Trouble with importing Facebook Events

[David M Lerner]

I work for a web design company and one of our clients wished to import their Facebook events onto their website. Our client gave us the API Key as well as the Facebook page to import from. We have entered them in the correct areas but we still were not able to import anything from our client Facebook page. Is there any hints or tips as to how we can do this properly?

[Geoff]

Hi David,

Welcome to the forums!

I’m so sorry to hear about the trouble here importing from Facebook. I actually saw a report of a similar issue and the culprit could be an issue with the server that Event Aggregator is on. We’re looking into that as we speak and hope to confirm and properly ticket that soon.

In the meantime, I’d like to make sure this is indeed the same thing. Would you be willing to share the Facebook URL of the account you are importing from so I can test it on my local site? It won’t quite be the same as me testing with your client’s Facebook credentials, but it will at least help me see whether there is an inconsistency with the server when importing from the same URL.

Also, it would be help if you could help answer a couple of other things for me:

• Are there any error messages when you try to connect Event Aggregator to the Facebook account in the API settings?
• The Events > Help screen has a table that shows the current status of the Event Aggregator server and your connected accounts. Will you please take a screenshot of that and include that in your reply?
• Do you know if the Facebook account being used is either a private account or is attempting to import from a Facebook Group? Or is it a general public Facebook Profile?

Let’s start here and see what we find!

Thanks so much,
Geoff

[David M Lerner]

Thank you for your quick response.
The Facebook URL is: https://www.facebook.com/Businessonmountaintime/
The Facebook Account is a general public account
Attached is a screenshot of a message I am receiving on the import settings.

[Geoff]

Hi David,

I’ve been digging into this and can confirm that I have been able to successfully import events using Facebook Events and the URL you provided.

The error highlighted in the screenshot you shared is pretty telling, so let’s try a couple of things:

• Navigate to Events > Settings > Licenses and make sure there is no license key entered for Event Aggregator. Having this active in addition to Facebook Events can create some conflicts
• Navigate to Events > Settings > APIs and confirm that you have properly set up a Facebook App ID and Secret Key. Here’s a screenshot of my working settings.
• Navigate to Events > Legacy Import and click on the Import Settings tab and confirm that “Businessonmountaintime” is entered into the “Organization and page usernames” field.
• Navigate to the Events > Legacy Import screen again and click on the Facebook tab and confirm that there are events to import from that Facebook account. Here is a screenshot of the events I was provided to import.

Let’s try those in order and see where it takes us. For what it’s worth, our new Event Aggregator service makes this import process a whole lot easier and might be worth trying out since we have provided you with a free license for it. But let’s give this a shot first. 🙂

Thanks!
Geoff

[David M Lerner]

According to the settings the next import is not for another 8 hours and I had it set to hourly. Is there a way to speed this up a little?

[Geoff]

I believe you are able to view events that are available to import on the Events > Legacy Import > Facebook screen regardless of when the next import is scheduled.

Thanks,
Geoff

[David M Lerner]

I am not seeing anything on the import area and it keeps saying there is an API error. Is there a way to get the Access token?

[Geoff]

Hi David — hope you had a great weekend.

There’s a message at the very top of your screenshot that is asking you to create a Facebook app. Doing so will allow you to create the App ID and Secret Key I referred to in this step:

Navigate to Events > Settings > APIs and confirm that you have properly set up a Facebook App ID and Secret Key. Here’s a screenshot of my working settings.

Will you please take a screenshot of your Events > Settings > APIs screen for me so I can confirm your settings?

Thanks,
Geoff

[David M Lerner]

Hi, We are not familiar with creating Apps through Facebook. That may the problem. We’ll look for a Facebook developer who can create an app for us.

[David M Lerner]

Thank you for helping us through this whole troubleshooting process. We have found someone to help us set up an app for our client and everything is now working as it should. You have been a great help to us and again thank you. Have a great Thanksgiving!

[Geoff]

Awesome, I am so happy to hear all is working well! Thanks a ton for following up to let me know. 🙂

Cheers right back at you and here’s to an awesome holiday week!

Geoff

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