Adding recurring events to Google Calendar

[Gosia]

Dear Events Calendar Team,

I have recently purchased Events Calendar Pro because i needed an option of adding recurring events on my website, and more specifically, an option of adding recurring events to Google Calendar. Unfortunately, even though Event Calendar Pro enables creating recurring events on my website, when I click on the “Add to Google Calendar” button, it still only allows to add the first event in series to the calendar, and if a user wants to add the whole series of events, they need to set it up themselves.

Here is an example of a recurring event on my website: http://happyfeetstudio.dk/event/swing-1-tuesdays/2016-03-15/

I run a dance studio, where we teach weekly classes in round of 7 weeks. Therefore i was really looking forward to the function, where our students could add the whole course (e.g. a series of 7 Mondays of classes) to their Google Calendars. I am guessing that it is probably Google’s software, that doesn’t allow this option (a conclusion I got to after some testing of other plugins and just googling the problem in general). However, the reason I bought Event Calendars Pro was to enable this particular function.

Is there a way to make the “Add to Google Calendar” button generate a link, that would add a whole series of the recurring event to one’s Google Calendar? If yes, how to set it up?

I hope you can help me solve this problem. If it can’t be solved, I will need to request a refund (and i only have less than two weeks left to do so).

Best,
Gosia

[Nico]

Hi Gosia,

Thanks for reaching out to us on this! If I recall correctly I’ve sent you here from the inbox, right?

Well, if you click on the “Add to Google Calendar” button in the individual event (even if it’s recurring) it should download just the current event. Maybe we can create a snippet for it to include the series and not only that particular event in the ics feed. I guess the event won’t be recognized as recurring in Google Calendar but you should get the individual instances.

Please confirm this would help you out and I can give the snippet a try.

Best,
Nico

[Gosia]

Hi,

Yes, that’s correct 🙂

And your idea sounds interesting. But just to make sure I understand you correctly: will that mean that the snippet would generate one link that will collect all 7 events in one window on Google Calendar’s site?
What I am looking for is a single link that I can use e.g. in our newsletters, next to the class schedule and practical information. And people should be able to click that one link and be redirected to the Google Calendar window, where they can add the series of events into their calendar. It’s ok if it means that they will need to choose which events they want to add by clicking on the individual instances, but it is important that that window shows all instances of the recurring event.

A short explanation why this issue is important to me:
Our courses run in rounds, where each round lasts 7 weeks. Sometimes there are some breaks between individual classes (e.g. Easter Break, Fall Break etc), which means that the period of one round can be stretched out to 8 or even 9 weeks. But there will still be only 7 classes during that round, that should be added to the calendar.
The solution that Google Calendar is offering now when i click on the “Add to Google Calendar” button is adding the first event in series, and manually setting up how long the series should last. I want to save my students the hustle of setting it up manually and remembering to include all breaks between classes. Therefore i would like to see if it can be done automatically.

So yes, please give the snippet a try, if it can generate one link that would summarize all events in series. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will work 🙂

Best,
Gosia

[Nico]

Hey Gosia,

Thanks for clarifying I guess we are on the same page. The solution I’m think of is to generate a new button that instead of ‘Adding event to Calendar’ let’s you ‘add all the series’ to the calendar. I guess I’ll be able to send something tomorrow.

Thanks for the patience while I work on this 🙂

Best,
Nico

[Gosia]

Great, I am looking forward to it 🙂

[Nico]

Hi Gosia,

Thanks for the patience here!

So, the following snippet add a + iCal Export Series link to the existing ones. Just paste the code in your theme’s (or child theme) functions.php file:

https://gist.github.com/niconerd/3876598a70b521f87cc40ac0e0ec37f0

The new link should only show in recurring events and not in single events!

Please let me know about it,

Have a great weekend,
Nico

[Gosia]

Hey Nico,

I have good news and bad news 😉

I have given the snippet a try, and I got a new button called “+ iCal Export Series” on my recurring events. Success! However, even though I can download an iCal feed by clicking that button, for some reason the file cannot be read by Google Calendar when i try to import it to my personal calendar (it shows an error). Same happens on my mobile phone (Android).

You can see an example of my recurring events here:
http://happyfeetstudio.dk/event/swing-1-tuesdays/2016-03-15/

I have also made a test event only with future dates, just to check if that can have any influence.
http://happyfeetstudio.dk/event/test/2016-04-17/

Also, I was rather hoping for a “+ Google Calendar series” button than “+ iCal Export Series” – I think that downloading an ical feed and importing it to Google Calendar takes almost the same time as manually setting up the dates in the calendar itself. So i wanted to get a direct link that would add all dates to Google Calendar without having to download and import feeds first. Is that possible?

Best,
Gosia

[Nico]

Hey Gosia,

Thanks for following up!

Reviewing the links you sent you are getting an empty line at the beginning of the feed, that’s why the import fails. The same is happening for the individual event ics. I’ve tested the same locally with default theme and the file format is correct for me. This might be due to a conflict with the theme or another plugin. Can you please follow the steps described in our Testing for conflicts guide? This way we can see if this is a problem in our plugin or not.

…I was rather hoping for a “+ Google Calendar series” button than “+ iCal Export Series”…

Yeap, I can get the point here. The thing is that there’s no built in function to generate the + Google Calendar series link, but there’s one to generate the series ics. Generating a new function for this (I’m not sure it’s event possible to build a link to add multiple events to Google Calendar) would be a bit out of the support scope of these forums.

Please let me know about it,
Best,
Nico

[Gosia]

I am sorry to hear that, but it is of course fair enough.

I’m afraid i cannot test my website for theme/plugin conflicts, as we are running a registration for the next round of classes at the moment, and I cannot start implementing big changes that might cause a dysfunction of other plugins / other parts of the website.

But thank you for your help!
And I hope that the other users will find this topic useful 🙂

Best,
Gosia

[Nico]

Sorry to hear Gosia, but glad you can understand the limits of the support we provide. Hope you can find a workaround this in the future!

I’m sure other users will benefit from the snippet that came up of your issue!

I’ll go ahead and close out this thread, but if you need help with anything else please don’t hesitate to create a new one and we will be happy to assist you.

Best,
Nico

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