Seeing the other ward(s) calendars as the BUILDING SCHEDULER

Discussions about the Calendar Tool at lds.org. Questions about the calendar on the classic site should be posted in the LUWS forum.
Olivertwist7
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#11

Post by Olivertwist7 »

aebrown wrote:Any member of the stake (not just building schedulers or ward administrators) can see the events scheduled at any building that his or her ward is assigned to (in Week view, check the box by the building under "Available Locations"). Note that "assigned to" in this context is not restricted to the building a ward meets in, but rather an assignment made in the Calendar system by a stake administrator. By default, wards that meet in a building are assigned to that building, but any other unit may be assigned to that building.

Some stakes choose to assign all the units to all the buildings for precisely the reasons you mentioned. It enables more flexibility in scheduling events. That practice can create some tension if wards who meet in another building overuse this privilege -- then the wards that meet in a building can feel that other wards are using "their building" too much. But used prudently, this can be a good arrangement.



It's not possible currently, but others have suggested that as an enhancement. I personally don't think it's a good idea. The calendar system will take care of making sure there are no conflicts, so a building scheduler shouldn't have to know about every new reservation. That would mean hundreds of emails each year for at least our stake center, which could be rather annoying.



That should never happen if the system is being used properly. If you would like to provide details as to what leads you to think that is happening, I'm sure some people on the forum would be happy to help you track down what is going on.

*I am a building scheduler and this is our HUGE PROBLEM! We do NOT have checkboxes next to our "locations" in order for me or anyone else to view ANY of our locations. How do we fix this??????? I have been trying to get an answer to this for over a month from various sources so I hope you can be the one source that actually has an answer.

Thanks much!
Kimberley Oliver
Cedar Mill Oregon Stake- Rock Creek Building Coordinator
dshep2020
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#12

Post by dshep2020 »

Olivertwist7 wrote: We do NOT have checkboxes next to our "locations" in order for me or anyone else to view ANY of our locations.
Change to week view. With v2 of the calendar, they removed the filtering events by location on the month view. It does appear in week view.
blarman
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Calendar change suggestions

#13

Post by blarman »

So I'd just like to chime in here. I am the Stake Clerk, Stake Technology Specialist, and Stake Center Building Scheduler (three wards). After the most recent changes, I am wondering if there is ever going to be a version of the calendar that really works. I think that version 2 has some great improvements (I really like the layered approach and the additions for setup/cleanup time), but the scheduling I feel took a giant step backwards in the user-friendly department. The biggest problem is that if a member of one ward schedules a building resource, noone else can see that event except members of their own ward - not even Stake personnel like myself. This is a nightmare, and we've had to tell our Bishoprics now NOT to schedule events in the building without going through me.

I would just like to be able to lobby for changes to the scheduler:

1) Personnel with a Stake calling (Stake Presidency, Stake Auxiliary Presidencies, High Counselors) should be able to see ANY calendar they choose. Even if the Stake Clerk would be able to assign viewing rights to ANY AND ALL calendars, it would work. I know our Stake Presidency/Stake Auxiliary Presidencies have to travel up to 2 hours - one way - to visit our wards/branches. Being able to coordinate that travel for special events such as Young Womens' Recognition, Priesthood Previews, and Scout Camps could be greatly facilitated.

2) Bring back event approval. Or at least make it so that there is a designated person such as a Building Scheduler or Stake Clerk who can make changes to ANY AND ALL calendar items - moving them to another calendar, making them appear on multiple calendars (such as Ward YM and a Building Scheduling calendar, for example).

If you're going to allow ANYONE to put in an event, it has to show up on the correct calendar(s). It used to be that you could click on a building calendar and see the events for that building, which was a kluge, but worked to some degree. With the elimination of the individual building schedules, events now get effectively orphaned when submitted by a ward member.

3) A real minor one: have the comments show up on the mouseover for events. This is typically where we put contact information for events in order to resolve scheduling conflicts, but there is no way to see this information currently.

Look, I'm a web application developer by day, so I appreciate the efforts that have been made, and I applaud the Church for putting together a solid, stable platform. I'm just trying to help move things along to make that last 10-15% gap in usefulness close up.
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aebrown
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#14

Post by aebrown »

blarman wrote:The biggest problem is that if a member of one ward schedules a building resource, noone else can see that event except members of their own ward - not even Stake personnel like myself.

That's not correct. Any member of the stake who can see the building can see all the events scheduled for that building; they just need to go to Week view and check the box by the building down in the Locations section.
blarman wrote: This is a nightmare, and we've had to tell our Bishoprics now NOT to schedule events in the building without going through me.

I suppose you can do that, but that sounds like a nightmare for you. It puts all the responsibility for scheduling on one person, making all the benefits of distributed scheduling useless.

In our stake we're doing distributed scheduling, and it's working quite well. The biggest problem we've had is getting our building schedulers to understand that the system works best when they don't schedule events. Now that they understand that, it's a pretty slick system.
blarman wrote:1) Personnel with a Stake calling (Stake Presidency, Stake Auxiliary Presidencies, High Counselors) should be able to see ANY calendar they choose. Even if the Stake Clerk would be able to assign viewing rights to ANY AND ALL calendars, it would work. I know our Stake Presidency/Stake Auxiliary Presidencies have to travel up to 2 hours - one way - to visit our wards/branches. Being able to coordinate that travel for special events such as Young Womens' Recognition, Priesthood Previews, and Scout Camps could be greatly facilitated.

There could be some benefits to this, and it has been suggested by several others. But the technique I described above should let your stake leaders see events that are associated with the buildings (Scout Camp probably wouldn't be covered by that technique, since it wouldn't reserve a building).
blarman wrote:2) Bring back event approval. Or at least make it so that there is a designated person such as a Building Scheduler or Stake Clerk who can make changes to ANY AND ALL calendar items - moving them to another calendar, making them appear on multiple calendars (such as Ward YM and a Building Scheduling calendar, for example).

A building scheduler can make changes to all calendar items that are at his assigned building.

The request to have items appear on multiple calendars is quite a different request. But your mention of a "Building Scheduling calendar" sounds like you're still trying to mix the old way of doing things with the new. Since there is already a feature for seeing all the events at a location, it seems to me that a "Building Scheduling calendar" would just add more complexity.
blarman wrote:If you're going to allow ANYONE to put in an event, it has to show up on the correct calendar(s). It used to be that you could click on a building calendar and see the events for that building, which was a kluge, but worked to some degree. With the elimination of the individual building schedules, events now get effectively orphaned when submitted by a ward member.

I don't see how events are orphaned. What do you mean by that? They are visible to ward members, building schedulers, and actually any member of the stake with access to the building.
blarman wrote:3) A real minor one: have the comments show up on the mouseover for events. This is typically where we put contact information for events in order to resolve scheduling conflicts, but there is no way to see this information currently.

Making that information visible on mouseover might be handy, but the information is indeed available. You just have to click on the event to see its event details; it's not quite as handy as mouseover, but you can get to the info.
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russellhltn
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#15

Post by russellhltn »

blarman wrote:The biggest problem is that if a member of one ward schedules a building resource, noone else can see that event except members of their own ward - not even Stake personnel like myself.
Yes, they can see the events by going to week view and looking at events by location. But I'm not sure as they need to see that. The system won't let them schedule two events for the same time for the same room.

blarman wrote:This is a nightmare, and we've had to tell our Bishoprics now NOT to schedule events in the building without going through me.

The problem with that is that you're unable to place events on any calendar but the stake and your own ward. You can't place events on the calendars of the other two wards. Seems like this is a bigger problem then it's trying to solve.
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bgtaylor4
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#16

Post by bgtaylor4 »

For whatever reasons, foreseen or unforeseen by LDS tech and the designers of Calendar, as they may on occasion arise, someone at the stake level and one person in each building (IE the building scheduler) should have access to and the ability to add events and otherwise tweak calendars for respectively any calendar in any ward of the stake and for ALL wards in one's building as needed. Yes, we can move towards distributed responsibility for the calendar. But it is reasonable that these few individuals have broader "keys" to work with members, leaders and all who use the Calendar -- again, whenever the need arises. This just seems more professional.

And I'm really unclear on what the downside would be?
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aebrown
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#17

Post by aebrown »

bgtaylor4 wrote:And I'm really unclear on what the downside would be?

There's one obvious downside: it would take significant development resources to make your proposed changes. Any use of the Church's limited development resources on these features will delay or perhaps eliminate work on other features, such as other important calendar features, as well as development on other areas of the ward and stake websites, including Directory, News & Information, Lesson Schedules, and other modules.

Everything you propose can be done now, but only by a distributed set of people, rather than a small centralized set of people. Adding those capabilities to that small set of people would certainly facilitate certain administrative tasks, but adds nothing to the overall capabilities of the system. Is that more important than the other planned features it would displace on the priority list? Personally, I don't think so. I'd rather have the developers work on other features.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
bgtaylor4
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#18

Post by bgtaylor4 »

I am not a software developer. So thank you for your insight. I had ignorantly assumed rather that resources had been expended to block access for some purpose.

There is a related inconvenience built into another portion of LDS.org -- Directory. As we all know who live in areas where the Church grows, wards and stakes split -- GOOD LUCK trying to stay in touch with or find people outside of your stake. The software is built to insulate wards and stakes from each other. And there is a downside to that.

You best understand and can evaluate those needs to which resources should be directed. I sustain you, or at least those who hired you and therefore you, in making those wise decisions. This is a feedback blog/board. My feedback is that we have chosen broad access in distributing a powerful tool into the hands of the untrained masses within a ward or stake over access by trained/called individuals. Certainly there, too, are many benefits. But a downside as well.

Meanwhile, feedback should be welcomed; perhaps less dismissive and condescending.
bgtaylor4
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#19

Post by bgtaylor4 »

And there is a workaround by the way. Every ward has inactive members. Supplying someone, like a stake or ward calendar/building specialist, trained and called, with the membership number of inactive members in wards who would never use the site, provides the full access afforded to general membership of that ward. LET ME BE CLEAR that I've not sought such access. But it does raise what might be for developers a simple solution to changes proposed -- membership numbers in each ward specific to such tasks rather than to actual living people. These would be the same dummy numbers used for testing contribution software, training examples for clerks, training for classes about any feature of the website, and such. These either exist or maybe should.
jdcr256
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#20

Post by jdcr256 »

bgtaylor4 wrote:Supplying someone, like a stake or ward calendar/building specialist, trained and called, with the membership number of inactive members in wards who would never use the site, provides the full access afforded to general membership of that ward.

I hope that no one would ever do this, and strongly caution ward and stake leaders against it. Doing so would expose that inactive member's private information to the other user, not to mention giving that other user control to change the inactive member's information, or expose it to others. This would be a serious violation of privacy laws in nearly every country. Another member's membership number should always be treated as confidential information.
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