Synchronization with published Outlook 365 calendar

[Randy Kalscheur]

We are considering your plugin for only the calendaring function on our WP site. The essential requirement for this calendaring plugin is its ability to synchronize with a Published Outlook calendar, which is presented/hosted by Office 365 as both an ics and html file.

We need the plugin to regularly check, even down to the 15 or 30 minute intervals, back to this published ics/html file for any changes that we initiate from our side.

We don’t want to have to manually import a new file everytime we make a change, so please confirm this feature.

To push this requirement further, what about two way functionality, features that are offered by other similar calendars such as birchpress and timely?

Thank you.

[George]

Hey Randy,

Thanks for reaching out.

We have a plugin called the iCal Importer which might do well here, but there are some caveats to point out:

• This plugin does not have two-way synchronizing abilities.
• You can import an ics feed on intervals. The smallest interval is one hour, however; not 15 minutes or 30 minutes.
• The plugin’s auto-importing features are WordPress cron jobs. These are not true cron jobs. So, if you set an auto-import to happen hourly, then the import will run every hour as long as the site has been visited within the last hour. If nobody visits your site in an hour-long span, then the job will not be queued to run. This is a limitation with WordPress itself, not our plugins or by our own choosing.
• The auto-imports have to listen to a feed of ics. If outlook does not provide a URL or feed that can be “listened to”, then this will not work. If it only provides ics insofar as you having to open the app and then manually export the ics file, then you would have to manually import that ics file each time you want to do an import.

☝️ I hope this information is clear and helps you move forward with your decision!

Sincerely,
George

[Randy Kalscheur]

Does the import interval (min 1 hour freq) start timing from the last import event or in the case of low traffic and thus dormant WP cron jobs (> 60 mins since last visit), 1 hour from the last site visit.

An example:

An ics feed is updated by the iCal import feature at 10PM, because there is activity on the site.

Internal calendar is updated at 1AM, and because traffic to the site isn’t happening, the cron job isn’t firing. Will that iCal job kick off the moment the site is visited next or will it be that time +1 hour?

Lastly, is there the ability to make the ics feed refresh more granular, much like the time.ly product, which gets down to 10 min intervals?

Thank you.

[George]

Hey Randy,

Will that iCal job kick off the moment the site is visited next or will it be that time +1 hour?

☝️Once the site is visited, then the job will kick off only if it’s been more than one hour since the last import. Otherwise the job will remain queued, but not run until the above condition is met.

As for making it more granular, there is no way to do this at this time. You might be able to do it by diving deep into the core plugin code on your own and rewriting/modifying the recurring-import code. But otherwise it is not possible.

Sorry to disappoint!
George

[Randy Kalscheur]

Thanks for the answer. No disappointment at all and thanks for clarifying the kick-off sequence/mechanism of the cron jobs.

[George]

No problem Randy!

I will close up this thread for now, but if other issues arise, or any questions, open a new thread any time.

Best of luck with your project,
George

[Author]

Posts