ICS file to generate the calendar entry.  THIS LINK IS BROKEN

This link is generated when the ADD TO CALENDAR button in google is clicked, rather than the accept.  Even if you click accept on the calendar entry after adding it - this link does not work. It opens teams but does not open the meeting.

https:// www.google.com /url?q=https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%253ameeting_NWVkMTViZTItODMxMS00ZjI2LWExZGUtNjIzNzQ4NjdlNzEx%2540thread.v2/0?context{very short contect string here, and no oid} &sa=D&source=calendar&usd=2&usg={another code, not sure what this is used for}

Note that the sender has no control over these links - they're generated by bookings. BOTH scenarios work in a windows calendar in outlook (IE you can either add the calendar entry by adding the ics file and accepting, OR by clicking the accept button on the original invite.  So it seems it's an interaction between the shorter non-complete link and google, or something happening in the shortening process.  NOTE that as Stated above - this all worked flawlessly for over a year. These problems only recently cropped up. The reason we suspect it's an MS problem rather than a google one is that the links are different depending on the method of selecting the meeting appointment (they should be the same) and this problem cropped up after a recent booking change that, until we recreated the services for the bookings, no links were being sent out at all for teams. This leads us to believe that they tinkered with the teams links and didn't properly test them or confirm that they were identical depending on the invite acceptance method.

Steps to reproduce:

Create or use a gmail account to accept the booking - this is the "end user" account

Create a bookings page with a schedule and the ability to book a teams meeting from outside users

Have a booking page that allows a user to schedule a booking
Go to the booking page as a end user (not the administrator, not the client getting the booking).
Schedule a meeting and send the meeting invite to the end-user gmail account.

In GMAIL open the meeting invite email.

There are two options.  You can actually use both and it will show you two different calendar entries.  Do this.

Choose the google "Add to Calendar" options - and add the meeting to your calendar. Clicking THAT calendar entry and choosing "join meeting" will NOT work.  This creates the second shorter link.

Choose the ACCEPT meeting button option - that will create a different calendar entry at the same time.  That meeting will work, and generates the first, longer link.

As you can see these links are generated by going through google first, but that's not the problem. The problem is the format of the link that shows up in the calendar entry

You can do the same thing and invite a Microsoft calendar person. In this case you - again - get two different links, but at least in this one both links work. 

The links SHOULD be the same and SHOULD be the longer of the two (the first one above).

You need to test this with a google calendar to reproduce the bug.

This all worked flawlessly up till a couple weeks ago when something changed. We suspect the change was in bookings as we also had a situation where links weren't getting sent out at all and had to re-configure our settings for the appointment generation and re-add certain elements that were missing.