syncing to Google calendar

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  • #1459363
    John Sisler
    Guest

    We have a scout troop and have been trying to wean people off of the google calendar.

    Currently, we are using a plugin the reflects the google calendar AND using the free version of your plugin, which is much better.

    To switch our source of truth to your calendar, I would like to only update The Events Calendar and have it sync with the google calendar, but the feed doesn’t seem to work and I am not sure if that feature exists in perhaps the PRO version or the Aggregator product, or maybe something else.

    The idea is that parents who already subscribe to the google calendar can continue to do so since we would update The Events Calendar and the sync would automatically update the google cal.’

    Can you help me understand if this is possible?

    Thanks kindly,

    John

    #1459378
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi John

    Event Aggregator is more of a tool to import Google calendar into The Events Calendar. It is great if you want to have people add events to a Google calendar and have that displayed then on your site.

    However, on your calendar, you can have people subscribe/export to their own Google accounts. See http://wpshindig.com/events in the bottom right corner. This is our demo site. Even on the free version of The Events Calendar, you can have this export/subscribe functionality. The problem is getting your users off the original Google calendar. You could pester them by putting up some sort of a polite nag notice as an event that just says go to this website and hit Export events.

    I do hope one of these options works for you. Keep me posted on what you decide.

    Thanks
    Courtney 🙂

    #1459726
    John Sisler
    Guest

    Thanks Courtney,

    I want to sync so folks can subscribe once and not have to continually download then upload the events.

    I can’t seem to make the URL https://t244.org/events/feed load in another calendar, like google calendar.

    Since when I tried no events do not show up I may be missing a step or not understanding how the sync is supposed to work. What I think I need is an ics file to subscribe and am not sure if that is an option.

    #1461267
    Courtney
    Member

    Hey John

    Check out the bottom right corner on our demo site https://wpshindig.com/events/. It says “Export”. This creates an .ics file that you can take into Google Calendar or other calendar tools. It will auto-update as the website calendar posts new events.

    Let me know if that works for you.

    Thanks
    Courtney 🙂

    #1461332
    John Sisler
    Guest

    Thanks again!

    So I can get the ics, but I tried that and think I asked the wrong question.

    When I am asking how to subscribe, I do not want all my users to have to download the ics every time we add or update an event.

    I think my ignorance is getting in the way, but how do I setup the Events Cal so changes made in the Events Cal automatically update the google cal?

    #1461368
    Courtney
    Member

    Hey John

    No worries, text-based communication can be hard.

    You can take the .ics file and put it into a Google Calendar youself (https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=en), then make that Google Calendar public. https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37083?hl=en

    Is that more what you were thinking?

    Thanks
    Courtney 🙂

    #1461399
    John Sisler
    Guest

    I think that is almost the answer.

    I did put the ics into my google calendar, I had to import the ics file and it confirmed 2 events were imported.

    Then I went into the Events Calendar and added an event and was hoping to see it on my google cal, but I don’t think it will show up unless I get another ics file.

    I would like it to just feed and be updated via rss, so that i can make the Events Calendar the source of truth and not have to keep importing the ics file.

    This may sound out of box, but you mentioned it is difficult writing and I could setup a conference call with a screen share to perhaps communicate better what I am trying to do?

    Please let me know if the question makes sense and if you think perhaps a call would help.

    Thanks again for your time and attention to this.

    #1461409
    Courtney
    Member

    Hey John

    You’ll just need to wait a little bit I believe for Google Calendar to run its search for a recently published event again. I’d check back in a few hours to see if it catches that itself.

    Thanks
    Courtney 🙂

    #1461911
    John Sisler
    Guest

    Thanks again Courtney,

    I left that to settle overnight and it still has not updated.

    It makes me think that the ics file is a file that updates what it has at the time and does not continually sync.

    There is another option for a url and that makes more sense to me.

    It says it needs the iCal format for the address and does not work using the ‘feed’ url.

    Any idea if the iCal formatted url is available in either the free or Pro product?

    #1462726
    Courtney
    Member

    I do love RSS myself, but it doesn’t really know what to do with events. Our calendar’s RSS is better suited for instances like how you might read WordPress Posts in an RSS list.

    I did a bit more digging. The Export Events button, when clicked, will download an ICS file containing all of the displayed events for that particular view. So, for instance, if the button is clicked when viewing events for the month of December, the downloaded ICS file will contain all events in December. However, you can also copy the URL from this button and paste it into a third-party application to automatically sync all events from that calendar. You can try this for yourself with the export URL from our WP Shindig demo site: http://wpshindig.com/?ical=1

    Let me know if https://t244.org/?ical=1 works to import all events into Google Calendar.

    Thanks
    Courtney 🙂

    #1462925
    John Sisler
    Guest

    This sounds like a really solid idea. I tried it this morning and am waiting for it to update.

    I may wait to see until tomorrow but the good news is that the url was readily accepted as valid from the google calendar interface, and the feed url is not so this is a big step in the right direction.

    I did not want to wait until tomorrow to say thanks for all the help on this so far, and I will let you know when I see it updating online.

    #1463286
    John Sisler
    Guest

    I tried using https://t244.org/?ical=1 as mentioned above and let it settle overnight but it is still not updating.

    Maybe there is another method in the PRO version?

    #1470313
    Courtney
    Member

    Hi John

    Checking back. I believe this might be the extent of what we can do. I do so appreciate your patience as we tried to work through this. I believe it’s a bit of an endless loop on calendars.

    If there’s anything else I can do, please let me know.

    Thanks
    Courtney 🙂

    #1489795
    Support Droid
    Keymaster

    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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