Recurring events with different times each day

[Curtis]

Hi Events Calendar Pro Support,

I wanted to follow up on a thread that posts something of a similar issue:

Recurrence rules: My brain is exploding

I bought your plugin because of recurring events support, but I’m finding it difficult to adapt to certain situations. The addition of the “Same time” option under the Custom option in the Recurrence Rules section is a blessing, but it’s not quite flexible enough for my needs yet. Take, for instance, an event (a training course) I’m trying to set up. It occurs Friday- Monday, April 28- May 1, 2017. The Friday – Sunday times are 9:00 am – 5:30pm, but the final day, Monday, runs from 8:00am – 4:15pm. But it’s the same event, so I want it to be recurring.

So I can set up the time for Friday, have it recur daily until Sunday, April 30, but I can’t figure out how to add a recurrence on Monday, May 1 at a different time from the previous days. I could choose the “Custom” option under recurrence rules and change the time, but this uniformly changes the time for all the days that fall under that custom umbrella. I.e. CUSTOM won’t add in just one standalone date: it assumes a series, since the rule that follows it is “and will end on”. In other words, this setup would work perfectly in a scenario where Day 1 had times X – Y, but Days 2-4 had times A – B: just add in a CUSTOM series ending on Day 4 with times A – B and you’re done. But that doesn’t work with single days. I tried adding May 1 with its unique times as a CUSTOM, but that rule cannot specify just one day: it assumes that the special 8am – 4:15pm May 1 schedule recurs daily from the start date up to May 1, which effectively gives me 2 times each day (see second screenshot).

I hope the issue I’m trying to communicate is clear. I think the solution would actually be pretty simple: add the “Same time” tick box under the DATE Recurrence rule and not just the CUSTOM one. Then I could add in just one day (or multiple single days) to a series and specify the time for each one. This would accommodate series with changing schedules. Would that be possible, or am I missing a simpler solution that’s already present in the software?

Thanks so much!

Curtis

[Hunter]

Hello and welcome back 🙂

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on how recurring events can be improved. The best place to submit requests of these nature is by visiting our UserVoice Feature Ideas.

Before I attempt to reproduce the behavior and investigate for potential alternatives, can you please review our Testing for conflicts guide and reply back with your findings? This help to eliminate the potential of a theme and/or plugin conflict and is a required step to continue receiving support.

Lastly, please review our PRO Recurring Events Knowledgebase article. It’s worth reading and relevant in this situation. It was just updated within the past 24-48 hours with detailed instructions. Please keep me updated and take care!

[Curtis]

Hi Hunter,

Thanks so much for your reply. That knowledgebase article was helpful, and I’m sorry for not seeking it out sooner. It looks like one thing that I could do is to create a series say, a 4-day retreat for my clients. And then I have to go back and find the particular day that has a different schedule (say day 2 or 3) and then break it out of the series and edit it separately with different hours. I’ll have to see if that’s possible.

But I didn’t check for compatibility issues here since the question I had seemed limited to the feature set of the plugin. I realize that the support forums aren’t necessarily the right place for this discussion but I wanted to be sure my understanding was correct before proposing a new feature — and indeed I see that it is in fact one of the top features requested and the developers plan to incorporate it:

https://tribe.uservoice.com/forums/195723-feature-ideas/suggestions/15581598-recurrence-rules-please-add-time-to-date-optio

So I will await that development. Anyone else with this issue can receive updates by means of the above thread. Thank you!

[Hunter]

Hello,

Thank you for the response and sharing the link for others to benefit from. We are always here to help assist, so I’m happy to hear your questions have been answered. I’ll close this thread out, but please don’t hesitate to open a new one if you have any more questions or just need help finding documentation. Have a pleasant evening and great weekend ahead. Cheers!

[Author]

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