Linked Calendars & time limit for importing past events

LiveWhale
1

We will be onboarding a campus unit this summer that has been using Timely for their event calendar for over a decade. We plan to import the existing events on their Timely calendar to LiveWhale via a Linked Calendar using an iCal subscription feed from Timely, then we’ll delete the linked calendar and keep the events. Will the iCal feed automatically pull every single past event ever posted to the Timely calendar for 10+ years? Or is there some sort of default limit, e.g. the feed only pulls events from the past X years? We want to pull all upcoming events and likely some past events too, just not sure we need 10+ years’ worth. If there is a default limit, or a choice we can make, I want to explain it correctly to the unit. Thanks!

2

Great question!

From the sample livewhale/client/private.config.php:

//$_LW->REGISTERED_MODULES['events']['custom']['since_linked_calendars']=93312000; // max age of items (in seconds) acknowledged in linked calendars (default: 93312000 i.e. 3 years)
//$_LW->REGISTERED_MODULES['events']['custom']['until_linked_calendars']=31536000; // max future date of items (in seconds) acknowledged in linked calendars (default: 31536000 i.e. 1 year)

So, by default, LiveWhale will include events from -3 years to +1 year from now when importing and syncing Linked Calendar. You can uncomment those lines to tweak that, though, so if you have a special case where you know you’ll be importing a feed that has ~10 year old events in it, it’s configurable. Hope this helps!

3

Thanks, Karl. If that is the default setting for all LW clients it might be helpful to note that in the documentation for Linked Calendars, which is where I looked first for an answer!

4

Hi Jen,

Great point! Our docs are a living document and ongoing project and we’ll definitely get this piece added to help clarify.

Thanks!
Rachael

5

On a semi-related note, if you delete an event from a linked calendar feed, will it reappear the next time the feed syncs? I know you can hide events on a feed and that status does not change, but wasn’t sure about deletions.

6

Hi Jen,

Yep! LiveWhale will re-“discover” a deleted event the next time it syncs (this can be a useful way if you want to intentionally undo customizations that have been done to a synced event), so if there’s an event from a Linked Calendar you just really don’t want to display, leaving it as status=Hidden is the way to go.

7

Thanks, Karl! That’s what I figured.