FB Groups events not importing

[Linda Wendt]

I just bought the Aggregator *today* and it doesn’t work for FB group events (which is the only reason I bought it). It seems as if it will work great for FB Pages. But FB groups all say “Your preview doesn’t have any records to import.”

I have tried open groups, closed groups. Doesn’t seem to matter.

Help please. If this doesn’t work there is no reason for us to have this plugin.

[Victor]

Hi Linda!

I’m sorry you are having that issue. Let me help you with this topic.

Could you please share the Facebook URL for the group you are trying to import events from?

I will run some tests with it and see if I can reproduce the problem.

Thanks,
Victor

[Linda Wendt]

The group I need is:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nfinterfaith/?ref=bookmarks

You will need to join the group with the login you are using to import,
yes? Will you be joining as Victor? I need to approve you.

However, I may want to import events from other groups as well and none of
them work right now. I believe I provided an example of a group that is
an open group and that didn’t work either.

[Victor]

Hi Linda!

Thanks for following up with this.

Unfortunately, Event Aggregator does not currently support importing events from Facebook groups. I’m sorry I haven’t noticed this before. (please see correction in the following posts)

You can, however import group events using each event URL. I know this is not ideal if you have to deal with large number of events, but at the moment it’s the only way to import from Facebook groups.

Let me know if you have other questions and I’d be happy to help as much possible.

Best,
Victor

[Shane]

Hi Victor

Love your product but I am having the same problem with importing from Facebook groups. Is there any chance of this being resolved? If not, it might be worth removing this as a feature on your website as I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why it wasn’t working.

Thanks
Shane

[Victor]

Hi Linda & Shane!

Thanks for chiming in Shane!

I’m sorry for the confusion here. Importing from Facebook groups is currently possible. What is not currently possible though is importing events from a private group.

If you are not able to import events from a public Facebook group, please let us know and share the group URL you are trying to import from so we can run some tests and see if we find any problem.

I apologise once again for the confusion.

Let me know if any questions.

Best,
Victor

[Shane]

Hi Victor

Thanks for clarifying. I just tried with a few Public groups and it appears that most events associated with groups are not actually created/managed by the group. They’ve just been shared with the group and therefore show up in the Events list. I’m assuming that’s why EA does not find them?

I tried creating a new Public group with an event as a test, and EA did retrieve the event successfully.

Cheers
Shane

[Victor]

Hi Shane! That is correct. Only events created by the group will be available to import.

Linda, please let us know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Best,
Victor

[Linda Wendt]

Thanks so much Victor and Shane for clarifying these two issues. Although not ideal, I now understand what will and will not import automatically; and I also have a work around for importing individual FB events regardless of the host of the event. That is sufficient.

Thanks again!

[Linda Wendt]

PS. I agree with Shane though. It would be very important to update the functionality description of what is and is not supported and also update the user instructions. I spent HOURS on this testing and trying to figure out if there was something I was missing before finally creating this ticket (and before FB changed their calendar so you can see clearly which events belong to a group and which are shares).

Updated documentation would be very helpful to new users.

[Victor]

Hi Linda!

Thank you for following up with this.

We always try to keep our articles up to date with the plugins functionalities and how to use them, so your feedback is highly appreciated. I will make sure to pass this along to the team.

I actually found the article that explains how to import events from a feed or URL and what is actually capable of importing from each source > https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/import-from-feed-or-url/. I’m sorry I missed to share that article with you before.

For future reference, let me also share with you this link > https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/plugin/event-aggregator/ where you’ll find a list of all the articles we have for the Event Aggregator service.

As you marked this “Resolved”, I’ll go ahead and close this thread, but don’t hesitate to open a new topic if anything comes up and we’d be happy to help.

Good luck with your project,
Victor

[Author]

Posts