Reservation Problems

[NPAlemany]

aebrown, There has been a week plus problem with the "reservation details screen", from what I can determine, looking at posts it is universal - everyone authorized to make reservations cannot currently do so. It doesn't matter what system you are running we are all in the same boat. The difference between "scheduling" and "reserving" is this: "Scheduling" is nothing more than an electronic flyer that you are posting on your ward or stake electronic calendar saying "Hey, Everyone! We are doing such and such at the building on this date. Ya'll come" You can put those up til the cows come home. "Reserving or inputting a reservation" involves getting to the "reservation details screen" by someone authorized to do so and making sure your group can actually USE the building on that particular day and time and room. I hope things are fixed soon, my reservation requests are piling up for the stake center I am responsible for.

[russellhltn]

The difference between "scheduling" and "reserving" is this: "Scheduling" is nothing more than an electronic flyer that you are posting on your ward or stake electronic calendar saying "Hey, Everyone! We are doing such and such at the building on this date. Ya'll come" You can put those up til the cows come home.

That is incorrect. As part of scheduling, you can select a location. When you set the location, then you are "booking" the rooms for that event and no one else can schedule a event that uses those rooms. Even if they belong to another ward or stake and can't see the "flyer". Handled properly, a scheduled event is BOTH a flyer and a solid lock on the room(s).

"Reserving or inputting a reservation" involves getting to the "reservation details screen" by someone authorized to do so and making sure your group can actually USE the building on that particular day and time and room.

No, that's no more then putting up a sign on the door saying "Reserved for Ward x". Note that you cannot reserve it for a specific event only restrict the use for a given ward. So if you reserve the gym for ward x for the RS social, the Elder's quorum of ward x can still schedule the gym for basketball. Because reservations only works down to the unit level - not to the event level. But once the RS schedules their event and selects the gym, then they have a lock on it.

The purpose of a reservation is to block off a building for "ward x" on Tuesday night and "ward y" on Wednesday night. That prevents ward y from scheduling things on Tuesday night when it's ward x's night.

[jdlessley]

aebrown, There has been a week plus problem with the "reservation details screen", from what I can determine, looking at posts it is universal - everyone authorized to make reservations cannot currently do so. It doesn't matter what system you are running we are all in the same boat.

This is a known issue, and they are working on it.

The difference between "scheduling" and "reserving" is this: "Scheduling" is nothing more than an electronic flyer that you are posting on your ward or stake electronic calendar saying "Hey, Everyone! We are doing such and such at the building on this date. Ya'll come" You can put those up til the cows come home.

This is correct to a point. There is more to scheduling an activity or happening than just the information about it. For activities at a location there is also the booking of rooms and/or equipment. For the calendar application the term reservation functions entirely differently than what we are accustomed to when we make a reservation at say a hotel. The calendar application calls the hotel analogy type of reservation an event. The event books the rooms needed for the activity.

In the calendar application, a reservation can only be made by a person assigned to the position of building scheduler by a stake administrator. Reservations do not reserve rooms and/or equipment for organizations or individuals. They set aside, or restrict, the unit that can book rooms and/or equipment for an activity. If only one ward used a building and was the only ward in the stake permitted to use the building then reservations, as used in the calendar application, would not be necessary. But since many buildings are used by more than one ward/branch and many stakes permit other units of the stake to schedule events at any building within the stake then there needs to be a way to restrict the use of a building or certain rooms/equipment within a building to a specific ward/branch during a specific block of time. This ability to restrict use for organizations to one ward/branch is called a reservation in the calendar application. A common use example of a reservation is to set aside a building for the ward that has mutual on Wednesday evening so that the other wards cannot schedule events during mutual activities. Once the reservation is made for a ward then only organizations within that ward can schedule events at that building. All organizations in other wards will get a conflict notice if they try to schedule an event during the reservation time period. This conflict will happen for the other ward organizations regardless of whether there is an actual event scheduled or not.

"Reserving or inputting a reservation" involves getting to the "reservation details screen" by someone authorized to do so and making sure your group can actually USE the building on that particular day and time and room.

This statement indicates some confused understanding of what reservations and events are in the calendar application and what function they have. A reservation, as used in the calendar application, only sets aside a building or rooms/equipment in a building for a ward to "book" for an activity. When rooms/equipment have been booked for an activity this is called an event in the calendar application. Calendar editors can create events. These events book the rooms/equipment for the activity. Reservations are created by building schedulers. Reservations do not book rooms/equipment for an activity. Rather an event sets aside a building or rooms/equipment for one specific ward/branch so that any organization within that ward/branch can book rooms/equipment.

Some stakes and some wards/branches erroneously use reservations as a method of booking activities. This requires people in the stake or ward/branch to contact a single person to "book" rooms/equipment. This is a holdover from the classic method of scheduling. Problems can arise from this use. There is the potential for double booking; calendars do not display activities with their booked resources; and there is no correlation between booked resources and activities.

The current calendar application is based on the distributed model in which any number of individuals have the ability to "book" rooms/equipment. The building scheduler, in the current calendar application system, does not "book" rooms/equipment for activities. He/she acts more in the role of overseer and conflict resolver.

The issue discussed in this thread is about reservations as used the calendar application. This does not affect the booking of resources for activities through the use of events.

[smconvey]

I have 15 video tutorials on the calendar that I will publish by the end of this week (Friday). If you can wait until then, they will help you understand the calendar in an easy way.

Please post a link in this forum when these tutorials become available.