Tech Forum

I am curious to know how people are handling combined YM/YW activities in the new calendar. I have created calendars for YM, YW, and YM & YW, but I'm not sure this is the ideal situation. Would it be better to duplicate the activity on the YM and YW calendars?

HPaulsen wrote:I am curious to know how people are handling combined YM/YW activities in the new calendar. I have created calendars for YM, YW, and YM & YW, but I'm not sure this is the ideal situation. Would it be better to duplicate the activity on the YM and YW calendars?

We have created a calendar for YW and another for YM. If the activity is a combined activity, then the event's posted on both calendars, otherwise events are only placed on the appropriate calendar.

techgy wrote:We have created a calendar for YW and another for YM. If the activity is a combined activity, then the event's posted on both calendars, otherwise events are only placed on the appropriate calendar.

I assume that this causes a duplication on the calendar if one is subscribed to both. Is this an irritation?

Here are the calendars we have created for the youth in our ward. There may be some reduction but each quorum or class maintains their own set of activities so it seems foolish to put them all on one calendar. If you are a Teacher/Varsity scout, why would you want to keep seeing all of the events for the Deacons/Scouts or Priests/Ventures?

Young Men General would be combined YM activities such as some campouts, merit badge colleges, Duty to God firesides, etc.

Leadership calendars are for the adults to use for YM or YW presidency meetings, etc. so they really aren't for use by the youth.


YM-Deacon/Boy Scout
YM-Teacher/Varsity
YM-Priest/Venture
YM-Young Men General
YM-Leadership
YM/YW-Joint Activities
YW-Beehive
YW-Mia Maid
YW-Laurel
YW-Young Women General
YW-Leadership

HPaulsen wrote:I assume that this causes a duplication on the calendar if one is subscribed to both. Is this an irritation?

I haven't heard any complaints. However, since the calendars are more experimental there's less expectation. For the calendar year 2011 we have been urged to stay with the LUWS calendar which is what the ward is still depending upon.

I added this scenario to the calendar documentation.

Problem: You have a separate YM and YW calendar, but every fifth Wednesday of the month you have a combined YM/YW activity that needs to appear on both the YM and YW calendars.

Solution: There's no way to post the same event on both calendars, so you either have to duplicate the event manually on both calendars, or create a new calendar that shows YM/YW combined activities, and then set this new calendar to repeat every fifth Wednesday of the month.

techgy wrote:For the calendar year 2011 we have been urged to stay with the LUWS calendar which is what the ward is still depending upon.

Ah, techgy, that was so "last week!"

The "urging" to stay with the "old" has now been re-worded to give us the "option" to use the "new," as long as you know it's still developing:

When should our stake begin using the new tools?
Stakes and wards can encourage members to use the new directory right away, but the use of the calendar during 2011 is optional. Since the calendar is in development, it will continue to evolve and improve over time, with the expectation of reaching maturity for the 2012 calendar year rather than the 2011 calendar year. Wards and stakes are welcome to use the calendar for testing or actual usage now, but they should be aware that the interface will change, bugs may still be present, missing features are still being added, and so forth. However, data you enter will not be lost. .

This kinder, gentler re-wording comes with the recent improvements, which seems to beg the question:
Why not use the new one for real, and for 2011? I'm suggesting to my bishop- "Let's go Live" on January 1, in part because the things it can do are labor saving NOW.

For example:
1) import from LUWS calendar - don't "import all!"
2) Print a decent hard copy - try export in PDF if you want to email them- very good!
3) Resource scheduling -My stake is getting on board for their calendar and the resource scheduling. Let's figure it out now.
4) Email reminders - think of bishopric meetings on a new "leadership meeting calendar" that we will subscribe ward council and PEC members to- will save me work!
5) We can now move away from Google, which I really think is important

By the way, when you use the import wizard, it gives you the option to set up all your organizational calendars for you, with permissions already set, saving much work in doing this yourself.

tomjohnson1492 wrote:I added this scenario to the calendar documentation.

Problem: You have a separate YM and YW calendar, but every fifth Wednesday of the month you have a combined YM/YW activity that needs to appear on both the YM and YW calendars.

Solution: There's no way to post the same event on both calendars, so you either have to duplicate the event manually on both calendars, or create a new calendar that shows YM/YW combined activities, and then set this new calendar to repeat every fifth Wednesday of the month.

Two issues here. I don't think the combined calendar is the answer as more calendars = more confusion. Double entry isn't the answer, because that opens up the chance for mistakes and perhaps resource scheduling issues.

Issue one: Members may see two events for the same combined activity on that date because they subscribe to both the YM and YW calendars, and it needs to show on both. Can't be fixed now, but no big deal.

Issue two: Making events show/post or enable copying to more than one calendar is a big deal, and needs to be resolved by programmers. The combined YM/YW activity is a good example. There are many more times that events should show on several calendars: Priesthood Preview is a Primary, Young men item. Many stake events really should be duplicated onto ward calendars, like stake conference and stake leadership. Service assignments might involved HP, Elders and Young men.

What to do to avoid double entry and quadrupling your calendars by making combined calendars? In google, they have an option: "copy to calendar" and you can copy any event to many other calendars. This would fix the issue. Not sure how this would affect resource scheduling...

kisaac wrote:Why not use the new one for real, and for 2011?

If anyone wants to discuss that particular question, please don't do it in this thread; instead do it in the new thread: Why not use the new calendar for 2011. Thanks.

We want to set up a missionary dinner calendar using the new calendar system. How do we go about creating a calendar where anyone in the ward can enter an event?