Importing Venues via iCal

[Neville Gibson]

Hi,
I’m having trouble with importing Location / venue information from an ical feed, which I am generating myself from another system. Right now, I’m generating the location using the basic ical location parameter.

Here’s an example of the feed I am importing:
https://cowichanculture.ca/feeds/vista.php?rsm=1&action=event_export_ical&htaccess_qs=&event_action=&event_id=&no_headers=1&excluded_only=&barebones_mode=1&date_range_start=&date_range_end=&key=ZipZap!

The system seems to add a few venues, but not all of them. It doesn’t seem to display the venue name or address on the imported events either.

Should I be using the VVENUE type?
https://icalendar.org/RFC-Specifications/iCalendar-Venue-Draft/

I can set this up, but I don’t want to go to the work if event aggregator isn’t reading that info.
Please let me now. If not this format, how should I be passing venue info?

Nev

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

Welcome and thanks so much for reaching out!

Did the URL to the feed you shared get cut off?  It seems to not have the whole URL included.  If you could repost that full URL, I could run some tests on my test site.

Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Neville Gibson]

Sorry, the exclamation point at the end of the url was problematic. I’ve updated things so it isn’t needed. The existing url works now.

Thanks for your help.

Nev

[Jaime Marchwinski]

This reply is private.

[Neville Gibson]

Hi Jamie,
The original link in the post works (for me at least)
The url you reposted doesn’t. It looks like you are mising the ? after .php

Can you try clicking the original link in the first post again?

Here it is again for convenience if it helps: https://cowichanculture.ca/feeds/vista.php?rsm=1&action=event_export_ical&htaccess_qs=&event_action=&event_id=&no_headers=1&excluded_only=&barebones_mode=1&date_range_start=&date_range_end=&key=ZipZap

And yes, icalendar one time import is what I am trying to do. Events work great, just not sure about how I am supposed to be passing in the venue details.

Nev

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

Okay, not sure why that wasn’t working for me, but I got it working now!

Basically, Event Aggregator will use whatever information you entered under “Location” as your Venue information.  So, working within the confines of iCal, you can append the Venue Name to the Location field and it will be imported there.

You can also just add a venue name to that field, if you don’t want any other information included.

Although it sounds like you may already be doing this.  In that case, I’d recommend starting off by updating your WordPress version to the most recent version (4.9.1) and backing up your site first.

Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes trying to import with a different source, such as ICS or Google Calendar sometimes helps to import the data properly, so it is worth giving that a try as well.

Let me know how it goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Neville Gibson]

I Jamie,
I’m glad you got the import working. Did it import the venues for you?

I have tried again with a second wordpress installation running the latest version, and the results are the same for us: The import works, but venues are not imported, or at least not consistently. I get a few venues, but their addresses are not separated from their names, and none of the events seem to show up as linked to a venue.

I have looked for hours into the ical spec on how it should handle location info and I can’t find anything different from what I am doing.

Can you post an example .ics file or feed link, that works with the aggregator to properly import venue information? Then, I can copy the format from there.

Thanks

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

I just imported the next five events from the URL that you provided and none of the venues imported for those events.

You can try to export the .ics file from iCal and then when you go to Import, select ICS file, where you can upload the file.  You should not have to do any additional altering of the file/URL path.

If you are pasting in the URL by using the iCal import, the file path should look something like this:

example.com/url.ics

I have also attached a Test Event with a venue and venue address that I exported from my iCal, so you can get a sense of what it should look like:

Calendar

Let me know how it goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Neville Gibson]

Hi Jamie,
I have downloaded the file as a .ics file and uploaded, and it doesn’t change the results with importing the venues.

I tried importing your test file, and it only found 1 event. It imported the venue, though it didn’t seem to import any venue details. By that, I mean that it just imported the venue name and address as the title of the venue, rather that populating any details into the relevant fields. Is that the expected behaviour? I can certainly live with the importer just importing the whole location field as a venue. It’s far from ideal, but at least the location of events shows up on the calendar. If the importer can’t consitently read the location field at all though, then it is effectively useless.

I have scoured all the location lines of the file I have exported and I can’t see any way in which they are different from the example you gave me. I have run my files through ical validators, and they come up without errors. Can you explain why the venue imports are only intermittently working? Out of 60 events, only importing 5 venues seems pretty disappointing.

I have paid for an event aggregator license, and our community invested heavily in developing these feeds with the anticipation of your product doing what it says it does. If it indeed cannot, it puts us in a very bad situation.

Can you please tell me specifically what is wrong with my formatting, or give me a timeline for a bug fix which will fix this issue?

Please don’t give me another “you could try this..” answer. You have a working test file that proves the issue exists. Your team should now have everything they need to diagnose what is going on here.

I am a PHP developer, sof you can point me to any relevant code within the system, I’d be happy to have a
look to see if I can diagnose what the issue might be.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue.

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

The test file I sent you included only one event.  Would you mind taking a screenshot of what you see when it is imported?  I want to make sure that you are seeing what you should be seeing when it is important, so that we know if it is expected behavior on your site.

I can certainly live with the importer just importing the whole location field as a venue.

For now, this is the way that venues are imported and this is expected behavior.  However the fact that not all venues are imported should not be happening.  Can you try to create a bare WordPress install (default theme like Twentyseventeen and only Events Calendar plugins activated) and import your calendar and see if the issue still exists?

I know this process can be frustrating and tedious, but for now this is the way our support works and we appreciate your patience in this process.

Let me know how it goes!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Neville Gibson]

Hi Jamie,
I am working with a bare wordpress install with the default theme. Nothing else has been modified. As I have already stated, the behaviour is the same on a second, up to date install of my client. Additionally, you confirmed that on your install, you had the same issue (only 5 venues were imported)

Will you please awknowledge that this issue exists and forward it on to someone who can fix it?

Thank you.

Nev

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

So I just double checked and 52 events were imported, 3 venues were imported, which appeared on 5 events.  I’m assuming that you have created venues/locations for all of your events, correct?

I am currently speaking with my colleagues about this issue and will let you know as soon as I have an update.

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

I can confirm that this is a bug with our service.  What is happening is that when both the geo information (longitude and latitude) and the location information are included in the calendar, then Event Aggregator does not import any venue information.

For now, a workaround is to remove the longitude and latitude information, which will allow for venues to be imported.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this glitch and we are actively working on a solution for this.

I cannot guarantee when it will be fixed, as it’s in the development team’s hands now.

They need to assign it, code it, test it, and schedule it for release.

The good news is that you will be contacted as soon as a fix is available.

Thank you for your patience as we see this through.  Please let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime.

 

Thanks,

Jaime

[Neville Gibson]

Thanks,
I can confirm that with the coordinates removed, this works properly.
This will work for us for now. Thank you.

In the future I’d love to see the import support the VVENUE spec, so we could actually import detailed venue info
https://icalendar.org/iCalendar-Venue-Draft/2-an-example.html

Thanks for your help.

Nev

[Jaime Marchwinski]

Hi Neville,

I’m glad that this workaround will work for you for now.  We are actively working on resolving the issue so that everything will work together properly.  Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

You can also add your idea to our Feature Requests, as we tend to implement ideas based on customer feedback, so your input is greatly appreciated:

https://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas

Please let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime!

 

Thanks,

Jaime

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