Is there any plan to create ics files instead of api file for subscribing to the calendar? My website can’t read an api file. I have to download the ics file through the api file and then upload it to outlook and then subscribe to the outlook calendar. This breaks the subscription process. So if I update it an event on Scoutbook Plus I have to delete the outlook calendar, create a new calendar, download the new ics file via api link, upload that to the new outlook calendar, then change the subscription link on the website. Can you please fix Sxoutbook Plus so there is a direct ics file link instead of an api link?
So, neither your website nor outlook allow you to subscribe to the link produced by Scoutbook Plus?
A post was split to a new topic: Error Editing Calendar - Date
@sethtinkler - you never want to use the ics file method as that is static. The best practice is to subscribe via url. The url from scoutbook plus works flawlessly for our sites and is a Google calendar. Is this your first time doing a web site calendar?
I can subscribe via outlook. However I cannot publish from outlook a calendar I’m subscribed to. The website cannot read an api file. It needs an ics like the old Scout book used to have. I’m sure it’s a deficiency with my web hosting. We use go daddy website builder. However, they aren’t changing their platform any time soon. I spent a little over 20 hours with their support team until I finally got someone who knew their system and came up with the solution described above. However if there is a way to get a differently formatted link to scoutbook plus I would not have to jump through so many hoops.
No, this is not my first time.
There are others subscribing to the calendar using godaddy so it is not an issue with the format of the URL which does provide an ics file. You can use the forum search function to find posts related to godaddy and the calendar.
I did. No one has a solution for the api format. I was hoping that since I spent 20 hours with Go Daddy support we’d be able to find a solution. It does not appear that anyone can or will fix the issue. Thanks for everyone’s thoughts.
The URL used for subscriptions returns an ics file. You can see this by clicking on the URL for your unit and pasting it into another browser window.
If you do this and you get a file that contains only
{
"errorCode": "M404",
"message": "Not Found",
"errorDesc": "Calendar is empty."
}
your calendar is empty and there is nothing to subscribe to. In this case, create one event and a properly formatted ics file will be downloaded.
Yes. That downloads the ics file which I then have to upload to outlook, etc. What I need is a link that is not api. I need it to end in .ics like outlook, google, etc. produce when you subscribe to those calendars. Instead of api.scouting.org/xxxxx I need scouting.org/xxxxxxx.ics.
@sethtinkler it is simple - I just put the URL in a web-browser and an ICS downloads - or just add .ics to the URL if you need that
@sethtinkler - you need to subscribe via url which is what i do for our calendars on our sites. You can look at scouting33.org then the individual unit pages. I am fairly certain that you can do thay on the godaddy page. The method you are using is not the best practice and i know for certain that subscribing via url works in outlook. Your additional step of linking your outlook calendar is problematic if you have not made it public. There is nothing to be fixed on the scoutbook subscription URLs. Your method makes the entries static
This downloads the file. I need to subscribe to the link.
The problem is when I subscribe to the link via the provided api it removes all the time zone data. Therefore, Go Daddy shows all the events at GMT+0 instead of GMT+7 which produces all the times 7 ours off. As I said, I spent 20 hours chasing down this issue with Go Daddy support. They cannot properly handle an api formatted link when sharing a calendar. If there isn’t any way to get the calendar link in the format that every other platform shares their calendars, that is fine. It is just a bug that hopefully someone will fix at some point. The old Scoutbook did use links that ended .ics, so I was hoping it would be fairly easy to get a link that was formatted that way again on the new calendar.
@sethtinkler - that is a known godaddy issue as all other ical products hav no issues with the url
A simple search of “godaddy” in the forums returns this thread which explains how to workaround Godaddy’s time zone issue. It is not an issue with the URL but how godaddy interprets time zones in the ics file.
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The link is not stripping out the the time zone data. The problem is godaddy is not properly interpreting the data that is in the file and rendering the time properly.
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Try appending ?timezone=America/Phoenix to the end of your calendar subscription URL to work around Godaddy’s TZ issue.
@sethtinkler - you could move in the direction we did using godaddy as a landing page and leveraging google sites for the unit pages.
Thanks for the thinking outside the box @edavignon! Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
