Having problems with Google Calendar imports

[Steve Van Dyke]

I’m having some pretty serious issues with Google Calendar imports. I had a site that had a calendar event on 1/31 from 6-7pm in a Google Calendar, and it was imported as an event taking place from midnight to midnight from 2/1 to 2/2. We’re getting pretty frustrated with the unreliability and dependability of the GCalendar import process and we’re beginning not to trust it.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

Thanks so much for reaching out!

As a first troubleshooting step, can you update your Events Calendar plugin and test again?

In addition, can you provide me with the URL that you are trying to import, so that I can do some testing on my end?

Also, can you enable and check the Event Log under Events < Help to see if you see anything unusual? Right under that is your Event Aggregator Status. Can you take a screenshot of what you see there?

Let me know if anything else comes up in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Steve Van Dyke]

I have added this and tested again, and I’m still getting weird quirks.

The ICS I’m using to import is https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/portageps.org_5075626c69632d434d53%40resource.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

I’ve started logging, as it was previously disabled, but everything else is looking OK, the license is OK, and I haven’t exceeded the amount of imports yet. Import services are also looking OK.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for providing me with that information.  I have imported your Google Calendar onto my site, but I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for.  Can you point me to an event that’s being imported improperly?  Or point me to where the functionality isn’t working as expected?

Also, is this a scheduled import or a one-time import?  Can you also provide me with your Event Aggregator settings under Events Settings < Imports?

Let me know if anything else comes up in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Steve Van Dyke]

Jamie –

Let’s look at another calendar on another one of my sites that is in disarray right now, but exhibiting the same behaviors. The other site’s events have rolled off.

Home

Set up as a scheduled import from https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/portageps.org_5075626c69632d4e4853%40resource.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

We typically see duplicate events as you see here, and occassionally events will import as UTC time, but should be EST/EDT as per the calendar defaults. Here are my global settings for the calendars.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for providing me with that information!

I have set up a scheduled import for that feed and imported 15 events on the initial import.  Here is what my preview looks like before importing:

I’m not seeing any duplicates here, do you normally see duplicates show up here?

Can you point me to which events import with the wrong timezone?  As a first step, you may want to take a look at your WordPress Timezone Settings under Settings < General and see if they are set properly.

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Steve Van Dyke]

I typically don’t see duplicates on initial load. However after a few days I’ll see duplicates. It’s random and doesn’t happen to all events.

Wordpress timezone is correct. Again, it’s only on occassional events. Initial import is fine, but after some time, it will go to the wrong time. It’s totally random and really frustrating because there isn’t any clear repeatable process that occurs that causes it to happen.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Steve Van Dyke.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your response.  I have your calendar set up as a scheduled import on my test site and will continue to monitor for any duplicates.  If you could do the same, and let me know when something unusual occurs, I can check if I see the same results.

I have run your calendar through an iCal Validator and there is an error related to the organizer field not being filled in.  Can you try adding that in and see if it helps?

Let me know if there’s anything else I can assist with in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Steve Van Dyke]

Jamie –

We’re not able to fill in the ‘organizer’ field from Google. Probably a limitation that exists when we use a resource calendar.

I did a clean import today on that calendar, and had many issues. To be clear, I took every event, purged it completely from the events list and ran an import.

The ‘Screenagers’ event from yesterday not only dupilcated, but also shifted forward a few hours to reflect that it was from 11:30pm to 1am, even though the timezones match. The next few events also duplicated. Attached is a screenshot of the duplicate events.

The event log shows the following:
2018-02-14 09:15:01 No Records over retention limit, skipped pruning expired debug EA Cron
2018-02-14 09:15:01 No Records Pending, skipped Fetching from service debug EA Cron
2018-02-14 09:15:01 Filtering records happening after 2018-02-14 10:00:00 debug EA Records
2018-02-14 09:15:01 Record (4736) skipped, not scheduled time debug EA Cron

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

Okay, I see.  What do you have your End of Day cutoff set to, under Events Settings < General?  If it is after midnight, I’d recommend moving it back and seeing if the events still shift forward.

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Steve Van Dyke]

It’s set to midnight. However, the actual event in the calendar was from 6:30-8pm, and for whatever reason the sync brought the time to 11:30-1am. So the time should have shifted at all.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

It looks like the calendar is set to GMT, even though your site is not, which is why you are seeing that it is 5 hours later.  Can you check your timezone settings in Google Calendar to see what timezone it is set to?

Let me know how that goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Steve Van Dyke]

The time zone of the calendar is set correctly.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Steve,

I tried to replicate this issue with my own Google Calendar and test site setup, but events import as expected.  Can you try updating your WordPress version and Events Calendar related plugins to their most recent versions.

You can also change the Event Update Authority to “Do not re-import events…” so that events don’t change timezone upon re-import.

Also, do you see the same issue with a bare WordPress set-up (default WordPress theme and only Events Calendar plugin)?

Let me know!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

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