Duplicate iCal Import Still A Problem

[Chris Bishop]

My bug report from back in July:

https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/duplicate-events-on-ics-import/

…is still a bug, despite the Events Calendar 4.5.10 update saying this should be fixed:

https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-week-7-august-2017/

To repost that bug report:

I’m trying to import the following iCalendar link:

https://rockymountaincc.churchcenteronline.com/groups/icalendars/8zAj9v5j3j5g2jjf6vs1qr0AfyZnltqy5xd5fl896q8Amj6jnsf4j2knv948rj23hp3Afzkklx841wc8mvr83lmkp4pr3d844rr2csr8zplg1bs494t1nzm6qy6zv9jqyq.ics

Doing On-Demand imports, EA recognizes the previously-imported events, but any automatically-scheduled imports will simply duplicate the same events. I get a list of duplicated events using a Daily/Hourly/whatever import (8 new/0 updated)…but if I choose “Run Import” manually, the import comes back as “0 new/8 updated”. Having set an import to run every 30 minutes, I now have multiple instances of the same event in my calendar.

Could somebody confirm that this bug is still outstanding, and if so, what the ETA is on this? It’s been reported since July but is still a problem for me.

Thanks,
Chris

[Andras]

Hello Chris,

Thanks for reaching out!

I’m sorry this is still affecting you. Please give me some time while I do some investigation and run some tests.

Thanks for your patience!

Andras

[Chris Bishop]

Thanks András. Since creating my initial post, I see one major update (came out the same day) & 2 maintenance updates have come out, all 3 of which appeared to address my problem in the release notes. I deleted the import & all of its (many-duplicated) events, then created a NEW import from scratch…but the issue still remains. I see you guys are likely working on it from the release notes, but I just wanted to report that it’s still a problem for me. Thanks for looking into it. I anticipate your followup.

Thanks,
Chris

[Andras]

Hi Chris,

Just wanted to give you a quick update.

I was running tests last week where I discovered some inconsistencies.

A new fix has been out and currently I’m running tests with that.

Will report back shortly about the results. Thanks for hanging in there!

Cheers,
Andras

[Andras]

Hello Chris,

So after a lengthy investigation and discussions with developers I have some news. Unfortunately not the good one.

I guess we are dealing with a feed from Outlook 365.

When Event Aggregator imports an event from a feed is also registers its unique identifier. If you open the feed in the browser it will look something like this:

UID:40459df3-997d-4743-b40f-039baac757d5

This is different for every event.

Basically this is the only data that allows Event Aggregator to determine whether we are talking about the same event or not. If you change any data of the event, based on iCal standards the UID stays the same, or rather should stay the same.

Unfortunately Outlook 365 (and likely some others as well) doesn’t follow this standard, and the UID of every event changes with every new call / request. If you check your feed in the browser and hit refresh you can also see that all the event UIDs will change.

Since the UID changes with every call there is no way for Event Aggregator to match it with an existing event in the calendar, thus it will create a new event, because it has a new UID.

You might be asking “so if that’s the case, why was it properly updating when I manually ran the import”? That’s exactly the question I asked the developer as well.

When you run an import it will get cached for a short while. This is needed to prevent our servers from being overloaded when people hit “Run now” several times after each other for example. This functionality also has been a bit adjusted with TEC 4.5.12.2 so that is why you will likely not see updates even with manual imports.

I’m sorry I’m not able to provide you a solution for this, unfortunately this is beyond our reach.

As an alternative, instead of Outlook 365 you can try to use a different calendar service, like Google Calendar.

If there is anything else I can help you with or if you have further questions, please let me know.

Cheers,
Andras

[Chris Bishop]

Thanks Andras. That is a GREAT answer. Mind you, not the one I wanted. But I understand the true problem & its hurdle. If I may piggyback on this, my calendar feed source is from this webpage:

https://rockymountaincc.churchcenteronline.com/groups/bible-studies/women-s-bible-study

As you see, there are a few options for calendar sync: Outlook (there ya go), Google, Yahoo, or old fashioned iCal. When I try to utilize the Google link instead of iCal (which I tried previously), and choose “Google Calendar” from the TEC Import dropdown, I receive the error “There was an error fetching the results from your import: Events could not be imported. The URL provided did not have events in the proper format.” Being that this is Google, I hope this is a problem you can fix? This calendar DOES sync to my Google calendar personally, so I’m hoping you can speak to why TEC Import doesn’t seem to read the feed.

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=webcal%3A%2F%2Frockymountaincc.churchcenteronline.com%2Fgroups%2Ficalendars%2Fb44xg38vcvy2s2dpdhmng8430yZtn2znnkvsjxb7r1r8vkf06tkntgqbtk1j3c3f40qvgslmqxymy8x6jlmkt8bAvnwd4rjqqw4z3xk4cfvb1ssngjz4f1lzw70Acjx423.ics

[Andras]

Right.

When you copy that link straight in the beginning it has a pointer to the google calendar page. You don’t need that part.

Try with this instead:

webcal://rockymountaincc.churchcenteronline.com/groups/icalendars/cd49szcxbgjlx5mtrw07h6xjm3Zvrzf6d2z6vdp791Aqx8xg2ypkypr68sc1gpf8ksm711vx5f7g4y23c02hvrc6vffq4xf3by2z4jvxwlvpjy52rkjtjw9Aj861A12r8y.ics

A.

[Chris Bishop]

Thanks A,

Looks like the Google Calendar link has the same problem. Is the Google feed also created with Outlook 365? Just packaged into a link-form that will direct you to subscribe to said feed via Google?

Thanks as always,
Chris

[Andras]

I tested the other feed URLs as well, and it looks like they are suffering from the same issue. As you say, it is “packaged into a link form”.

A generic iCal feed is generated by Outlook 365. This URL is prepended by the appropriate calendar hook like https://calendar.yahoo.com/subscribe?ics={url-of-feed}.

I wish I could help you more on this but the feed url generation is beyond us. 🙁 I’m really sorry.

Is there anything else I can help you with before we close this down.

Andras

[Chris Bishop]

You’ve been amazing help. Thank you for researching the cause of this! I’ve put in a support ticket with the provider of the feed & they now know it’s an issue to fix. No further help is required here. Thanks again!
Chris

[Andras]

Hi Chris,

I’m happy I could help you out with this. I sure hope that the provider will be able to fix this for you.

I am going to close this ticket, but if you need anything else related to this topic or another please create a new ticket and we’ll be happy to help.

Cheers,
Andras

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