Tech Forum Archive

Calendar sync with v2

17 postsstarted by marmat 5,248 viewsoriginal topic

marmat
Member
#1
Just tested the LDS.org Calendar version 2.0 with the Google Calendar sync and it works! Woohoo... great job. Nice to have it back. Thanks to those who had the workaround for a period of time, but its great to have it back in the 'native' format.
kentedman
New Member
#2
aebrown wrote:I synced the new calendar to my Google Calendar successfully back when it was on new.lds.org. This morning I subscribed to the calendar now that it is on lds.org. That also worked just fine.

I don't know that I have any great insights to offer. I copied the URL from the Sync page in my new calendar. Then I went to my Google Calendar, and under Other Calendars I chose Add > Add by URL, pasted the URL I had copied, and about a minute later it was imported and the events were all visible. It just worked exactly as I expected.

Was the timezone correct? i can sync the calendar to google calendar but it shows as GMT +00:00 so all the times are 7 hours off -?
jdlessley
Community Moderators
#3
kentedman wrote:Was the timezone correct? i can sync the calendar to google calendar but it shows as GMT +00:00 so all the times are 7 hours off -?
This may be related to the time zone feature of calendar v2. Read about it here. Have your stake administrators reactivated the locations and set the time zone?
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
ernieblodgett
New Member
#4

Exporting to Google Calendar is missing a time zone

For whatever reason, when pasting the URL into Google Calendar, it doesn't allow us to specify the time zone - and the feed coming from LDS.ORG is missing whatever parameter it expectes so the time zone defaults to GMT - so all the times are many hours off. About the only thing I can think of to work around it is to change my google calendar to GMT, but that may cause other issues.

HELP!
aebrown
Community Administrator
#5
ernieblodgett wrote:For whatever reason, when pasting the URL into Google Calendar, it doesn't allow us to specify the time zone - and the feed coming from LDS.ORG is missing whatever parameter it expectes so the time zone defaults to GMT - so all the times are many hours off. About the only thing I can think of to work around it is to change my google calendar to GMT, but that may cause other issues.

I examined the iCal feed and indeed, it has no time zone information. So I did the following as an experiment:
  1. Used my sync URL to capture the iCal feed, and saved it with an .ics extension.
  2. Edited the file in a text editor and added timezone information.
  3. Created a google calendar and imported the modified .ics file
  4. All the dates and times were correct.
But if I used the original .ics file, all times were interpreted as UTC/GMT, and so they were off by several hours. The times in the feed are all specified in my time zone, but without any timezone information in the file, they are treated as UTC.

For those who are curious, the timezone information I pasted was the following. I copied it from an old .ics file extracted from the v1 calendar. I pasted it right before the first "BEGIN:VEVENT":

Code: 

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:US/Mountain
LAST-MODIFIED:20060203
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:19671029T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
TZOFFSETFROM:-0600
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:MST
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:19870405T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=4
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0600
TZNAME:MDT
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
So if the developers would just make a similar adjustment to the feed, I think it would start working for more people. I imagine it works pretty well for people along the Prime Meridian, except perhaps with Daylight Saving Time issues.

Note: I moved the posts that relate to sync under v2 to a new thread from the exceedingly long thread Calendar sync issues.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
marmat
Member
#6
Ahh, now that I went back into Google Calendar, I am indeed seeing the times are way off from my time zone. Had a similar issue at one time with Basecamp calendar and reported the issue and they were able to fix it relatively quickly. I think it is a matter of specifying time-zones in the iCal feed.
RichPhillips
New Member
#7

Missing Events for Location with Sync

Glad to have the sync with google calendar working. However, the sync only includes subscribed calendars, and does not include events at the selected location. As a building scheduler, I need to see all the events at my building on the sync'd calendar whether I am subscried to those calendars or not, or the calendar is of no value.

Also, as a side note. When you select print for just the events for a selected location (no subscribed calendars selected) the calendar will show the events, but the print report is blank.
jdcr256
Church Employee
#8
The timezone issue should be fixed now.

I'd also like to note, we had no expectation that the Google Sync would work with this release. We have tried to get a response from Google to get this working again, but have never heard anything. I mention that because it is very possible that it may stop working again, without us doing anything.
richphillips wrote:Glad to have the sync with google calendar working. However, the sync only includes subscribed calendars, and does not include events at the selected location.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this will be included in the sync in the near future. I'll add it on the backlog for consideration.
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#9
richphillips wrote:As a building scheduler, I need to see all the events at my building on the sync'd calendar whether I am subscried to those calendars or not, or the calendar is of no value.

I don't know as many schedulers want to see the building calendar on their personal calendar. Either this should be a separate subscription, or done in LDS tools. Putting it in tools would offer a better chance of being able to update it at a future time.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
dgoehring
New Member
#10
I'm confused. When I enter an event in the calendar that is an all day event ( for example -thanksgiving). It shows up fine on LDS.ORG but if I sync to outlook or iPad it comes over as the prior day event ( for example -Wednesday). I have to give it a time (which does not make sense for a holiday ). Is this correct or am I missing something? In the old calendar these events came over correctly.
lajackson
Community Moderators
#11
jdcr256 wrote:The timezone issue should be fixed now.

I think it is fixed for events with a set start time. All day events, however, show up the previous day. (Probably because the 12:00 midnight on the day of the event is being converted to 11:00 pm or earlier (depending on the time zone) on the previous day.
Aczlan
Member
#12
lajackson wrote:I think it is fixed for events with a set start time. All day events, however, show up the previous day. (Probably because the 12:00 midnight on the day of the event is being converted to 11:00 pm or earlier (depending on the time zone) on the previous day.
That appears to be the case on my google calendar.
One such item:
Family Home Evening
Sun, November 27, 12am – Mon, November 28, 12am
If I look at the event on the LDS.org calendar, it comes up as:
Event Details
Event: Family Home Evening
Description:
Date: 28 Nov 2011
Repeats
Occurs every: Occurs every 1 weeks on Monday
Repeats: Weekly
Repeats until: 31 December 2012
My calendar still shows up in Google Calendar as:
Calendar Time Zone: (GMT+00:00) GMT (no daylight saving)
URL: http://lds.org/church-calendar/services ... D_REDACTED
Aaron Z
RussBarth
New Member
#13
I had to unsubscribe from my old google feed and get a brand new URL from the sync menu and then re-add it to google. Then the times were correct.
jeffreymads
New Member
#14

All-day events show on the previous day with Outlook sync

dgoehring wrote:I'm confused. When I enter an event in the calendar that is an all day event ( for example -thanksgiving). It shows up fine on LDS.ORG but if I sync to outlook or iPad it comes over as the prior day event ( for example -Wednesday). I have to give it a time (which does not make sense for a holiday ). Is this correct or am I missing something? In the old calendar these events came over correctly.

I just tried to sync with MS Outlook a few minutes ago, and I'm having this same problem. All of the timed events come across correctly, but the "all day" events are showing on the previous day. Any ideas?
hickend
New Member
#15
I am able to get the calendar to sync to google once but when I update the church calendar with new events it doesn't update the google link with the new event
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#16
RussBarth wrote:I had to unsubscribe from my old google feed and get a brand new URL from the sync menu and then re-add it to google. Then the times were correct.

The times issues was just recently fixed. By removing and re-adding it, you forced Google to re-load from the church system.
jeffreymads wrote:I just tried to sync with MS Outlook a few minutes ago, and I'm having this same problem. All of the timed events come across correctly, but the "all day" events are showing on the previous day. Any ideas?

Yes, many are reporting the same thing. However, I'm noticing that the Holidays I added just yesterday are showing up correctly in my Google calendar.
hickend wrote:I am able to get the calendar to sync to google once but when I update the church calendar with new events it doesn't update the google link with the new event

It's up to Google as to how often it pulls the data. From prior experience, it can take a day or two before changes show up. This is a "pull" system (Google has to for a new file), not a "push" system (where the church that tell Google that a change has taken place.)
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
dentkev
New Member
#17

Sync with Ical off by 7 hours.

I'm still seeing the same problem with the GMT +00:00 so all the times are 7 hours off.
I unsubscribed to the calendar and got a new subscribe link and resubscribed. Everything is still 7 hours off.

Any ideas haw to fix this?