Refining imported events?

[Michael]

Hi – I’m new to the Event Aggregator and am working with a one-time import from Google Calendar. I see that there’s a “Refine” function that can apparently “narrow down which events are fetched” from the calendar. But it’s unclear what the syntax for the filter is. Does documentation for this function exist somewhere?

I’m confused because, in Google Calendar, I can “refine” a list of all events on my calendar by using the string “-oyc” to exclude all events containing the string “oyc.” When I use Event Aggregator to try to exclude those events with the same syntax I get “Your preview doesn’t have any records to import.”

Ultimately, I just want to know what the “Refine” functionality is capable of so I can know what to expect.

Thanks,
Michael

[Barry]

Hi Michael,

There are a number of ways in which you can refine imports including by date and location — but it sounds like your main interest is in the ‘keywords’ field, is that correct?

If so, this is simply used to whittle down prospective events on the basis of words included in the event titles (and descriptions) — there is no specific syntax.

As an example, if you wanted to refine results to events that include party in the title or description, you would enter party in that field.

Does that help at all?

[Michael]

Thanks, Barry. You’re correct in that my main interest lies in the ‘keywords’ field and that I do want to whittle down prospective events for import. But what I’m asking more specifically is can that field be used to exclude events with “party” in the title from the list of events fetched.

I’m also a interested in whether keywords supplied to the field only match on whole words or also do partial matching. (For example, if I put “part” in the keywords field, will I get a list of events that match the word “part,” “party,” and “parties?”)

Thanks,
Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Michael.

[Michael]

Ah! I forgot a couple things. I also wanted to know about whether the keyword field supports boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT. In other words, can I search for party NOT birthday or children AND education?

Also, does the keyword field only search event titles or does it look at event description text too?

I’m preaching to the choir on this one, but these all thing that would be great to have in written documentation about the product.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Michael.

[Barry]

Negative patterns or exclusions are not currently supported, I’m afraid (though you could certainly propose that for future consideration). It does however support partial matching — ‘algo’ would match ‘algorithm’, as an example.

Yes, it is designed to search titles (or summaries, in iCal parlance) as well as the description.

Please note, however, that it is quite possible the fine detail of how this works will change and be tweaked over time.

[Michael]

Thanks, Barry!

[Barry]

Happy to help 🙂

I’ll go ahead and close out this topic, but feel free to post new questions as needed and one of the team will be only too happy to assist!

[Author]

Posts