Event Calendar Pro Reporting

[Jennifer]

Hi! My client just asked me to go into Tribe to pull a list of events that occurred between January 1, 2015 through March 31, 2015. And then asked me to sort the list by the city the events occurred in.

I’ve suddenly become overwhelmingly aware that you have no reporting features. I’m not worried about registration reporting – I can get that from EventBrite and GoToWebinar.

We just want to see the actual event listings that we posted via ECPRO within this time frame. Is there a way to do this?

If not, is there a way to export our event data to a CSV or Excel file so we can manipulate the data there to get what we need? Thanks!

[George]

Hi Jennifer!

You should certainly be able to get a list of the events within the parameters you mentioned here – the “Filters & Columns” box above the events listed in your admin is quite powerful, and allows you to filter by start and end dates like I’ve shown in this screenshot → https://cloudup.com/c2N8-WUBFIb

If this isn’t sufficient “reporting”, can you elaborate a bit on exactly what sort of things you mean and are looking for?

As for exporting events, you can indeed do this by going to Tools > Export in your WordPress admin. You can export just “Events” from there, or also “Venues” or “Organizers” – or all of these things.

By default, WordPress only exports an XML file, but if you need a .csv, you should be able to use a plugin like this one without issue → https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-csv/ (I haven’t tested that one personally, just an example – there are tons of CSV export plugins out there! 🙂 )

Let us know what you think about all this, and if the information here helps.

Cheers,
George

[Jennifer]

Hmm, ok, let me look at my filters again. And I’ll take a look at that plugin as well. Thanks!

[George]

Cool! I’ll keep this ticket open for now, let us know if the filters work for you.

Thanks,
George

[Jennifer]

Hi! So I was able to filter the list by date range. It’s helpful, but the person we need to give the report to wants to be able to see the location (city) where each event is held. Which this does not offer. And he does not access the back end of WordPress, so also no help. I tried that CSV plugin – sadly, again, no help.

We’re going to have a hard time explaining to the boss why we can’t give him a simple event report. All’s we need exported are:
Event Date
Event Name
City (from the Venue)

Is there really NO way to do this?

[George]

Hey Jennifer,

This is indeed possible, the built-in WordPress exporter (Tools > Export) alone should let you export Events, and then Venues separately. You could match Venue IDs to the exported Venues and just grab the city name from that.

You could also run SQL queries to get the specific data you want.

Are either things helpful here?

[Jennifer]

Hi! I used the WP Export tool, but it only exports to XML. I tried that CSV plugin that was recommended, but it output gibberish.

I have no idea how to run an SQL query – that’s beyond our technical expertise. So unfortunately, I guess there really is no way to export the data we want then?

[George]

Hey Jennifer,

You can indeed export the data, and while out-of-the-box the export functionality isn’t tailored exactly to only showing the fields you mentioned here, you can get all the raw data there in XML format.

Now, I don’t know what spreadsheet tool you’re using, but you can usually import XML into spreadsheet applications. Google Docs, for example → https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093342?hl=en

With that raw data there, you could then filter out what’s not needed and hopefully get something semi-useful…or have your client log into the WordPress admin, and modify the listing of the admin columns to show the venue city name instead of the venue itself.

These are the main options I can think of, and am sorry that CSV plugin didn’t work out well. It’s possible that other CSV plugins would work better for you, though I understand how frustrating it can be to try and wade through the massive selection of plugins out there.

— George

[Jennifer]

Thanks George. We use Excel, but we’re on Macs and XML won’t come into Excel on a Mac. I’ll check out the Google docs thing.

The challenge is that we’re exporting 3 months worth of events – which is probably over 100 events easily. Having to do all this sorting and data mapping to pull a report together that makes sense to the Director of our North American Division is a hugely time-consuming, manual effort. And one that we will need to repeat quarterly. So none of this is good news.

Do you guys have any plans to build in reporting tools? Sure hope so…. Thanks…

[Jennifer]

sadly, Google Sheets isn’t working either – I try to import the XLM and get this:
http://screencast.com/t/NfakWv0Zj

[Jennifer]

Ok, so the CSV exporter might work with Google Sheets. But how do I figure out the codes for the fields to include in my export.

It populated itself with these:
wp_post_title,wp_post_author,cf__EventStartDate,cf__EventOrganizerID,cf__EventURL

How can I identify the codes for the other fields from Tribe that I want to include in the export? Thanks!

[George]

Hey Jennifer,

I’m sorry for your frustrations here and hope we can get a workable solution in place for you here. Vital to that goal is your most-recent question, about mapping the fields properly for importing.

Basically, you should be able to see the field name as the header for associated column in your CSV file – then, when you try to use The Events Calendar’s built-in CSV importer, you should be able to map the fields for import to the matching columns in the import file. The interface should look something like this → https://cloudup.com/c0-MI2VwgFa

So, for example, setting the “Event Name” Column Header in that screenshot to the “wp_post_title” field name should handle that relationship, and then all the way down the list for all the various fields…

Do you find that this works?

Thank you so much for your patience here Jennifer! Let us know if the above information is helpful at all.

Sincerely,
George

[Jennifer]

Hi! No, this is backwards. I’m not trying to import into The Events Calendar. I’m trying to export OUT of the Events Calendar.

Someone in this thread previously suggested that I use this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-csv/

When I use the exporter, it only exports the following fields:
wp_post_title,wp_post_author,cf__EventStartDate,cf__EventOrganizerID,cf__EventURL

Those are not the fields I need. But if I had a map to show me similar codes to these for the fields that I want to export, then maybe this plugin would work.

The most important fields I’m looking to export are:
1) Event Date
2) Event Name
3) Event City (from the Venue)

The CSV export automatically grabbed cf__EventStartDate – that covers #1 on my list above. And I believe #2, Event Name, is wp_post_title. But what’s the field code for “City” from the venue list so I can grab that too? I need to tell this plugin that I want that field, but I don’t know what the code for it is.

Does that make sense now? Thanks! 🙂

[George]

Thank you for clarifying Jennifer, I apologize for my misreading of your issue.

Unfortunately, I do not know how to add custom fields to that plugin.

There are many solutions for custom CSV exporting for WordPress out there, and it unfortunately seems that a solution like one of these plugins is the best option here – The Events Calendar and its add-ons do not have the specific CSV export functionality you are looking for.

I’m sorry for the disappointments Jennifer. Let us know if you have any further questions or concerns here.

— George

[Jennifer]

Hi George! I know how to add the custom fields. I just need someone at Tribe to tell me the field names (e.g., “EventStartDate”). You don’t know what you’re on field names are?

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