New Locations calendar is useless to our members

The new location calendar has become a useless tool for our members and building schedulers.


Old system, a member could log into the calendar we had set up for scheduling the baptismal font and request a date and time. The admin or approver for that resource could approve or not approve the request. Pretty simple.
It appears that this simplicity has been taken away, and now members are required to call or email the person assigned to a location. The scheduler has to take down this info, then enter all of the info them self onto the location. This has created extra steps, many phone calls to the scheduler, and much frustration to members in the stake trying to schedule something at the stake center.


Can we get the old system back or improve the new system to allow simple scheduling requests like the old.

mjeffreysx,

As far as I know, the new calendar should be able to handle that task. I am unsure as to why the member is required to contact the person assigned to a location. The building scheduler for our building does not typically get involved with people scheduling the building unless there is a conflict where two events are meant to happen at the same time in the same location using the same resources.

The scenario for the new calendar (as I understand it) for scheduling a baptism is:

The ward mission leader logs in to the calendar and creates an event for a baptism. He assigns it to the correct location, and asks for the baptismal font resource, and whatever other resources he needs (in our building the font is attached to the primary rooms, so he would add in the primary room resource as well).


Is that what you are doing in your ward?

Swift

Swift wrote:The ward mission leader logs in to the calendar and creates an event for a baptism.

Assuming the WML has editor rights to a suitable calendar for the baptism, that is correct.

Generally, you don't have a situation where just any member needs to add something to a calendar. It's typically a leader functioning in their calling. Give the leaders the editor rights to the appropriate calendar(s) and you actually have a more orderly system.

We have added Ward Mission Leaders as having editing rights to our Stake Center Calendar to deal with exact problem. We have a font in only two buildings in our Stake. So our Stake Center has a stake level calendar that the Ward Mission Leaders have admin rights to, so they can schedule the font.
Each of our buildings has a building calendar that is a stake level calendar to handle things like funerals, wedding receptions, Eagle Court of Honor, etc. Most of the time people will call or email me (the building scheduler if they don't have admin rights) which is fine with me. I have to let them know who has a key often times anyway.

sharicarnahan wrote:So our Stake Center has a stake level calendar that the Ward Mission Leaders have admin rights to, so they can schedule the font.

I would not recommend giving admin rights to Ward Mission Leaders as they will have edit rights for every calendar for the stake plus other rights. But I am sure you really meant they have editor rights to a particular stake calendar. Administrator and editor rights are two different sets of rights.

mjeffreysx wrote:The new location calendar has become a useless tool for our members and building schedulers.

It is useless if your stake members have not transitioned to the distributed scheduling paradigm for the new calendar. The new calendar is far easier to schedule events than the classic calendar because there can be an unlimited number of calendar editors for a calendar. The classic calendar had the single point of contact.

Also note that building schedulers cannot create events and therefore should not be contacted for this purpose. You can read more about the new calendar and how it works here. You can also get there by clicking the Help button in the upper right of the calendar page.

jdlessley wrote:It is useless if your stake members have not transitioned to the distributed scheduling paradigm for the new calendar. The new calendar is far easier to schedule events than the classic calendar

Under the old system, the WML would have to put in the request, the website admin would have to respond, and the message had to get back to the WML. If there was a conflict, perhaps from another ward, the process starts over.

Under the new system, (assuming the WML has access to a calendar) he schedules the time and the room right then. No approvals. If there's a conflict, he works it out right then. By the time he steps away from the computer, he has a confirmed time/date for the room. A multi-step process has become a single step.

In our Stake we gave every unit access to schedule at every building. Our approach was to make it as wide open as possible and then monitor for problems. So far, it has worked really well with no noted problems.