GoToWebinar Add to Calendar no longer working

[msutton]

Way back in 2017 someone shared that you could use these tokens to create calendar links for webinars using this technique.

{{my.Calendar URL - Google}} https://global.gotowebinar.com/icsCalendar.tmpl?webinar={{my.EventNumber}}&user={{member.registration code}}&cal=google

I noticed today that the urls it creates in the event description are malformed and don't work. The word "Note" is appended to the join links thereby breaking them and leading to an error page instead of the webinar as expected.

This was a great and elegant solution for including Add to Calendar links for GoToWebinar events. But it doesn't work well like this.

I called GTW support and they were quite confused over where this technique even came from and insisted they don't support it.

Anyone have an alternative? Hopefully one that's as easy to deploy as this one was 🙂 

[Michael_Florin]

What exactly do you mean by "The word 'Note' is appended to the join links"? Do you mean, "Note" is appended to {{member.webinar url}}? If so, that would indeed break your join link, but should not affect your calendar URL.

(And I certainly feel you! Moderating between Marketo Support and GTW Support when it comes to this connector is a nightmare. Both sides reject all responsibility.)

EDIT: I just tested the tokens and I do see everything working as expected. Here's my test email in draft:

And here's my personalized preview after having registered for that webinar:

Looks fine to me.

[msutton · Accepted solution]

Hey, thanks for the reply, Michael 🙂

So to be clear, I can create this link from Marketo and include it in an email to the registrant:

https://global.gotowebinar.com/icsCalendar.tmpl?webinar=4461177581612578575&user=601224141&cal=googl...

The problem is when I click that link to actually add the event to my Google Calendar the links in the description are incorrect.

You can see in the screenshot that the join link is added as

https://global.gotowebinar.com/join/4461177581612578575/601224141Note

which doesn't work. It should just be

https://global.gotowebinar.com/join/4461177581612578575/601224141

I've confirmed this same behavior exists in the GTW-generated confirmation email as well. (Note to anyone using those emails.) GTW support said they couldn't help. 

In the end I switched to addevent.com to generate the add to calendar links. These seem to work really well and are more customizable. This, incidentally, is the same service GTW uses in their registration Thank You page, though not in their confirmation emails.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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In the end I switched to addevent.com to generate the add to calendar links. These seem to work really well and are more customizable. This, incidentally, is the same service GTW uses in their registration Thank You page, though not in their confirmation emails.

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addevent.com is also what the /icsCalendar.tmpl page is using. They just use it wrong.

[Michael_Florin]

Thanks Mike - I got you now. 

And yes, confirmed, I see that error too. I have informed the GTW API team.

[Michael_Florin]

Okay, error is confirmed, ticket is created and in prioritization.