manual iCal imports are missing some fields

Home Forums Calendar Products Event Aggregator manual iCal imports are missing some fields

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #1564809
    clashley1976
    Participant

    Hello,

    I’ve been using a manual iCalendar import process to work around the Facebook feed issue. For events that I want to import to TEC, I mark them as “interested” in Facebook, and then manually (one-time) import the webcal link with EA as drafts, then edit the drafts and publish them. It’s not as slick as the original Facebook import process, but it’s a decent workaround with the Facebook API issues are pending. There are some limitations (event images cannot be imported, and the events always import in UTC TZ), but they are manageable.

    The link I import is similar to this: webcal://www.facebook.com/ical/u.php?uid=XXXXXXXXXXXXX&key=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

    I use the same link to keep my Outlook calendar synced, and I’ve started to notice that EA is apparently not importing some of the information that Outlook is. I take this to mean that EA is ignoring or failing to process some of the available data.

    – The Organizer field is always blank in the TEC event, even though it is populated in the Outlook calendar from the same feed. I must always manually specify the organizer before publishing the event.
    – The Details field is now always blank in the TEC event, even though it is populated in the Outlook calendar from the same feed. I must always copy the details from the original Facebook event before publishing the event. I don’t recall this always happening: many of the events that I had previously imported via iCal had details populated, but several of the ones I’ve imported over the last couple of weeks turned out to have blank details, but I’m not sure when this started.

    I’m assuming that since Outlook is able to correctly populate this data, it should be available to EA when processing the iCal feed. Is there a workaround or fix for this?

    #1567468
    Jennifer
    Keymaster

    Hello,

    Thanks for reaching out! Unfortunately due to recent changes in the Facebook API, the Event Aggregator is entirely blocked from importing from Facebook until our application with them is approved.

    Just to clarify here, are you using the “Facebook” option or the “iCalendar” option when you’re able to import? Can you please send me the full link that you’re using so that I can test it out on my end?

    Thanks,

    Jennifer

    #1567487
    clashley1976
    Participant

    Jennifer, here’s an exact screen shot of my import process. It works, because I am essentially importing my personal event calendar from Facebook, not from the my Facebook page, through the iCalendar feed link provided by Facebook. I’m more or less bypassing the Facebook API. The key to making this work is for me to mark myself (using my personal FB profile) as “interested” in each event I want to import into TEC.

    There are some drawbacks (no images imported, location addresses do not always import correctly, etc.), but it’s a functional workaround for the Facebook API issue right now.

    The specific link to the iCal feed is: webcal://www.facebook.com/ical/u.php?uid=100000535717384&key=AQBCP1g-MCPOO0Pe

    The trick is that once I import the event, EA is not populating some fields that are actually populated in the ical feed:

    – Details is always blank
    – Organizer name is always blank

    Microsoft Office is load from the exact same URL as above and successfully imports both of these fields, but EA does not.

    #1567688
    clashley1976
    Participant

    I did some further testing. Instead of importing the iCalendar link, I manually saved the .ICS file generated by the iCalendar link and then imported that file in via the ICS file import. When I imported the ICS file manually, the Organizer field was populated by EA, but the details field was still blank, even when there was data in the Description field of the event within ICS file.

    #1571387
    Jennifer
    Keymaster

    Thanks for sharing this information! We have been able to confirm that this is an issue with Event Aggregator, which we are currently working on. As soon as we have an update, we’ll let you know here.

    I apologize for the inconvenience that this is causing, and thank you for your patience as we work on getting this resolved!

    #1603408
    Victor
    Keymaster

    Hi Cameron!

    As you might already know from your other post, a new release of out plugins is out, including a fix for this issue 🙂

    Find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/release-event-tickets-4-8-event-tickets-plus-4-8/

    We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience while we worked on this.

    As always, we suggest to setup a dev/staging site so you can make all plugin updates without disrupting the live site.

    Please update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site.

    Best,
    Victor

    #1620900
    Support Droid
    Keymaster

    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

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The topic ‘manual iCal imports are missing some fields’ is closed to new replies.