URL ReWrite Friendly-URL not working for novice programmer - url-rewriting

Question

We're using URL ReWrite 64bit version from Microsoft on Windows 2012 R2, ColdFusion 11 Enterprise, IIS 8.5, and SQL 2008.
Forgive me for being redundant and obvious. Writing in detail is the only way I know how to get my point over. I hope it's not too much.
I've searched the site but cannot find an answer that hints at what I'm doing wrong.
So, this is my first question:
URL ReWrite is installed and seems to operate okay with some rules, but I cannot get it to do what I want with the Friendly-URL rewrite. That is the problem. I'm hoping someone will use the same basic parameters I used to see if they get the same problem on Windows or Windows Server.
Our public Announcements section on our website was written to use the ID (PK) from an SQL database table to point the URL of the an
announcement (from a list inside an sql table), with lots of categories such as jobs, events, garage-sale, etc, etc. I know, you all know
this is pretty standard for amateurs. So, as you well know, this URL method is not only clumsy, can be a security risk, but does not
easily allow for me to format the URL as I want.
The selection of announcements starts at the 'select' page:
www.domain.com/event/select.cfm
So, currently when clicking on one of the links on the select.cfm page (the list generated from a cfquery output)
I get this URL and am taken to the view page to display the actual individual announcement:
http://www.domain.com/event/view.cfm?id=23
select.cfm and view.cfm are both in the same directory inside /event/.
The anchor for the link: href="/event/view.cfm?id=#ViewInfo.ID#" (without the brackets of course).
Everything displays and works fine except for the URL I don't want.
Obviously, the folder /event/ is just off the web root, (the announcements directory) which is the only place this rule should operate.
That 'ID' I've been using in the sql table is announcement number 23 in the JOBS category. All categories and announcements are in just
the one table.
For a more friendly URL, I'd prefer to use the 'category' of each announcement and the current 'date' the announcement was saved, which
seems a pretty normal, right?
Except I'm nearly brand new at programming and really hesitated coming here.
Anyway, before attempting to use URL ReWrite, I first tried to do this:
www.domain.com/event/jobs/23/2015-12-2/view.cfm or some variation. Nothing worked the way I wanted.
It was a mess.
I quickly learned the forward slash required an actual directory on the hard drive between each slash and I could find no way around it. I
added another notch to my html synapse. I didn't want to create tons of folders and sub-folders for no good reason. So, I thought by using
the URL ReWrite I could do something like this:
www.domain.com/event/jobs-2015-12-2_3.html or some crazy variation. A couple days later my brain was hurting far too much.
I had figured this way I'd rid myself of the id= and .cfm file, and add a category which makes more sense and is easier for reference. I
may actually use part of a uniqueidentifier instead of the PK ID but that's not important for this problem.
So I stumbled onto URL REWRITE and installed it.
I opened IIS 8.5 Manager, went to the website I was using, and to the /event/ folder and clicked on URL REWRITE. I then selected Add Rule
and User-Friendly URL. I then entered the URL to one of the announcements:
"/event/view.cfm?id=" at the top of the tab, as the "internal URL".
I also tried hard coding the full URL just for a test: "/event/view.cfm?id="23" They did not work.
For each test, I entered the second example suggestion on the second line: /id/184/ just to see if it would work.
But it did not. I checked the 'web.config' file (which I will include here) in the /event/ directory and the code rules had been written
correctly. But there was there was no change to the URL as I expected when I click on the link to view.cfm. It still showed this:
www.domain.com/event/view.cfm?id=23
I tried every combination in URL ReWite I could think of but I cannot get the link to the URL to change at all, to anything, no matter
what I do. I don't get it.
I know that my installed URL ReWrite is working because of another rule I use to forward all discovered .htm files to the .cfm equivalent
when they are found.
I even did a "repair" to the installed URL ReWrite and rebooted but that did not help. Then I uninstalled URL ReWrite and installed again,
rebooted. Still no change. It works, but not with the Friendly-URL rewrite. I'm obviously doing something wrong but am at at a total loss
and might need to hire a real programmers. And that could be the end of my new job.
So, hope someone can steer me in the right direction. If so, I promise to learn and help others as I can.
Here's my web.config
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="RedirectUserFriendlyURL1" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^event/view\.cfm$" />
<conditions>
<add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="^POST$" negate="true" />
<add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="^([^=&]+)= ([^=&]+)$" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="event/view/{C:1}/{C:2}" appendQueryString="false" />
</rule>
<rule name="RewriteUserFriendlyURL1" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^event/view/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$" />
<conditions>
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Rewrite" url="event/view.cfm?{R:1}={R:2}" />
</rule>
</rules>
<outboundRules>
<rule name="OutboundRewriteUserFriendlyURL1" preCondition="ResponseIsHtml1">
<match filterByTags="A, Form, Img" pattern="^(.*/)event/view\.cfm\?id=([^=&]+)$" />
<action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}event/view/id/{R:2}/" />
</rule>
<preConditions>
<preCondition name="ResponseIsHtml1">
<add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/html" />
</preCondition>
</preConditions>
</outboundRules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>