[Plugin: Events Manager] How do add an event to an Outlook calendar?

  • Resolved David Goebel

    (@david-goebel)


    12 years, 8 months ago

    Is there a way to include a link in the confirmation email that has an “Add to Outlook Calendar” option so that a user can add the event to their own personal calendar? I didn’t see any option for this in the settings except something called iCal. But I tried adding “#_EVENTICALURL” to the email and all it did was provide a link to the event page itself in WordPress. How do I allow the attendee to add the event to their own calendar or is this not possible?

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/events-manager/

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)

    (@netweblogic)

    not sure what the HTML is, but you could probably create this by building an html link and using this placeholder for the caldendar url

    Thread Starter David Goebel

    (@david-goebel)

    I am not exactly sure what you mean. Exactly how would I modify the setting in the “Confirmed booking email”? Currently it has the following code…

    Dear #_BOOKINGNAME, 

you have successfully reserved #_BOOKINGSPACES space/spaces for #_EVENTNAME.

When : #_EVENTDATES @ #_EVENTTIMES

Where : #_LOCATIONNAME - #_LOCATIONFULLLINE

Add to Calendar: ??????????????

Yours faithfully,

#_CONTACTNAME

-------------------------------

Powered by Events Manager - https://wp-events-plugin.com
    Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)

    (@netweblogic)

    is the link not ending in /ical/ ?

    i mean that if you get an ical url, you can probably create an html link e.g.

    <a href="#_EVENTICALURL">add to cal</a>

    Thread Starter David Goebel

    (@david-goebel)

    When I use this code…

    Dear #_BOOKINGNAME, 

you have successfully reserved #_BOOKINGSPACES space/spaces for #_EVENTNAME.

When : #_EVENTDATES @ #_EVENTTIMES

Where : #_LOCATIONNAME - #_LOCATIONFULLLINE

Add to Calendar: #_EVENTICALURL 

Yours faithfully,

#_CONTACTNAME

-------------------------------

Powered by Events Manager - https://wp-events-plugin.com

    I get an email with this link…
    https://tango.prototypetest.org/?event=search-master-conference-2012&ical=1

    When I click on that link it simply takes me to the page and I don’t see any type of notification to add the event to my calendar.

    When I use this code…

    Dear #_BOOKINGNAME, 

you have successfully reserved #_BOOKINGSPACES space/spaces for #_EVENTNAME.

When : #_EVENTDATES @ #_EVENTTIMES

Where : #_LOCATIONNAME - #_LOCATIONFULLLINE

Add to Calendar: <a href="#_EVENTICALURL">add to cal</a> 

Yours faithfully,

#_CONTACTNAME

-------------------------------

Powered by Events Manager - https://wp-events-plugin.com

    I get an email with this exact line in the text…

    Add to Calendar: <a href="https://tango.prototypetest.org/?event=search-master-conference-2012&ical=1">add to cal</a>

    Which links to the exact same page as the other code and also does not prompt me to add the event to my calendar. So how exactly is the user supposed to add this event to their calendar as I don’t see anything on my end. What am I missing here?

    Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)

    (@netweblogic)

    I’ll check out the html issue, but r.e. the outlook link, I don’t know what it is, but I’m giving you the URL to the ical link, you should then (once html works) be able to generate a link for outlook somehow

    e.g. https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/create-an-add-to-calendar-link-in-an-email-message-HA102114161.aspx should give more insight

    Thread Starter David Goebel

    (@david-goebel)

    Forgive me for the rather basic questions, but how exactly is this iCal supposed to work and should it be working in my example above? In a nutshell, the confirmation should have a link that allows the user to add the event to their own calendar such as Google, yes? I guess I am still rather confused as to what the final output of this discussion should look like. Do you have a live example of an event that uses the iCal feature?

    Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)

    (@netweblogic)

    we provide a pre-built link for google calendars which are in the form of #_EVENTGCALLINK

    we also have urls to the ical files which you can use for building your links. as to the link format itself that I’m not sure without looking into it.

    thank you. Thank You. THANK YOU. for this thread!

    I start to glaze over when things get to “codey” and I never would have figured this out on my own. With a couple of good visuals, though, I did it on the first try!

    David & Marcus, I owe you guys one!

    ??

    Thread Starter David Goebel

    (@david-goebel)

    @marcus – I changed the email settings to use HTML and I added #_EVENTGCALLINK to the confirmed booking email template. A Google calendar button shows up fine in the email, but nothing happens when I click on the link.

    Here is the code that is showing up when I use #_EVENTGCALLINK…

    <a href="https://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Spring+Picnic&dates=20120412T200000Z/20120412T210000Z&details=%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Ftango.prototypetest.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F03%2FTheBeev.jpg%22%3E%3Cimg+class%3D%22alignleft+size-full+wp-image-839%22+title%3D%22TheBeev%22+src%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Ftango.prototypetest.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F03%2FTheBeev.jpg%22+alt%3D%22%22+width%3D%22100%22+height%3D%22122%22+%2F%3E%3C%2Fa%3EGrab+your+gear+and+some+hotdogs%2C+it%27s+picnic+time+again.%C2%A0+So+put+on+a+smile+and+blah+blah+and+more+blah.%C2%A0+Your+pals+will+be+so+glad+that+you+came+or+maybe+not.+Grab+your+gear+and+some+hotdogs%2C+it%27s+picnic+time+again.+So+put+on+a+smile+and+blah+blah+and+more+blah.+Your+pals+will+be+so+glad+that+you+came+or+maybe+not.%0D%0AGrab+your+gear+and+some+hotdogs%2C+it%27s+picnic+time+again.+So+put+on+a+smile+and+blah+blah+and+more+blah.+Your+pals+will+be+so+glad+that+you+came+or+maybe!
 +not.%0D%0AGrab+your+gear+and+some+hotdogs%2C+it%27s+picnic+time+again.+So+put+on+a+smile+and+blah+blah+and+more+blah.+Your+pals+will+be+so+glad+that+you+came+or+maybe+not.%0D%0AGrab+your+gear+and+some+hotdogs%2C+it%27s+picnic+time+again.+So+put+on+a+smile+and+blah+blah+and+more+blah.+Your+pals+will+be+so+glad+that+you+came+or+maybe+not.&location=Apple+HQ&trp=false&sprop=http%3A%2F%2Ftango.prototypetest.org%2F%3Fevent%3Dspring-picnic&sprop=name:Project+Tango" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.google.com/calendar/images/ext/gc_button2.gif" alt="0" border="0"></a>
    Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)

    (@netweblogic)

    what about when you just use #_EVENTGCALURL? is the link clickable then?

    just wondering if it’s your email client stripping the html or if it’s a bad link. i think the former.

    Thread Starter David Goebel

    (@david-goebel)

    Well, I was able to get some items to work, but not 100%. Below is a breakdown of the code and the what shows up in the email. I tried five different lines of code, but only one of them (#3) actually sets up the event within my calendar (Google).

    Here is the code in the “confirmed email booking” settings…

    (#1) Add to Calendar: #_EVENTGCALLINK
    (#2) < a href=”#_EVENTGCALURL”>Add to Google Calendar
    (#3) Add to Calendar: #_EVENTGCALURL
    (#4) < a href=”#_EVENTICALURL”>add to cal
    (#5) Add to iCal: #_EVENTICALURL

    Here is what shows up in the confirmed email…
    screenshot

    (#1) The missing button is not a big deal, but even after I download the image the link does not work for some reason. It shows the URL when I hover over but nothing happens when I click on it…
    screenshot

    (#2) The “Add to Google Calendar” link does the same thing, it shows the link on hover but it doesn’t actually link when clicked.

    (#3) However, the third item in the lineup does in fact work. When I click on the really long URL it does open up Google Calendar…
    screenshot

    (#4,#5) Both options for ical prompt me to open or download an ics file…
    screenshot

    But when I open it, all it does is open two calendars side be side in Outlook and there is nothing related to the event itself…

    #1, #2 and #3 above works fine for me…

    However, I have the sam issue with #4 and #5. The file must somehow get wrongly formated since it openas an new calendar with no ionformation??

    i think the reason you get an “empty” calendar is that the ICAL file has following
    X-WR-CALNAME:{$blog_desc}”;
    which opens a new calendar with the blog name

    my work around was to copy the following files to
    /wp-content/themes/<your theme>/plugins/events-manager/templates

    and replace

    Line 20: X-WR-CALNAME:{$blog_desc}”;

    with

    “;

    and same for
    events-manager.5.1.8.5\events-manager\templates\templates\ical-event.php
    Line 20: X-WR-CALNAME:{$blog_desc}”;

    files are

    events-manager\templates\templates\ical-event.php
    events-manager\templates\templates\ical.php

    Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)

    (@netweblogic)

    #4 and #5 is expected for the ical links, you’d then open it in your client. eventually we’ll add more shortcut buttons like that of google cal.

    @sammalek thanks for the suggestion, will test that out, that might be the first step

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
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