Solutions or ideas on scheduling weddings, family parties or non church activities

For the most part I think I understand how the new calendar works on the ward and stake levels for church activites, and I think and hope I have set everything up correctly. But I am still unclear on how to manage or reserve weddings, or private functions like family get togethers or parties. I think it is great that editors of calendars be it auxiliaries or anyone else can create events and now they can also schedule and reserve a location for that event. But I am curious as to how others are handling member requests for weddings or family events non-church related.

The building scheduler in the past would take care of these things but from what I have read the building scheduler has a different role now. It seems reservations can be made on the ward and stake level for church activities that are created and scheduled, but I am confused on how the private functions are reserved and by whom and where?

I temporarily have a solution to this but I am not sure if it is the right way to do it or if it is the best way, but for now it is all I have until I hear or see a better solution.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!

The way I'd recommend is to create a calendar for this purpose. Call it "Private Events" or "Resource Only". Whoever is in charge of scheduling the private events (or may or may not be the building scheduler), places the events on that calendar.

This same calendar can be used to block off extra setup time. Perhaps the ward wants a full 24 hours to set up the cultural hall for the ward dinner. Likewise if the FM group needs to close down a section of the building to recarpet the room.

If you make the calendar private, then the general membership won't see it. Yet the event will prevent anyone from scheduling an event using that resource/room.

I do NOT recommend using "Reservations" for blocking out events. It's too easy to scheduler an event on top of it causing a double-booking.

This topic has been discussed multiple times on this forum, and is covered in the help system. I'd recommend that you review the help topic About scheduling events and the thread How to schedule a private or family event.

In our stake we have the wards schedule such events. They make their own choice as to what calendar to use; some put them on a public calendar such as a "Resource only" calendar, and others put them on a private calendar. Rarely does the building scheduler need to be involved. Each ward has at least one calendar administrator who is known to the ward as the person to contact for such purposes.

I know it is not the best way, but this is what we do: (A disclaimer: As I have expressed before, I think the whole new calendaring system is unnecessarily cumbersome for people not used to working with layered calendars. Which is most of the members in my ward. So, I have a tendency to "economize.")

Weddings and funerals are usually of interest to the whole ward. So even though they are "private events," usually the ward is invited. We decided to just put them on the "Ward Events" (or is it "Activities?") calendar with all the other ward activities.

That leaves things like private family parties. I felt like we were already managing enough different calendars and wasn't very excited about making yet another one just for the occasional family party. So, we put those on the "Ward Events" (or is it "Activities?") calendar as well. They don't really belong there, but for just a few times a year, it doesn't really clutter the calendar too much.

To me, the answer to questions like this seems to always be: "Create another calendar" when in reality the "other calendar" could have like 6 things on it all year. So rather than create another calendar, I first stop and think, "How many things are actually going to appear on it?" It is a trade off for me. Most of my ward members are smart enough to ignore "Smith Family Party" on the ward calendar and know they aren't invited.

TinMan wrote:Weddings and funerals are usually of interest to the whole ward. So even though they are "private events," usually the ward is invited. We decided to just put them on the "Ward Events" (or is it "Activities?") calendar with all the other ward activities.

If that's the case, that's fine. I work at the stake level where that's rarely the case.

TinMan wrote:That leaves things like private family parties. I felt like we were already managing enough different calendars and wasn't very excited about making yet another one just for the occasional family party. So, we put those on the "Ward Events" (or is it "Activities?") calendar as well. They don't really belong there, but for just a few times a year, it doesn't really clutter the calendar too much.

While I agree that we shouldn't be making a calendar for just one event for the year, I'd be careful about being too "economical". To me the real power of the new system is to allow the members to sync the calendar to their smartphones/personal calendars. I think that will improve attendance to church activities if they see it there when they go to plan things. If you put too much "junk" on it, they won't use it. And your attendance will suffer (from what it could be).

RussellHltn wrote: I do NOT recommend using "Reservations" for blocking out events. It's too easy to scheduler an event on top of it causing a double-booking.

Thanks for the feedback.

The way I have it set up for now is for the building schedulers to make reservations for those "private" functions on the reservation calendar in the settings that only building schedulers have access to. The way I understand it, if you 'block' out a time for a building meeting house using the 'Blocked-Location unavailable' option no one can schedule during that time except another scheduler. I know from what I have read that the option to use the 'Blocked-Location unavailable' option is not perhaps what it was created for, but as I have said it is the best option I had at the moment. I don't see how it can cause a double booking when no one can reserve a location during the blocked time, except another building scheduler. I know people can create events during this time, but that is not important if they cant reserve a resource for the same time. Or am I missing something here?

junyur wrote:I know from what I have read that the option to use the 'Blocked-Location unavailable' option is not perhaps what it was created for, but as I have said it is the best option I had at the moment. I don't see how it can cause a double booking when no one can reserve a location during the blocked time, except another building scheduler. I know people can create events during this time, but that is not important if they cant reserve a resource for the same time. Or am I missing something here?

You already mentioned the big hole in the strategy of using "Blocked" reservations -- another building scheduler can schedule an event on top of such a reservation. What's more, even if you have just one building scheduler, that building scheduler can schedule an event on top of his own reservation. It's easy enough to set up a blocked reservation and then months later create an event, forgetting that the blocked reservation exists.

If your building schedulers have absolutely no calendar editor or administrator privileges, and you only have one building scheduler for location, then I guess it is reasonably safe. But we have seen many examples on the forum where the building scheduler does have editing privileges, and creates an event that "conflicts" with a reservation. He will see no warning when he does that, which may lead to an accidental "double booking."

Also, we've seen plenty of examples where there is an official building scheduler, but one or more stake administrators gives himself building scheduler permissions so he can help out. In that case, it's easy enough for one of these schedulers to create an event on top of the blocked reservation the other scheduler created.

The bottom line is that an event is the only safe way to book a resource, but if you are very careful you might be able to use blocked reservations for that purpose. I don't recommend it, but it could work.

aebrown wrote:This topic has been discussed multiple times on this forum, and is covered in the help system. I'd recommend that you review the help topic About scheduling events and the thread How to schedule a private or family event.

In our stake we have the wards schedule such events. They make their own choice as to what calendar to use; some put them on a public calendar such as a "Resource only" calendar, and others put them on a private calendar. Rarely does the building scheduler need to be involved. Each ward has at least one calendar administrator who is known to the ward as the person to contact for such purposes.

Thanks for the info on the threads. I have seen other threads that have given ideas on the calendars but not these.

It sounds as if many people are creating private calendars for reservations such as the weddings, funerals and private family parties. I have read some of the threads you recommended and the ones here that other people posted (thanks) and I am assuming they are creating these calendars on a stake level so all wards can see them? Otherwise if one ward creates a private calendar on the ward level, other wards cant see that calendar. We have 3 units per meeting house and we are looking to make this as painless and smooth as possible. For each ward to have their own calendar of 'private events' for the same meetinghouse seems a little too much. All three units would need to coordinate with each other to see if there is something scheduled and reserved since they cant see each others calendars. The Stake calendar would eliminate this if all building schedulers from each ward are added as editors and I could create 3 private calendars for all 3 of our buildings.


I like the idea of creating private calendars for the 'private events' but I see 2 challenges. The first being as an editor of these 'private calendars' I really wouldn't want to see everyones 'private' events show up along with my ward and stake events. Yes I know I can unsubscribe to the calendar, but if I am an individual who has access to these private calendars as an editor, why would i unsubscribe myself. The second is that as I sync my android phone to the google calandar won't all those 'private events' also sync up to my calendar. That is something i most definately wouldn't want to see or download. It is my understanding that all calendars sync to the google calendar regardless if you are unsubsribed or not.

junyur wrote:It sounds as if many people are creating private calendars for reservations such as the weddings, funerals and private family parties. I have read some of the threads you recommended and the ones here that other people posted (thanks) and I am assuming they are creating these calendars on a stake level so all wards can see them? Otherwise if one ward creates a private calendar on the ward level, other wards cant see that calendar. We have 3 units per meeting house and we are looking to make this as painless and smooth as possible. For each ward to have their own calendar of 'private events' for the same meetinghouse seems a little too much. All three units would need to coordinate with each other to see if there is something scheduled and reserved since they cant see each others calendars. The Stake calendar would eliminate this if all building schedulers from each ward are added as editors and I could create 3 private calendars for all 3 of our buildings.

I see this is a "doesn't really matter". At the end of the day, the system will not allow events to double-book rooms regardless of what calendar they're on. Everyone can see what is scheduled for a location by switching to week view and checking the box for the location. While a master "private events" calendar may have some merit, the important thing is that it's on some calendar as an event.

junyur wrote:It is my understanding that all calendars sync to the google calendar regardless if you are unsubsribed or not.

That is incorrect. All calendars you are subscribed to under Settings > Subscriptions are synced to your phone. The problem, (that I hope will be fixed in a future release) is that you can't view a calendar on the website unless you are subscribed to it. So you'll be constantly subscribing (so you can view it)/unsubscribing (so it doesn't go to your phone) to the private events calendar until some few feature fixes this.

aebrown wrote:You already mentioned the big hole in the strategy of using "Blocked" reservations -- another building scheduler can schedule an event on top of such a reservation. What's more, even if you have just one building scheduler, that building scheduler can schedule an event on top of his own reservation. It's easy enough to set up a blocked reservation and then months later create an event, forgetting that the blocked reservation exists.

If your building schedulers have absolutely no calendar editor or administrator privileges, and you only have one building scheduler for location, then I guess it is reasonably safe. But we have seen many examples on the forum where the building scheduler does have editing privileges, and creates an event that "conflicts" with a reservation. He will see no warning when he does that, which may lead to an accidental "double booking."

Also, we've seen plenty of examples where there is an official building scheduler, but one or more stake administrators gives himself building scheduler permissions so he can help out. In that case, it's easy enough for one of these schedulers to create an event on top of the blocked reservation the other scheduler created.

Thanks for your insight, I hadn't thought of that and so I tested it and sure enough... it double booked. We will be going to private calendar's.

RussellHltn wrote:I see this is a "doesn't really matter". At the end of the day, the system will not allow events to double-book rooms regardless of what calendar they're on. Everyone can see what is scheduled for a location by switching to week view and checking the box for the location. While a master "private events" calendar may have some merit, the important thing is that it's on some calendar as an event.


That is incorrect. All calendars you are subscribed to under Settings > Subscriptions are synced to your phone. The problem, (that I hope will be fixed in a future release) is that you can't view a calendar on the website unless you are subscribed to it. So you'll be constantly subscribing (so you can view it)/unsubscribing (so it doesn't go to your phone) to the private events calendar until some few feature fixes this.

Good to know, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.

RussellHltn wrote:If that's the case, that's fine. I work at the stake level where that's rarely the case.



While I agree that we shouldn't be making a calendar for just one event for the year, I'd be careful about being too "economical". To me the real power of the new system is to allow the members to sync the calendar to their smartphones/personal calendars. I think that will improve attendance to church activities if they see it there when they go to plan things. If you put too much "junk" on it, they won't use it. And your attendance will suffer (from what it could be).

Sorry Russell. That made me laugh out loud. We must deal with completely different demographics. Most people in my ward would not consider a funeral of a ward member who has lived in the ward 40 years, or the wedding of a young woman who has lived in the ward since she was born, "junk."

I've been bishop for 17 months and had 19 funerals. Perhaps in another 20 years when us old geezers all die, and we all download the latest lessons on our smart phones, the new calendaring system will work just fine for our ward. In the mean time, most of my ward member sync the printed calender we deliver every month with the fast offerings, with the side of their fridge, using a big magnet. Believe it or not, there are still a few of us around.

Hey. Perhaps in twenty years the ward members will be able to catch a streaming video of my funeral on their I Pads. That is of course if they can find the time and date on their smart phones from a private calendar.

Sometime reading this forum makes me feel ancient.

TinMan wrote:Sorry Russell. That made me laugh out loud. We must deal with completely different demographics. Most people in my ward would not consider a funeral of a ward member who has lived in the ward 40 years, or the wedding of a young woman who has lived in the ward since she was born, "junk."

Please read posts more carefully before you laugh. You were laughing at something that wasn't written at all.

The post you responded to said two things:

• The response on the topic of funerals and weddings simply said that Russell worked at the stake level where he didn't see those things scheduled on stake calendars. There was no use of the word "junk" in this context -- just an entirely accurate observation that such events are almost always scheduled at the ward level. That's definitely been my experience, and I'm pretty sure it's been yours as well.
• The part that used the word "junk" was in response to your exact words that suggested that "private family parties" could be put on a "Ward Events" calendar. There was absolutely no connection to funerals or weddings of ward members in that response. It was talking exclusively about a suggestion to put events that are clearly not ward events on the "Ward Events" calendar, which I would agree is "junk" in the context of events that the ward is interested in.

TinMan wrote:Sometime reading this forum makes me feel ancient.

Your point was certainly reasonable on its own, but did not come from reading this forum (or at least not reading what was actually written here).

Funerals are something of potential interest to the entire ward or stake and could easily be on the regular calendar. Where I'm from you don't attend a wedding or a party unless you are invited (or your name is smith ) and I don't think those should be on a public calendar, but YMMV.

There is so much information on this topic I have not had time to read it all -- finalizing and setting up our new calendar has taken way too much time. But I guess I still need to do more reading and testing.

As I see it there are three primary functions of the reservations tab -- what I call "complete blocks" (location unavailable) to prevent anyone from scheduling the building for Monday nights for example, "event blocks" (location unavailable) for weddings and such, and "reservations" (assigned to a unit). I think the "complete blocks" and "reservations" function still has a purpose; it sounds to me like the discussion here is regarding " event blocks".

Here has been my experience. I am a stake administrator and temporary scheduler.

I agree that a separate calendar is probably best for event blocks, as yes I can schedule a block on top of a regular calendar event. I am glad I can do this as I have had the need to schedule complete blocks and/or reservations on top of existing events.

I can NOT schedule blocks or reservations on top of each other; if I could schedule two reservations on top of each other it would solve a lot of my problems!

I can NOT schedule a calendar event on top of a reservation.

I HAVE been able to schedule two events on our stake calendar on top of each other! (No blocks/reservations involved.) Yes they are using the exact same room. I think I usually can't do this, but it let me once. There were existing events that initially didn't overlap but were later edited.

One thing I hate is when I schedule an event it warns me of all the blocks in all the buildings. If I've chose a location it should only be looking at that location (and of course including events without locations).

craiggsmith wrote:As I see it there are three primary functions of the reservations tab -- what I call "complete blocks" (location unavailable) to prevent anyone from scheduling the building for Monday nights for example, "event blocks" (location unavailable) for weddings and such, and "reservations" (assigned to a unit). I think the "complete blocks" and "reservations" function still has a purpose; it sounds to me like the discussion here is regarding " event blocks".

I'm not sure why you use these nonstandard terms, and I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by them.

The only way to create what I might call a "complete block" is to create an event, since that is the only way to book a location in a way that could accurately be described as "complete." I think you might be referring to a "Blocked Reservation," but that is not "complete," since any building scheduler can schedule an event on top of it.

What you call an "event block" sounds to me like it's just an event that books a resource; I'm not sure why you would use that term, since it combines the term "event" (which clearly applies to events) with the term "block" (which applies only to reservations).

craiggsmith wrote:I can NOT schedule blocks or reservations on top of each other; if I could schedule two reservations on top of each other it would solve a lot of my problems!

Although I can imagine a use case where reservations on top of reservations might be useful, I think the risks of such a feature far outweigh the benefits. As soon as you allow that, it becomes possible for a building scheduler to unintentionally create conflicting reservations. If those reservations are for different wards, then you now have two wards who think they own the same resource at the same time -- that would be bad, and would void the whole purpose of reservations assigned to a unit.

craiggsmith wrote:I can NOT schedule a calendar event on top of a reservation.

I don't understand how that could be the case. Any calendar editor in the assigned unit can schedule an event on top of a reservation. And a building scheduler (which you said you are at this point) can schedule an event on top of any reservation for his building, as long as he is a calendar editor (and you said you are a stake administrator and thus a stake calendar editor).

craiggsmith wrote:I HAVE been able to schedule two events on our stake calendar on top of each other! (No blocks/reservations involved.) Yes they are using the exact same room. I think I usually can't do this, but it let me once. There were existing events that initially didn't overlap but were later edited.

I've never seen this, except in the case of a bug (since fixed) involving a reservation and two events created by a building scheduler.

craiggsmith wrote:One thing I hate is when I schedule an event it warns me of all the blocks in all the buildings. If I've chose a location it should only be looking at that location (and of course including events without locations).

I completely agree with this. When the system casts too broad a net for reporting conflicts, it creates a list that is so long that it becomes less useful -- I completely ignore long lists, but I look at a list of 2-3 possible conflicts.

TinMan wrote:Sorry Russell. That made me laugh out loud. We must deal with completely different demographics. Most people in my ward would not consider a funeral of a ward member who has lived in the ward 40 years, or the wedding of a young woman who has lived in the ward since she was born, "junk."

Yes, I think we are. I'm assisting a building scheduler for the stake center, which has 3 wards and frequently has events for members of the other 6 wards in the stake. Some of these weddings are of members that haven't been the most active. Perhaps weddings and funerals isnt't he best examples, but we also get requests for graduation parties, birthday parties and even family reunions.

As craigsmith points out, it may not be a good idea to put it on the ward calendar unless the whole ward is invited.

aebrown wrote:I'm not sure why you use these nonstandard terms, and I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by them.

I used them because I was not aware of standard terms to describe the different types of Reservations. But I guess this just gives credibility to my theory that many problems are probably caused simply by poor communication. At any rate, it looks like there is another thread addressing this topic.

aebrown wrote:If those reservations are for different wards, then you now have two wards who think they own the same resource at the same time.

Actually that's the exact thing we want to do -- reserve a building for multiple wards. From that point it's first come first served.

aebrown wrote:When the system casts too broad a net for reporting conflicts, it creates a list that is so long that it becomes less useful -- I completely ignore long lists, but I look at a list of 2-3 possible conflicts.

Exactly.

craiggsmith wrote:Actually that's the exact thing we want to do -- reserve a building for multiple wards. From that point it's first come first served.

You may want to review which wards are actually assigned to the building (I use the term "assigned" here in the strict Calendar sense -- under Settings > Locations a stake administrator can specify which units are assigned to a building). Although there can be helpful reasons to assign other wards to a building beyond the wards that meet in that building, if you restrict the assignments to only those wards that meet there, you will have no need to create a multi-ward reservation (which can't be done now anyway, but you would like to see).

yes I fee very "unsupported" in my calling by those in the church who are in tech development by all the problems years after the "new" website was forced onboard. I am the stake website administrator as well as the stake center building scheduler. I have tried to get this problem rectified for over a year now, the stake clerk as removed my name in calling and put it back in as recommended to see if that would solve the problem. No luck and by the time you get a response it is weeks and to tell you the truth working a very demanding full time job and having to work around one solution after another after another - I just don't have the time for this. If I make a separate building calendar for "reserved" items on the building that are not on the ward or stake calendar then that item on the separate building calendar do not show a reserve and if (say) the YM president schedules a social in the building online for a friday evening it shows the building is booked for that event - NOT the event I have on the separate building schedule.
signed - beyond frustrated now, too long overdue.

dnickolson wrote:If I make a separate building calendar for "reserved" items on the building that are not on the ward or stake calendar then that item on the separate building calendar do not show a reserve and if (say) the YM president schedules a social in the building online for a friday evening it shows the building is booked for that event - NOT the event I have on the separate building schedule.

When you place an item on this building calendar, are you scheduling the facility? If not, then someone else could schedule it.

If this calendar is a private calendar, then it won't show any details about the event to others.