The Beta Calendar is Up

[seguetester-p40]

If we are getting granular, what about ARP? Elders? HP? Ward Mission?

[n.oliver]

If we are getting granular, what about ARP? Elders? HP? Ward Mission?

All of those that apply in a YSA Ward are all calendars I've added in our ward. (Though, what in the world is 'ARP'??)

I've even made calendars for their meetings, in an attempt to make the site more useful for collaboration. For example, who teaches which Sunday in Elders' Quorum, or when the Relief Society Presidency is meeting. Great when integrated with Google Calendar (as I have on my Android)!

[kisaac]

I'm thinking that a standard list of Calendars might include:
Ward Activities
Stake Activities
Young Men/Scouts
Young Women
YSA
Primary
Cub Scouts
Activity Day Girls
Relief Society

Any other thoughts?

As we are in the process of trying out the calendar, and waiting for some improved functionality (like printing ability,) we are using it on a limited basis. I've assumed each organization (jbh001's listing) would create their own. Nobody has yet, and I created one months ago for the primary, and it sits idle. I still get calendars at my house for my kids from scouts and young women made on other calendaring sources, but these organizations seem to be waiting for a more polished "final product" before they transition to beta calendar.

For the leadership though, to begin, we've first tried to copy from those "paper lists" we keep as a bishopric and create our calendars, as follows:

Ward events: considered our "master" calendar. currently it mirrors our LUWS calendar until we actually "transition."
Ward Leaders Meeting schedule: not private, contains all the bishopric-leaders meetings with fun acronyms: PEC, BYC, organization PPI's etc.
Bishopric schedule: Private, contains Bishopric only items
Bishopric conducting schedule/talks: Private, contains the rotating conducting schedule for all bishopric responsibilities and talk assignments / topics..who conducts sacrament meeting, priesthood, who writes the bishopric topic in the newsletter this month, etc.
Bishopric Interviews: Private
Counselor Interviews: Private

While we understand some of the calendars could be combined into one, we like the ability to "click them off" individually when we don't need to see the data they contain.

Many bishopric scheduled items on calendars are repeating, and the ability to make repeating exceptions is really needed to make maintaining these less work. Example: Choir practice is every Sunday except the second Sunday, Bishopric meeting is every Tuesday except the second Tuesday because that is relief society, Temple recommends are signed by the stake every Sunday except fast Sunday, etc. Yes, I know this is on the list of enhancements to come...

[BensMeister]

I'm wondering what the intended interplay for the new calendars is. I have our ward tentatively set up similar to kisaac (above) but I just would like to be clear.

Will each organization create its own calendar and have the other members subscribe?

Will the admins create calendars for the different organizations and assign ownership rights to members?

Will organizational calendars be set up from Salt Lake, and tie admin rights to the leaders as identified by MLS, thus eliminating concerns about handing over rights when callings are changed?

Will there only be one Calendar with all events aggregated on it? (Meaning that the ability to create multiple calendars is intended for individuals use at their own discretion.)

I haven't been able to find information on what the intended use is. I really want to get others in the ward to start playing with the calendar, but it would be nice to do it right.

[russellhltn]

I believe the idea follows the old model of Calendar Creator (if you've ever used that software). Typically, I'd see each organization having their own calendar. Perhaps two calendars - one for members and one for leaders. Each individual then signs up for the calenders that pertain to them and ignoring any that do not.

The final details being whatever the local leaders decide to do.

[aebrown]

Will each organization create its own calendar and have the other members subscribe?

That's a local decision; one ward may choose to have a Youth calendar, another may have a Young Men calendar and a Young Women calendar, and another may have Deacon, Teacher, Priest, Beehive, Mia Maid, and Laurel calendars. It's just a tradeoff between consistency, simplicity, and flexibility. But individual members can then choose to subscribe to any of the calendars that they can see.

Will the admins create calendars for the different organizations and assign ownership rights to members?

A limited set of people (admins) have rights to create calendars. But once the calendars have been created, the admins can give Editor rights to whoever will be managing that calendar. From that point, the Editor(s) can manage the calendar and the admins shouldn't have to worry about the calendar.

Will organizational calendars be set up from Salt Lake, and tie admin rights to the leaders as identified by MLS, thus eliminating concerns about handing over rights when callings are changed?

That would be a nice enhancement, but I see no indication that this will be a feature anytime soon. Although the overall administrators have administration rights because of their callings as identified in MLS and CDOL, calendar Editors are actual members by name. There is currently no way to connect a calendar to an organization, so there is no way to connect an organization's leaders to a calendar.

Will there only be one Calendar with all events aggregated on it? (Meaning that the ability to create multiple calendars is intended for individuals use at their own discretion.)

The ward (or stake) can create as many calendars as the leadership decides. If a ward chooses to create just one calendar, that's their prerogative; in that case all events will obviously be viewable in one calendar. But if there are multiple calendars, then there are some features that will allow them to be aggregated in some ways:

1. This post describes upcoming features for conflict detection and resolution. So when you try to add an event to one calendar, you can be warned that an event on another calendar is at the same time.
2. People can subscribe to multiple calendars (as long as they have at least view permission). If someone subscribes to all the calendars, then they will see the events from all the calendars laid out on the same view.
3. Also, if you have subscribed to all the calendars, then when you sync your calendars to any iCal-compatible calendar (Google, Outlook, Apple), you will see all the events in one place.

[eblood66]

Although the overall administrators have administration rights because of their callings as identified in MLS and CDOL, calendar Editors are actual members by name. There is currently no way to connect a calendar to an organization, so there is no way to connect an organization's leaders to a calendar.

There is an enhancement item in Jira to allow editors to be assigned by calling. It was entered by the Calendar app product manager and it's assigned to 'Version 1.3 Queue' so I expect it will happen, it's just a question of when.

[russellhltn]

Any idea on the projected roll out of 1.3 in relation to taking the project out of beta?

[eblood66]

Any idea on the projected roll out of 1.3 in relation to taking the project out of beta?

I believe that the current beta version is 1.2 but I beyond that I don't have any information (and I don't even know that for certain). I've been observing the development fairly closely but I'm not actually working on that community project so I don't have any information except what's been posted on the forums and whats in Jira and SVN.

[jdcr256]

Any idea on the projected roll out of 1.3 in relation to taking the project out of beta?

1.3 will be released soon (hopefully within a month) but we don't have an actual date yet, due to technical reasons not related to the calendar project itself. As for coming out of beta, there are still a lot of new features, technical tweaks, and bug fixes that need to be made. As far as I know, there is no planned date to come out of beta, but it should be sometime this year. My biggest fear is that the powers that be will remove the 'Beta' flag prematurely.

Everything we release into beta should be useable (more or less), and the calendar data behind it is fully backed up and will persist when we go to full production. The official word is "wait to use this as your main calendar until it is finished". But that's just the cautious party line. In reality, as long as you are familiar with the current limitations, go ahead and use it however you see fit.