Import events from an existing Google Calendar

[user3120]

I switched to them back when they said they were revisiting this. It works flawlessly.

[Cortes_de_Aragon (Cortes de Aragón)]

News about this feature?

[Max]

Really happy to see you as a part of our Community, welcome @Cortes_de_Aragon

Much as I’d love to share an update, unfortunately, we can’t give any ETA for this feature at the moment. Hope the devs will find a solution, and I’ll make sure to update you here once I have any news.

Thanks a lot for your interest and help

[user4093]

So many of my clients use Google Calendar that any sync (import, export, sync) would be a step in the right direction.

Thank you.

[Max]

@user4093 Yep, definitely share your point!

We realize how useful this option might be for our users, so we’ll try our best to speed up feature developments.

We’ll keep you in the loop

[user6016]

I am a new customer and voted in favor of providing a solution for this, at the beginning of this month.

I believe that having - at least - an import data feature for the calendar will be of extreme value, specially if you have over 100 detailed events in a Google Calendar, for example.

I am waiting to see. I read that this request was created in Jan / 2020. I hope the path to achieve this is conquered soon. Manual effort in regards to entering each event - from one calendar to another - is a bit counter productive.

Blessings to all!

[Max]

Hi @user6016 and welcome to the Community

We are also eagerly waiting for this feature! It’s hard to give any predictions regarding its release. However, we promise to keep you informed about any changes here

Thanks a bunch for sharing your thoughts with us!

[Great_Awakening_Coff (Great Awakening Coffee House, Inc)]

Many other products, both free and paid, have this functionality. Using Styled Calendar now to get around Elfsight not having this functionality. This should definitely be a focal point for Elfsight develop development. To not have this function 3 years after request for the most-used calendar service would seem to be a real oversight.

[Helga]

Dear friends, we urgently need your input on a couple of ideas regarding the import option

The good news is that we’ve started working on this feature! But we need to hear your thoughts before making any major changes.

Our idea of the import option in action

You’ll have an option to connect your Google Calendar, and we will automatically retrieve events from there to display in the widget. But:

In this case, you will not be able to edit events in the Event Calendar widget editor. All the event-related tasks must be handled on Google Calendar side.

A range of event fields in Google Calendar also looks a bit different from the event fields in our widget. These are the fields that Google Calendar doesn’t have:

• Settings for the action button in each event (button text, link, caption under the button);

• Field to choose an Event Type;

• Tags;

• An option to add a Host to the event.

This way, we won’t be able to support the above-mentioned fields by default if Google Calendar is set as the content source.

Our idea to resolve this difficulty:

We could give you an option to add these fields to the event description in a particular format. When importing, we would parse this description and extract the setting values.

The potential downside of this idea: in case you use Google Calendar that is connected to your widget some other way (ex., invite other people or import data somewhere else), these extra fields data in the description will be visible for everyone else.

We realize this option is not ideal, but this is the best solution we could come up with so far.

Our questions to discuss with you

1. Do you need the fields in question when connecting the Google Calendar, or are they not necessary for you when working with the Event Calendar widget?

2. If these fields are mandatory, what are your thoughts about our idea to add them to the description? Does it sound like a problem for you?

3. Do you have any other ideas, thoughts or suggestions in this regard?

It’s super important for us to hear your thoughts, so please share what you have in mind

And yes, this feature is now officially “In Progress”!

[Kitty_Turner]

Thanks for asking!
My organization doesn’t need those fields. Your resolution is fine, I don’t think anyone will mind the blank spaces.

However, an option that we do need is to highlight specific events.
Enlarge, extra art, and/or pin to top would be nice features that we could offer to our partners and sponsors to make their events stand out from the rest.

[user11691]

All of those features are important to the calendar - tags, event type, and adding a host. I am glad this is in progress - I am waiting for this upgrade before I pay for your service. Thank you!

An ability to import events via spreadsheet would be even better than connecting to a calendar…

[meaghan]

Thanks for asking

An action button would only be necessary if the connection didn’t automatically pull the zoom link (or other meeting link) from the Google Calendar event and add it as a clickable link to the widget events.

It’s also cool to have the option to add specific info to the description that will make an action button possible. I don’t foresee that being an issue for our calendar invitees.

My organization uses this widget to make a very user friendly, aesthetic calendar for clients that allows our international clients to easily view the events in their timezone. We have clients starting and stopping work with us on different dates throughout the year so having a calendar link to view all events saves us on the admin of adding and removing invitees to the events in the Google Calendar. For this reason we would mainly use the Google Calendar just as internal feed for this widget so what shows up in the description isn’t an issue for us!

Not being able to specify event type isn’t a deal breaker but it is so convenient to have. So being able to add this with the description field would be great.

I’m curious if a client viewing the widget selects “add to calendar” does the description field info from the original Google Calendar even then get added to their calendar?

Also if it’s a recurring event - does it get added to the widget as a recurring event also? and if it’s a recurring event does it get added to the client calendar as a recurring event when they select “add to calendar”?

Thanks!!

[Matthias_Hautekiet]

For us the above mentioned field are very important. Having them in the description in stead of nice looking labels on an event would really be a bummer. This would really be a step down for us.

Furthermore we reply on tags and event types to give the filter options to our Customer.
Last but not least the host is very important for SEO reasons. Removing this would mean less organic visibiliy.

I think that the possibility to have a 2-way connection should be looked at. In this way you can import your évents, but you are still able to fine tune them later.

[Helga]

Guys, thanks a lot for all your comments here, they are very much appreciated! Our dev team is considering them all

@meaghan to answer your questions:

• yes, you will see recurring events in your widget after integration with Google;

• and no, “add to calendar” button is not related to the integration and will create only one event instance. But we will develop this option as we go

Guys, if you have any other ideas, suggestions, or thoughts, feel free to add them all to this thread. We’ll be happy to discuss them all!

[Melanie_Schram]

Action button is not of intrest to us.
Event type is really handy to have
Tags would be nice
We don’t need extra hosts.

I would not mind using the google calendar description to provide the data necessary for you to extract this. Will it automatically sync? Also, could you add an image to the event?

[Helga]

@Melanie_Schram many thanks for jumping in!

Great questions, and the answer to both of them is ‘yes’

1. We’ll be able to pick tag data, event type data, etc… These data will be hidden when displaying descriptions in the widget. Also, any changes made in Google Calendar will automatically reflect in your widget.

2. You will only need to add an image as an attachment to the description. Additionally, if you include a YouTube link in the description, the video will be used as a video event in your widget.

Feel free to ask any other questions!

[Rev_Devan]

I wouldn’t mind these Losses, as long as I can still schedule my own events in the same old fashion. To me, the only purpose of events is to have a place where people can go and click the link or button to participate. I assume there could be a distinct Difference in look compared to the other events. Which would be a lot easier to post last-minute events. Thank you

[Val]

I think one way importing events from a google calendar is a great solution!

I wouldn’t need tags/host or action button but the Event type or a category to set different events apart from each other would be needed.

I could create multiple event widgets to handle different event types but It would really great to have categories that the events fall under.

[user208]

I didn’t understand what you wrote to me. My request is different. I need to be able to filter events based on very specific characteristics. I don’t have to import events anywhere. I create the events directly in your widget, but the end user must be able to filter only what interests him. Can we filter by tag? or by duration of an event (attention, not by date, but by duration)