Scheduled Imports High Failure Rate

[Neil Duckett]

I’ve upgraded to the latest versions (including WordPress), waited a few days to see how the Scheduled Imports would go, but still pretty much a 100% failure rate.

I’ve installed WP Crontrol – which shows me a massive list of Cronjobs, that’s about all as far as i can see, i don’t see any error reporting?

Letting the EA scheduler run on its own i get the odd random even every few days – then i hit the “Run Import” button to manually grab the events and presto in they come, plenty of them.

I don’t see how there can be a theme or other plugin conflict if the manual “Run Import” works with success EVERY TIME i hit the button, it even shows a nice little banner saying how many events were skipped, how many imported, how many images and venues etc …

I’m no stranger to trouble shooting issues having worked as a Software Engineer for 20 years – it wasn’t an option to ask people to do a fresh install, our Software HAD to work / integrate with other systems period. With the manual import working 100% successfully all the time tells me everything else is fine … the theme and the plugins i have installed .. the issue is with the scheduler side of things and of how it’s being executed on the server.

Considering the amount of other users experiencing the same high errors / red exclamation marks further confirms it.

The attached images show failures all the time with the exception of the newest manually run import which again worked great.

Come on Modern Tribe Support – we need the system running on real time sites, not just vanilla fresh install test environments.

I’ve included an image of a successful manual import then another of 100% success of every other manual import i tried.

Let’s get this scheduled import working please.

[Cliff]

Hi, Neil. There is a known issue with scheduled imports that will hopefully be fixed soon (weeks at the earliest, not days).

I’ll mark this ticket as Pending Fix, which means this thread should receive a reply once the applicable fix has been released. 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.

I apologize for this issue and appreciate your understanding and patience.

[George]

Hello!

I wanted to share the news that we released a Maintenance Release today that should include improved handling of these imports.

You should be able to see this update in your wp-admin Updates page. You can learn more about the release here: https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-events-calendar-4-4-2-event-tickets-4-4-2-premium-add-ons/

Cheers!
George

[Neil Duckett]

Hi George, i’ve updated my plugin but still not getting any of the scheduled imports to work – and I notice many new threads with the same issue so i’m guessing it’s not just me. I haven’t checked to see if the Facebook images are failing, which i’ve also seen reported, because i don’t get any scheduled imports so no new events.

I loathe to run the import manually and bring in a heap of events with no FB image so i’ll just sit and wait for another month to pass without a working solution – i have no doubt your licensing renewal date works spot on though and that payment will work without issue.

Like i’ve seen others mention, it seems with every “fix” there’s new issues that arise that were supposedly fixed previously – i don’t see how this can be that hard, although it clearly is.

I’ve built a system based on this working and have invested too much time and effort to back track now.

Hoping for a solution soon …

[Cliff]

Neil, sorry for the multiple frustrations this has caused you.

I’d suggest trying to import a single Facebook event (a URL like facebook.com/event/12345) and see if that works well enough for you (it should, since the issue here was with scheduled, not one-time, imports).

If it does, maybe try importing a new Facebook feed on auto-import, even if it’s not something you actually want in your calendar (you could set these events to import to a “temp-before-delete” category and be in “Draft” status), just to test the scheduled importing.

If all that works nicely, cross fingers and hope the stuff you actually want to import does too. (Of course, we always recommend restorable database and file backups before modifying anything on your site.)

Please let me know how this goes for you.

[Neil Duckett]

I relented and imported an event manually, sure enough 30 new events were created, all with NO Event Image! I don’t know what’s worse, the scheduled import never working or now the Facebook event image not importing when done manually?

This is why i haven’t run the 80 scheduled imports manually.

The suffering for choosing this ‘solution’ continues – and please don’t come back and tell me it’s going to be weeks until a fix, we need this working now.

Coming from a Software development background i’m amazed at the ‘development’ of this plugin …

[Cliff]

You imported “an” (one?) event manually and 30 new events were created?

Do you possibly mean one Facebook URL that was for a group, page, or other collection of multiple events?

Regarding the Facebook image not being imported, it is a known issue that is soon to be fixed. Here’s the pull request that’s likely going to be the final version that’ll make it into a near-term update: https://github.com/moderntribe/the-events-calendar/pull/1293/files

Please let me know if there’s more I can do to help in the meantime awaiting this fix.

[Neil Duckett]

Yes, I imported one Facebook URL from a page that regularly has events – a total of 30 new events were created.

[Cliff]

Please provide the URL that you tested that created 30 new events.

[Neil Duckett]

The only issue is there were no images created, the 30 new events were all individual / different events from one organizer.

https://www.facebook.com/themidnightshiftsydney

Would like be able to run it again and have the event image imported.

[Cliff]

I understand now.

As you said, that is a Facebook page link, which is why it was more than one event — which could be imported by using a link like https://www.facebook.com/events/406715123008584/ (single event) instead of https://www.facebook.com/themidnightshiftsydney (multiple events).

Also, part of the miscommunication here is that we have this thread tied to 2 internal bug reports. George updated this thread because the “automatic import from Facebook fails while manual works in some cases” issue was fixed.

However, the “Featured images aren’t getting imported from Facebook” issue is still not resolved. I would expect this code change to be the solution, but I cannot guarantee it… however, you might want to try making the edit to your own /wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/Aggregator/API/Image.php

(Of course, we always recommend restorable database and file backups before modifying anything on your site.)

If you choose not to attempt this file change, then you’ll need to await the next release that includes the fix. Once this 2nd fix is released, this thread will receive a 2nd update that it is released.

[George]

Hello!

I wanted to post a quick note here that we have published a new Maintenance Release today that should restore the Event Aggregator that lets Facebook event images get imported as “Featured Images” into WordPress.

You can read about the details of this release here → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-events-calendar-4-3-3-event-tickets-4-3-3-premium-plugins/

I hope this update helps!

If issues persist, open a new thread in the forums and be sure to include your site’s complete, un-edited “System Information” as per the instructions in this knowledgebase guide.

Cheers,
George

[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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