Best way to add locations to a large number of existing calendar events.

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jficklin
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Best way to add locations to a large number of existing calendar events.

#1

Post by jficklin »

Here's our situation:

We are a stake in which the membership and many of the leaders have strongly resisted leaving the "central point" scheduling model, especially for buildings and resources. This may be due to a large number of members (and some leaders) lacking computer literacy and/or access to computer hardware or web connections. Our feedback from members has been a mix of "this could be cool" to "why does this have to be so complex? Can't you just give us a simple calendar like we used to have?"

Anyway, as a result, our stake clung to the classic calendar for building and resource scheduling until the church finally forced the issue by setting the classic calendars to not allow approval of any scheduling event beyond the end of 2011.

That has resulted in our having a ton of events on the new calendar with no location associated with them. Although we have now set up buildings on the new calendar and trained building schedulers... our schedulers are going nuts because everyone calls them to get locations scheduled and resolve conflicts. However, they can't edit any event that does not have a location associated with it and can't enter an event from scratch unless they are entering it on top of a reservation in their own building.

Given that the already existing events on the calendar come from a host of sources - that's how distributed scheduling works - it is quite a difficult task to identify and get all these various editors and/or administrators to go back and add locations to their already scheduled events. Any ideas on how we might handle this? We can probably assure that newly scheduled events have locations attached, but is there a fairly easy way we can appoint someone to go back through the existing events and add locations to them? Thanks!
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aebrown
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#2

Post by aebrown »

Given the distributed model, you're going to need help from at least one administrator in each ward, plus one administrator in the stake. The effort could be distributed more broadly, but cannot be centralized more than that.

I don't know of any magic solution, other than each of those administrators systematically editing each event and selecting the correct location/rooms. If the location is well known or obvious, this should take only a few seconds per event. Yes, that adds up, but each unit shouldn't have more than a few dozen events per month, so you should be able to get at least the first couple of months done pretty quickly. That's where much of the new activity would probably be. Then gradually fix the rest of the events.
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russellhltn
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#3

Post by russellhltn »

I'd suggest taking a look at the list of default admins. You'll see that the extended bishopric has full rights to all public calendars in their ward. Likewise the extended stake presidency has full rights to all public calendars in the stake.

I think the answer is to hold the leader's feet to the fire to get them to fix the problem. They can chose to fix it themselves or to lean on the appropriate calendar editors.

Since there is no way (that I know of) to get a building scheduler onto the calendar of a ward they are not in, I can't see how they can fix it.

If you need a little help, Handbook 2: 13.2.7 may provide a bit of ammo. (Note however, when the Handbook says "Reserve" I would highly advise against using the "Reservation" function in the calendar to do that.)
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aetaber
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#4

Post by aetaber »

We have a similar problem here. I'm the stake calendar admin and while I can and have set up each of our buildings as a location, and have set up multiple resources in our stake center, I don't seem to have authority to actually schedule locations for stake events. This leaves our stake center scheduler having to go in retroactively to tie in the resources. Is there an easy fix to allow me to a) assign resources to an event and b) to do so for multiple events at once?

Alan Taber
Cherry Hill NJ Stake
russellhltn
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#5

Post by russellhltn »

aetaber wrote:I'm the stake calendar admin
I don't see that on the list of callings that are default admins (which would give you the rights to all calendars at the stake level). I'd suggest you talk with the stake president about calling you to an appropriate calling. Alternatively, he can grant you admin rights.

It appears that you've been made a "Building Scheduler" in the calendar system, but that doesn't give you editor rights unless they are granted specifically.

I don't see this as a failing of the system, but rather the need for your leaders to understand the system and grant you the rights they wish you to have.
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aetaber
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Admin Rights

#6

Post by aetaber »

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I am an assistant stake clerk with the responsibility to keep our calendars straight, so I have admin rights already. That said, I found the problem. I hadn't realized that the time zone change wiped out all the schedulers I'd set up previously. Now that I've added them back, things seem to be working better.

Alan
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