Short-Term Solution for Event Reminder Emails

[Tim Stringer]

I’m getting ready to launch a new website in the November 2016 timeframe and am using Events Calendar to manage all of the event registration/payment.

I have all of the required pieces in place except for reminder emails. It’s important that I send participants a reminder email 24 hours and 2 hours before the start of the event.

I’ve heard that this feature is coming to the Events Calendar. Is there any chance at all it will be ready to go within the next month?

If not, can you recommend any developer(s) that has successfully implemented an event reminder system using a plugin such as Better Notifications for WordPress (the plugin you referenced in this post)?

Thanks!

[Nico]

Hi there @technicallysimple,

Thanks for getting in touch with us!

First of all let me say that I’m mostly sure this functionality won’t be added to the plugin soon. So I’d say the best path right now is to develop your own customization for this.

While I’m not aware any developers have successfully implemented a solution for this, you can contact customizers from this list and ask them about it.

The Better Notifications plugin allows you to create rules to send notifications to site users when a custom post type (like events) is created or updated but I don’t think you can schedule these notifications. There are also some premium add-ons that add more use cases like send a notification when a custom field is updated. I guess you could contact the plugin authors about this particular use case (notifications for events) to see if it’s a good idea to use their plugin as a starting point.

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with,
Best,
Nico

[Tim Stringer]

Thanks for your message, Nico!

I’ll try contacting customizers from the list to see if any have implemented something similar to what I’m looking for.

Also, good to know about the Better Notifications extensions. I’ll drop them a line to see what they have to offer.

I also use the WooCommerce Follow-up plugin to schedule things like subscription renewal reminders. It’s possible that it could also trigger reminders about events…but this is a bit of a long shot as I don’t see any indication that this plugin is extensible.

I’ll be happy to report back on any findings. If it works for you, perhaps we could leave this thread open until I complete my research (likely about a week, hopefully less).

Cheers,
Tim

[Nico]

Sure Tim, let’s leave this thread open (it will be automatically closed in three weeks though).

Ragarding Woo Follow-Up plugin, you might want to reach out to the author of the plugin and ask about it. I guess it might be a bit of a stretch but you never know!

Hope you can find a workaround for this and thanks for keeping the community posted about it 🙂

Best,
Nico

[Tim Stringer]

Sounds good. Thanks Nico.

I reached out to two of the developers on your list last week and am waiting to hear back.

I’ve had some contact with the author of the WooCommerce Follow-up plugin in the past and plan to email him today. It’s a bit of a long shot, but doesn’t hurt to ask.

I’ll update this thread once I have more information to share.

Cheers,
Tim

[Nico]

Thanks for the heads-up Tim 🙂

[Tim Stringer]

Update:

I haven’t received a response from any of the people I contacted on September 26, 2016.

I’ve since had a great chat with one of the developers at Codeable.io and have hired him to implement the event reminder functionality. He has previous experience customizing The Events Calendar and I’m confident that he’ll deliver as promised.

I’m expecting this work will be completed within the next couple of weeks. If you could leave this thread open, I’m happy to report back.

[Nico]

Thanks for keeping us posted Tim! Sure I’ll leave this thread open, no problem with that.

If you have a good experience with the developer you might want to suggest him to submit an application to be listed in our customizers list → https://theeventscalendar.com/new-customizer-application/

Hope everything goes well,
Best,
Nico

[Tim Stringer]

You’re very welcome, Nico.

Once the project is done, I’ll suggest that the developer submit an application to be listed on your customizers list…assuming I’m happy with the work he’s done (it’s going great so far).

It might be worth checking in with the customizers you currently list to make sure they’re still available for this type of work. I emailed a couple of them on September 23 and still haven’t received any response.

[Nico]

It might be worth checking in with the customizers you currently list to make sure they’re still available for this type of work. I emailed a couple of them on September 23 and still haven’t received any response.

That’s an interesting comment Tim! I’ll make sure I bring this up to the team 🙂

[Jason]

Hi technicallysimple,

We are facing the same issue and wondered if you managed to get this sorted? If you did would you mind sharing how you did it or put us in touch with the developer you used?

Thanks

[Tim Stringer]

Hi Jason,

For the past month I’ve been working with a developer to implement reminders for Events Calendar.

In my case, reminders are sent out 2 and 24-hours before the start time of the event. In addition to pulling data from the regular event information (including the event name and start time) the code that generates the email can pull custom fields. For my use case, the custom fields include a text block containing event-specific information and the meeting ID (most of my events are conducted online using Zoom and there’s a different meeting ID for each event).

The scripts that takes care of sending our email is triggered by cron. Depending on your hosting setup, the script may only be run if there’s activity on the site. If you have a low traffic site then the script might not be triggered at the exact time the reminder is set to go out. For relatively high traffic sites this is likely a non issue. My site is hosted through WP Engine and I’m planning to use their “alternate cron” facility, which will ensure that the script is run every minute.

We’re moving into the final stages of testing and I expect that work will be wrapped up on this project by Friday. I’ll see if the developer is interested in taking on some more work in this area (I suspect he is). In the meantime, let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers,
Tim

[Nico]

Great update Tim, thanks for sharing your progress! Stocked to hear this customization is going well 🙂

[Tim Stringer]

I’m happy to report that development on the event reminder’s functionality for my Holistic Productivity website is complete (the website itself will be launching very soon).

Email reminders are automatically sent out based on the information contained in custom fields, combined with the standard Events Calendar fields.

I’ve attached a screenshot showing the custom fields that were defined. I’m using the excellent Advanced Custom Fields plugin to present a friendly interface and to help ensure data integrity (e.g. make sure that text isn’t entered into a number field). In my case, the custom fields are:

• Pacific Daylight Time (true/false) – Set based on whether PDT is in effect.
• First Reminder (hours) – How long in advance of the start time to send the first reminder.
• Second Reminder (hours) – How long in advance of the end time to send the second reminder.
• Additional Information – Information specific to this event to be included in the reminder emails.
• Zoom Meeting ID – All my events are virtual and each has a unique Zoom meeting number.

The code that my developer, Henry wrote automatically generates reminder emails that consist of predefined text combined with the event information. He added some nice touches. For example, if the reminder is for an event that is taking place tomorrow the subject will contain the word TOMORROW. If it were a 2+ days away, the subject instead contains the date of the event.

If you’re looking for something similar, feel free to drop Henry a line at anri.tora at gmail dot com. You can either work with him directly or through Codeable.io. I’ve also encouraged him to apply to be an official developer/customizer for the The Events Calendar.

I hope this helps…and let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Tim

[Nico]

Hey Tim,

Thanks a lot for the update! I’m super stoked to hear this custom developed functionality ended with great results 🙂

Congratz to Henry, and to you as well for the great work here! Make sure to tell Henry to link to this thread in his application (if he decides to send one at some point).

I’ll go ahead and close out this thread now that the issue is resolved and that the dev information is also shared for future reference.

Thanks for keeping us informed on this,
Best,
Nico

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