A more comfortable handling of occurences of recurring events

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen!

Thank you for that great plugin!

As you can see, I use EO for scheduling lessons at our young music school in Berlin. We have individual lessons and group lessons. Our events are the lessons (Unterrichtstermine). Our venues are the classrooms (Unterrichtsorte). Our categories are the subjects (Unterrichtskurs). And the WordPress users are the teachers (Lehrer). As you can see, I edited the file event-meta-event-single.php and the translation files (mo + po) too.

By the way, I’d like to make a suggestion, which has nothing to do with the actual problem. It would be great if I could rename the main terms (e.g. event, venue, category) in the EO settings. This would greatly increase the flexibility of EO. The question is how to deal with different languages. From my point of view it would be sufficient only to be able to rename the main terms in the current language in which I am working (for me German of course).

But back to the problem. First, you should know that I want to use EO to build a history, where I can look up when, where and what happened. Often it happens that an occurence of an event can fail once, can time shift once or can time shift permanently from a certain point in time. For example, if I time shift a single occurrence of a recurring event via drag and drop and later I change e.g. the end date of the event or what else, all manual time shifts get lost. Can you follow me?

Another example, I have no chance to say: From this point in time the class (event) starts at 12:50 and no longer at 13:00. Ok, I could split it into two recurring events. But when it changes too often, I’d get so much entries of actual one recurring event. Everything would become completely confusing. I think, one (recurring) event, one entry, because we have so many individual lessons. From my point of view, the managing of recurring events could be more comfortable and flexible. Can you understand that problem? What do you think for the future?

Best regards,

Martin

[Stephen Harris]

It would be great if I could rename the main terms (e.g. event, venue, category) in the EO settings

You can 🙂 See:

• http://codex.wp-event-organiser.com/hook-eventorganiser_register_taxonomy_event.category.html
• http://codex.wp-event-organiser.com/hook-eventorganiser_register_taxonomy_event.venue.html
• http://codex.wp-event-organiser.com/hook-eventorganiser_event_properties.html

They all filter the arguments with which to register the taxonomy / post type – in particular you can alter their labels.

Regarding the issue you describe – I have been considering this lately. As you say it would be helpful to be able to edit an occurrence and have the choice of the change affecting “just that occurrence”, “all occurrences” or “this and later occurrences”.

Since the edit event page relates to the event as a whole, then it’s difficult to include that functionality there (its quickly becomes ambiguous as to what you updating – technically you are specifying a start/end date and replicating that according to the occurrence rule – which is why any altered times are reset). So it may be that editing date/times there will still have the effect of reseting all the times of occurrences. If this feature is developed it would be most likely in the admin calendar (where you can currently edit individual occurrences).

There are some complexities on how to store this data – but it is feasible.

At present, there is the undesirable and confusing behaviour that move an individual occurrence’s date and time, and then saving the event (while editing the occurrences) will reset the time but not date. This is because the edit event page allows you to include/exclude occurrences based on date not date-time (and it’s by that mechanism occurrences are moved).

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen,

I’d like to take up the topic once again. Thank you for your detailed explaination. (I’m sorry for that long delay, but the complexity of that problem in a foreign language sometimes challenges me.)

Back to manual time shifting (no day shifting) of single occurences of recurring events via drag and drop in the calendar view in the back end. The problem was, when I do that and later I edit the event e.g. extend the period, all individual time settings get lost and take over the original time settings. Those changes may not overwrite the individual time shiftings. This is a very big problem for my use case.

You said:

There are some complexities on how to store this data – but it is feasible.

Are you going to work on this problem in the near future?

I would be willing to pay extra for it.

What do you say?

[Denise Wunder]

And you are right. When you edit an occurrence there must be a choice of the change affecting “just that occurrence”, “all occurrences” or “this and later occurrences”.

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen!

I’m sorry to tell you that the problem is becoming more and more precarious. I urgently need a solution. Don’t you think it would be a great benefit for others as well? I really don’t want to give up your plugin. Otherwise I’m so happy with it.

Best regards,

Martin

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Martin,

Unfortunately looking into this, it’s a lot more complicated than at first it seems. The reason being that the plugin can only support one recurrence rule per event. By shifting ‘all future occurrences’ by a day/time, you are effectively adding a new recurrence rule.

I’m afraid I don’t see this being introduced any time soon.

[Denise Wunder]

Stephen, thank you for your honest assessment, although I’m very sad about it!

It will be a difficult task to find something that is as good as and better than your plugin.

Greetings,

Martin

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen,

I’ve searched the entire WP plugin database, and the result was sobering. Only “The Events Calendar (Pro)” offers a satisfactory opportunity of “Non-Pattern-Based Event Series” – the solution of my problem. But I’m afraid to work myself into the plugin and implement it in my site. So much time…

You said that EO

can only support one recurrence rule per event. By shifting ‘all future occurrences’ by a day/time, you are effectively adding a new recurrence rule.

Btw, this is exactly what “The Events Calendar (Pro)” obviously can handle.

I promise, this is the last time I ask you again. Is there really no way to implement it? As I already said, I would extra pay for it.

Hopefully,

Martin

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen,

I am not sure if you have received my email, so I will contact you via this channel again. Be sure I’m very embarrassed to write you again, but I’m so frustrated of finding a solution for my problem (see on top). Please read on, I have a new solution.

I know, that this is a big problem for all businesses that are doing in timetable plannings with very different weekly plans with people who appear repeated but very irregular. It’s really no solution to create a complete new event. Maybe you ask why? I want to give you an example.

At our small music school students can purchase a prepaid contingent of 10 lessons – no contract with periodically lessons – to get flexible teaching dates. You can be sure, nearly every music school offers that. That leads to very irregular dates of in priciple one recurring event. In addition these irregular dates reaches not very far in future and can change suddenly, that’s why these events always have to be adapted. Creating lots of new events (instead of one) is very time consuming because of all the content we have to enter and because we will lose overview. And we need this overview to check facts fastly and easyly. Also we only can build up a correct and urgently needed event history when handling is much more comfortable. One lesson/student, one recurring event is the only solution!

And your solution is so close compared to other competitors. With “custom” you can pick on and off dates so easy! What we now need is to set a time for each date. Isn’t it imaginable to pick the dates first and EO will generate a table with these dates and with times of time of last event (in this example starting event) which are subsequently editable? Later you can pick off existing dates (and they will disappear in the table) or pick on new dates (and they will appear in the table [and take on the time of the previous date in table]). I think that this could be a much better solution approach than we thought recently.

Imagine Event Organiser would be the first event plugin which can handle this! That would be a key selling point for a huge number of music schools, dancing schools, gyms, restaurants and what you want. Only one event for all his different occurrences. And btw The Events Calendar (and all the others) can’t handle this – I’ve just checked it out in detail!

If I still couldn’t convince you, what can I do to persuade you? I’d write a detailed article about EO – please only in german 😉 Or to ask silly: How much is the price you would do it?

Greetings,

Martin

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Martin,

Sorry I haven’t had chance to reply to your e-mail. With regards to the feature, what I had thought you were asking for was the ability to edit an occurrence, say, to changes its time and apply that to all future occurrences. This is quite complex, because you effectively introducing multiple recurrence rules.

However, in the above you seem to be describing something a lot simpler, and which is currently possible in Event Organiser (if enabled). Namely, the ability to edit the date/time of a particular occurrence.

Does that do what you need it to?

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen,

of course, the code line define( ‘EVENT_ORGANISER_BETA_FEATURES’, true ); has been implemented in wp-config.php file to activate custom times for occurrences. But with the current solution I still have the following problems:

1. If I edit the occurences via drag and drop in admin calendar view in back end and later I want to add another occurrence(s) I will lose all individual selected times. Because in that moment I hit the checkbox at ‘This is a recurring event. Check to edit this event and its recurrences’ (to add another occurrence) and press ‘Update’ all occurrences get the time of the initial/first/parent event after ‘Start Date/Time’ (I hope you understand).

2. I admit that drag and drop is very smart but also very inaccurate (currently half an hour). I need an accuracy of at least 5 minutes!

But don’t worry, I have a really good idea how to solve these problems. This could help to realize your own goals as you wrote in this announcement.

As I think, currently there must be a kind of table to save the different times of occurrences. With ‘custom’ at ‘Recurrence’ you fastly can select and deselect single dates as it has already been implemented. And here is the new: Below that you should expand a table (by clicking on it) that you’ve just generated. In it you will find the following columns:

1. Number – Number of occourrence would be nice.

2. Date – The dates correspond to the dates you’ve just selected in the small calendar window. Maybe you split it into Start Date and End Date. If so, default value of End Date correponds to the duration of the initial/first/parent event. (For me it’s not necessary to split it.)

3. Start Time – Of course, the default value is the time from initial/first/parent event after ‘Start Date/Time’.

4. End Time – Same as Start Time.

5. Delete – A small delete button after every occurrence/row. But you still can delete an occurrence in the small calendar window as it has already been implemented.

At the same time you reach the goal that occurrences can have arbitrary duration as you wrote in your announcement: “Occurrences can have arbitrary duration”. If it gets too complicated with the drag and drop feature in admin calendar in back end, I easily can live without drag and drop. It has ‘only’ beta status anyway. And btw I also don’t need multiple occurences at one day!

Stephen, my wife and me urgently need a fast solution for our music school and we are ready to pay tribute. How can we help you?

Greetings,

Martin

[Stephen Harris]

That is one solution I have considered. It would work well for events with relatively few dates, but for events with more occurrences it becomes problematic. Since events can have an unlimited number of occurrences any user interface would need to cater for that – a simply list isn’t practical.

Such a UI would need to allow the user to navigate easily through the event’s dates (in order to remove a date from the schedule), and/or search for a particular date. Perfectly feasible, just not entirely trivial :).

Another issue is that at present, to edit an event’s occurrences on the event screen involves resetting all the times of the event’s occurrences to the initial start time. This is necessary because otherwise a change in time of an event would otherwise result in excluded dates reappearing. (It is also, depending on context desirable behaviour: e.g. I create a recurring event, add/remove a few dates, then decide to bring the event forward an hour).

However, it might be possible that if the initial start time of the event is not changed, that all the occurrences retain their existing time. This would allow you to add a new date without altering the time of excluded/included dates. The time of the new date could then be modified in admin calendar (I will investigate the possibility of allowing you to drag and drop the event to 5 minute window intervals).

I can’t guarantee this will be implemented. Above all us I need to ensure that this will not break existing (reasonable) usage of the plug-in.

[Denise Wunder]

Hi Stephen, thank you for answering!

You say:

However, it might be possible that if the initial start time of the event is not changed, that all the occurrences retain their existing time.

I’m afraid that my English is so bad to understand you precisely. Only to get sure: Currently I notice the behavior that all individual times of an occurrence (you made by dragging it in admin calendar) get overwritten with the initial times of the event when you hit the checkbox at ‘This is a recurring event. Check to edit this event and its recurrences’ (e.g. to add another date) and press ‘Update’. So currently I can’t add additional dates without loosing individual times of all occurrences. This is a huge problem.

Beyond that problem and from my user perspective, there are still three reasons why the calendar view is inadequate and not convenient to manage events with individual occurrences.

1. Quickness. Every adaptation of the occurrences of an recurring event involves too many clicks which consume too much time. Please imagine step by step what you have to do if you have to move some occurrences to another day of another week to another time. Please imagine what you have to do if you like to add new occourrences and if want to edit their times.

2. Duration. We urgently need the ability to set the duration of an occurrence. Even if you’ll implement the function to adjust the duration by admin calendar (maybe to stretch or compress it) you will have the problem like in #1.

3. Smart devices. How do you want to edit an occurrence via admin calendar with a smart device?

And now imagine how easy and quickly a table could be. And a table wouldn’t have to be a must, it could be just an option you can expand. So you don’t have to expand it if you prefer the admin view. Imagine a button right next to the ‘Show dates’ button. ‘Show dates’ button could become to ‘Show calendar’ and the new button for the list/table could be called ‘Show list’ or whatelse. How fast would you scroll a list of e.g. 52 dates/rows (a weekly event for one year) – whether on a desktop, a laptop or a smart device? Especially events with more occurrences could become so easy to handle. You could have one compact overview of all occurrences of that event. You could easily counter the occurrence or they could get numbers by the script. You could jump and edit from field to field, from row to row. You could remove an occurrence by a small ‘delete’ button at the end of a row or by deselecting a date in the small calendar window. You also could add an occurrence by a small ‘add’ button at the end of a row or by selecting a date in the small window. Depending on his date position a new occurrence could get as default values for Start and End time the values from the previous date. So you don’t have to enter start and end time for each new occurence if the time remains the same.

If you think a simple list isn’t practical because of its possible length it could have, there are possibilities to shorten it (e.g. as you already do with ‘Show more’ in single-event.php). Maybe you do have better ideas.

Stephen, I have to apologize for hounding you like this. But every day, the problem becomes more depressing.

Greetings,

Martin

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.

[Denise Wunder]

Stephen, I really don’t want to overwhelm you, but I’ve just realized that in the list/table, also organizer and location would have to be selectable!

To sum up, the occurrences of an event series need to have the ability to set a date, a start time, an end time, a venue and an organizer – occurrence by ocurrence, row by row. That’s it what we need! This would be a killer feature compared to all other event plugins! This could be a pro feature! Imagine the size of the new target group!

Seriously, what can I do to make this real?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by  Denise Wunder.

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Martin,

Unfortunately varying duration for occurrences cannot yet be supported because to do so would mean to rewrite a significant bit of the core plug-in. I won’t rule it out for the future, but it’s not practical for me to do that now.

Differing venues and organiser for each occurrence is impossible. Events are a post type, and they have venues, categories, tags and organiser (author). The occurrences are just a collection of date/times associated with an event.

While I can’t implement the above, what I can do is prevent the plug-in from resetting the times of the occurrences when you try to add a new date. Specifically, if you do not change the initial start date/time of the event, then any changes to individual occurrences will not be lost. This will allow you to add a new date, and then drag and drop it to a new time. I’ll also allow events to be dragged to 5 minute intervals, rather than the current 30 minute.

In the future I’d like to allow editing the event’s scheduling detail to the admin calendar. This would make it easier to manage the event from one screen. I appreciate the drawbacks you’ve mentioned previously with using the admin calendar, but my hope is that future iterations of that page will overcome those.

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