Enhancement Request: Sync separate from Subscriptions

[aebrown]

Ideally I'd like to be able to have each subscription in the LDS calendar appear as a calendar in my iCal calendar or google calendar.

I can see how that could be useful for some people.

But to offer a contrasting viewpoint, I would absolutely not want it to work that way. I already have multiple calendars on my Google Calendar. I love having the LDS.org calendar consolidated into one calendar. Then I can turn it on or off as needed. If I had to check or uncheck 30 boxes for each of my subscribed LDS.org calendars, I'd find that very tedious.

[smconvey]

I would absolutely not want it to work that way. I already have multiple calendars on my Google Calendar. I love having the LDS.org calendar consolidated into one calendar. Then I can turn it on or off as needed. If I had to check or uncheck 30 boxes for each of my subscribed LDS.org calendars, I'd find that very tedious.

I agree. But as indicated in the original post, it would be nice to be able to select (in LDS.org) which of my subscribed calendars are consolidated and appear as my LDS.org calendar in my Google calendar. The way it works now, I don't find integrating my LDS.org calendar into my personal (Google) calendar useful at all. In fact, I leave it permanently off in my Google calendar. I only check it (at LDS.org from a PC) when I have to for my calling. It is too noisy to be useful in my personal calendar.

[russellbaird]

I fully agree that exporting the lds.org calendar into my personal calendar is useless. Anytime I need to see when ward or stake activities are schedule, I log in to lds.org. That turns out to be (slightly!) less painful than having the entire lds.or calendar in my mobile device.

And I agree that it would be nice to select in lds.org which of my subscribed calendars get exported.

You noted that you have exported the lds calendar into your google calendar, but leave it permanently off. You could do the same for your 30 ward and stake calendars (a one-time task). And if you make that one-time investment, you then have the ability to selectively turn on which ever one you need at the moment, while leaving the rest off. That way the painful noise-signal ratio is more manageable.

I might could be persuaded to lump them all together if I could pick a small enough subset of them so that when I turned on the whole mess I still had a high signal to noise ratio.

And then again, if I picked a small enough subset of them, that might make managing them individually a not-so-painful task...

As a compromise, suppose we had a check-box to allow us to select which subscriptions to export, and a radio button pair to indicate whether to export them as a single calendar or as individual calendars?

[russellhltn]

I fully agree that exporting the lds.org calendar into my personal calendar is useless.

I disagree. My subscriptions are setup to only subscribe to calendars that contain events that I wish to attend. It works fine.

That said, I don't work with the calendar on a regular basis. When I do, I have to turn on subscriptions to the calenders in question so I can see them on lds.org, make the changes, and then restore my subscriptions before my next sync. So for ward leaders, there is a flaw that needs to be addressed, but for the rank and file that don't worry about scheduling church events, I think it works just fine.

You noted that you have exported the lds calendar into your google calendar, but leave it permanently off. You could do the same for your 30 ward and stake calendars (a one-time task). And if you make that one-time investment, you then have the ability to selectively turn on which ever one you need at the moment, while leaving the rest off. That way the painful noise-signal ratio is more manageable.

From a technical standpoint, exporting to individual iCal files may work. But you'd have to repeat that process regularly if you want your calendar to stay up to date.

I might could be persuaded to lump them all together if I could pick a small enough subset of them so that when I turned on the whole mess I still had a high signal to noise ratio.

And then again, if I picked a small enough subset of them, that might make managing them individually a not-so-painful task...

And that's what I think is behind the OP's request. The way I'd use it is to send the calendar of events I'm to attend to my personal calendar via the sync and then send everything to the front page of lds.org. I'd also want to send the complete calendar to LDS Tools since I can select calendars in the app. But that's just me.

As a compromise, suppose we had a check-box to allow us to select which subscriptions to export, and a radio button pair to indicate whether to export them as a single calendar or as individual calendars?

Unless the iCal file supports it, exporting as multiple files would require multiple URL - one for each file. That's a non-trivial change in demand on church servers. Not to mention complexity.

[fellobo]

Having the calendar online has been a great time saver. I love the feature. My only complaint is that when I subscribe to my Stake PPI's I get all their PPI's on my Phone. I really only want to subscribe to my PPI's. Unless the Stake goes in and creates a calendar for just me, which won't happen, I am left to know their whole schedule.

I am very thankful for the LDS.ORG and all their wonderful apps that help me get my calling done more efficiently. Thank you!

[joebuckwalter]

+1 for getting separate caldav URL for individual calendars. Would like to add just the young men calendar to a website we use for scouting but I have to add the entire calendar or modify my subscriptions on lds.org to only include the young men calendar.

[russellhltn]

+1 for getting separate caldav URL for individual calendars. Would like to add just the young men calendar to a website we use for scouting but I have to add the entire calendar or modify my subscriptions on lds.org to only include the young men calendar.

From the calendar sync page: "This URL is provided for your own personal use. It should not be shared with anyone else."

[jlw223]

There are a plethora of calendars (ward, stake, organization-specific) that I can subscribe to on lds.org. It would be really nice if they could be treated as separate calendar objects when syncing to an iphone. I don't necessarily want to unsubscribe from these calendars...I would just like the ability to display or undisplay certain calendars individually. Can this suggestion be incorporated in the next release?

[russellhltn]

If the iPhone LDS Tools is like the Android one, you can do that now using LDS Tools.

If you're asking for the selection of calendars on the lds.org page to be different than what is in your sync, that's been requested. No idea if and when that will happen. The iCal format makes for limitations on what can be done. I really doubt that we'll have individual syncs for each calendar.

[aebrown]

[Moderator note: I moved this post into an existing topic for this issue]

There are a plethora of calendars (ward, stake, organization-specific) that I can subscribe to on lds.org. It would be really nice if they could be treated as separate calendar objects when syncing to an iphone. I don't necessarily want to unsubscribe from these calendars...I would just like the ability to display or undisplay certain calendars individually. Can this suggestion be incorporated in the next release?

This has been requested many times, over the course of at least two years. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to be incorporated in the next release.

But if you review the posts in this topic (and particularly this post, which links to an older topic for this issue), you'll gain some perspective on the issue.