Does Event Info Gets Updates After Reacquiring Import?

[Laura]

Hello.
I had a question about the iCal importer.

If an organizer changes the date or any other info on an event I already have in my calendar from a previous import, then my reacquiring import happens, will the date or the changed info be modified in my existing event? or will it create a new one?

Thank you for your time

[Nico]

Hi there Laura,

Thanks for reaching out on this! I’ll help you with it…

When an event is updated when the re-occurring import runs, the event in WordPress should be updated. Is this not happening for you?

Please let me know about it,
Best,
Nico

[Laura]

Hi Nico
Thank you for the replay.

It is great to know that events info will be updated, nut now I have a different question – on the same matter thought.

Let presume I have a list of posts from a iCal feed that are webinars, so no location assigned, or no location gets picked from iCal. For some odd reason their location – right after the pull – displays as “Array”, which is not quite acceptable. So we have to manually go trough and assign new venues, which we called “Webinar”, to all those events.
Now a re-occurring import happens, and:
1. If they changed a date on their end it will change the date in my event as well, correct?
2. Will their old non existing ( or different than my location ) override the changes I made to the event Venue, Organizer, Category, Tag, etc?

Thank you for your time.

[Nico]

Hey Laura,

Thanks for following up!

First of all the empty venue displaying as a an empty Array, seems to be related to a bug we have but for Community Events. Is Community Events active on the site? Can you please provide the iCal feed in a private reply to test this?

Regarding your sync questions, I would need to give that a try to see which fields get overwritten in the re-ocurring sync. Will do so and let you know about it. I usually run import tests from Google Calendar events, but if you have an specific source to test event better.

Please let me know about it,
Best,
Nico

[Laura]

This reply is private.

[Laura]

Hi Nico

Do you have any new developments on the issue?

In terms of feeds that don’t have venues by defaut, because event is a webinar. We have to change the location manual after the import.

In terms of the feeds D and E, we have to change the location since they are webinars, and also because unfortunately Zapier is not able to pull Venus from all EventBrite events. So are changing those events venue manually after the import.

What will happen to those manually updates venues after events get reimported?

If you are wondering how Zapier is connect to all of this, let me explain.
We need a way to get reoccurring imports for EventBrite events. The Event Calendar extension allows for good imports of events, but only manual imports one by one. Which is very misfortune and doesn’t work for us.
So we need a way to automate the process.
We connected Zaprier with the needed EventBrite accounts of the calendars we wanted to follow.
Then we created a Zap that takes that data and sends it into Google Calendar we designated for that purpose.
Then we are taking that Google Calendar feed and importing it as ICS reoccurring import into iCal Event Calendar.
Obviously this setup has many flaws. One of which is loss of venues data. And other data as well.
If you guys could automate EventBrite import it would of made everybody lifes so much easier…

Thank you

• This reply was modified 10 years ago by Laura.
• This reply was modified 10 years ago by Laura.

[Nico]

This reply is private.

[Nico]

Laura,

Thanks for the patience here…

Well I’ve investigated a bit more on the override, and noticed a filter was added (tribe_events_ical_importer_overwrite_existing_events) which lets you decide whether events should be overwritten or not. By default is set to not overwrite (I thought it was the opposite, shame on me). So you won’t have problems with the venue or other fields to be updated. This behaviour can be change by adding the following snippet to the site’s theme functions.php:


/* Allow events to be overwritten on iCal import */
add_filter( 'tribe_events_ical_importer_overwrite_existing_events', '__return_true' );


As far as I could test all fields will be updated / overwritten.

Regarding the array issue can you please point me to a specific feed / event so I can check on that? I’ve imported events from 3 feeds and opened up various of them (most of them container webminar in the title) but all of them have a Venue assigned. If this is still not fixed maybe I can create a snippet to avoid the hassle for now…

Have a great weekend,
Nico

[Laura]

Hi Nico

Thank you for the reply.
So if I understood you correctly – selecting
Overwrite Recurring
If checked the importer will update/overwrite the recurring events when they are changed in the source.
Will it overwrite ALL-or-ANY changes I made to the event?
If I changed the venue – it will be changed back by the import?
If I changed the date – it will be changed back by the import?
If I changed the organization – it will be changed back by the import?
-Or –
will the plugin know only to change the bits that are different from the initial import?
So it won’t overwrite my changes, but only touch on aspects which are different, like date?
In this scenario, even if I changed the venue after the initial import, it will stay as is, but the date will change, since it will be changed at the source.
Can you please clarify which way will it go?

Thank you

[Nico]

Hi Laura,

Thanks for following up…

In the case of allowing override, all fields would updated. There’s no distinction from the fields that have been changed or not. Date, Venue & Organizer will be updated and unfortunately there’s no easy way of indicating which fields should be updated or not.

Your actual need would be to preserve modified venues right?

Best,
Nico

[Laura]

Hi Nico

The actual need would be twofold: 🙂
1. To have the EventBrite events imports on a reacquiring basis – which would be AMAZING! ( and probably all the people who purchased the EventBrite addon would agree with me on this one )
2. As per the import override –
a. if you could choose which fields should be allowed to be overwritten – or excluded from the overwrite.
b. if it could notify in some way, in a dashboard message or an email to site admin, about changes to overwritten events. which events – what was changed – what should of been changed, but you blocked the change, so you can still do it manually.

I think getting those would really help everybody.
Thank you

[Nico]

Laura,

Thanks for clarifying!

Regarding #1, there’s a related feature request in The Events Calendar user voice page. If you can go in there an add a description of your usecase it would be great!

On #2, I’ll create a ticket to add some filters to control which fields get overwritten, this sounds logic and not a big lift for devs. Regarding the notification part, I guess that’s far more complex and not so easy to develop. I’ll link this thread to the ticket so this information will be available to devs as well.

Thanks for the feedback 🙂

Do you think we are good to close this ticket or is there anything else I can help you with?

Best,
Nico

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

Posts