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Shelby,

Thanks for the update! I do have a question for the meantime. If I manually download the ics file from the sources I’m importing from, with those events match up with auto imported ones? I just don’t want to manually import the events and then have two of all of those events.

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Thanks, Courtney! I’ve switched it from iCal option to the “other url” and it is working great now!

I did push the start date of the new feed to after the current imported events. Otherwise, I noticed that the two imports would duplicate events.

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Nico,

Thanks for the update! I did confirm that the events from the other calendar are importing with the correct end time now.

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George, thank you for the update! I’ve confirmed that the feed from our TEC site to the other calendar is working great now.

However, the ics/ical events from the other site to our site is still importing with the same starting and ending time. Will this be in the next update?

Thanks again for the great support!

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Cliff, thank you for the reply! I realize this is a tricky question, but do you have an estimated timeline for the fix (clients are asking)? Even a super rough estimate would be helpful, like a fix of this nature typically takes a month. I really appreciate the great support!

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Cliff,

I was able to dig up some more info. The other calendar’s support team, which is importing events from our TEC iCal, sent this reply:

The ical file attached does not meet the ical spec for datetimes. It leads with an offset, which I believe needs to be a timezone id. I think it’s seeing the UTC and assigning that as the timezone.

In File:
DTSTART;TZID=UTC-5:20161115T090000
DTEND;TZID=UTC-5:20161115T100000

Expected:
DTSTART;TZID=US-Eastern:19980119T020000

I think they can put an offset if they use another field TZOFFSET such as:
TZOFFSETFROM:-0400
TZOFFSETTO:-0500

They continue to import events from our TEC without having the timezone applied. Any thoughts? Thanks for looking into this!

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Cliff, one more question if you don’t mind. When I import from their ics file (the Drive file above), the starting time and ending time is the same in TEC: https://cl.ly/2p2C121O1k2l

I tried importing the same ics file into ICS Convert (https://icsconvert.appspot.com) and it showed up correctly: https://cl.ly/3Z210U1k0y3M

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Our calendar should be Chicago timezone: https://cl.ly/271u3f2U1k0q

I click update Timezone button in TEC to be sure. Both calendars should be Chicago timezone.

Would appending the timezone to the end of event details potentially help Blox when importing from TEC? https://cl.ly/0b462H1X3u11

——–

Yes, the imports are going both ways. We’re running the new Events Aggregator.

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Sure thing! The goal is to import events from the community calendar (powered by The Events Calendar) into the Voice of Alexandria website (Blox CMS) at the correct time. Right now Blox CMS is importing all events without the timezone applied.

Community Calendar (alexmncalendar.com/events/ical) -> http://www.voiceofalexandria.com/

Something I also noticed, not mentioned in the previous posts, is that The Events calendar is importing the ICS file from Blox with the same starting and ending time for events. I checked the file with https://icsconvert.appspot.com/ and the end time seems to be showing up there.

ics sample file from Blox: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0y2bU1imTGoRE4xd2tKNTlDVGs/view?usp=sharing

Thanks again for the help!

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I noticed something else while digging. The timezone difference is showing up in the ics file for Blox but not TEC.

The Events Calendar: https://cl.ly/0o1I1S2L2x3C

Blox CMS: https://cl.ly/3Q0K1N0Y361E

The objective is to have the Blox CMS import events at the correct time from The Events Calendar. However, I tried importing events from an ics file from Blox CMS to see if the same problem occurs in reverse. It worked correctly. Not sure if that helps, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

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Cliff,

Thanks for the response! I used this tool for testing the ical feed from my site: http://icalendar.org/validator.html

The other site is running TownNews Blox CMS and is importing the ical feed from alexmncalendar.com (running The Events Calendar).

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Added my vote! 🙂

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Thanks for the clarification!

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Cliff, I tried it again with all the plugins deactivated on both explorealex.com and alexmncalendar.com with the same result. The only active plugins were The Events Calendar and iCal Importer. Both themes were on Twenty Fifteen.

Screenshot of venues imported: http://imgur.com/Et7XQHP

When you test out the importer, are the venues coming through with the proper name or are you seeing the same thing?

Thanks for taking a look!

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Cliff,

I disabled all the plugins except The Events Calendar and The Events Calendar Pro on ExploreAlex.com with the same result. Check out the screenshot: http://imgur.com/utpayE8

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