Conflict resolution

I am at a loss to determine how the building scheduler can resolve conflicts when he can not see everything scheduled. I have a situation where the Physical Facilities group wish to reserve the cultural hall for maintenance for an entire week. When I tried to put it on the calendar, I found that there was a conflict with the Stake Primary. However, I can not see if there is a conflict with any unit other than the Stake and my ward. There are two other units using the building. It looks like the coordination will have to be done manually rather than through the calendar system. I don't believe that this is a particularly unique situation to us. In fact, it appears to me that in order for the building schedulers to do their job, they will still need to keep a manual record, but that will be difficult because individuals are taught that they can schedule independently for the building scheduler. From what I have read, there is no building scheduler. And if he is told about a conflict, and can not see it, he apparently has to make a determination of how to resolve it and then tell someone else to make changes if the resolution is to have a unit other than his own make the changes.

This sounds unworkable. When it was done manually, it was a big burden, but at least the scheduler could determine what to do and effectively resolve it.

In my case, I assume I will have to schedule Physical Facilities and then notify all the units in the building so they can determine if they have a conflict and take action to move their events unless there is a better way.

alrobo wrote:I am at a loss to determine how the building scheduler can resolve conflicts when he can not see everything scheduled.

The building scheduler can indeed see everything scheduled. There are two ways:

• Under Week view of the main Calendar screen, check the box for the building (location) under Available Locations. This technique is available to all members assigned to that building.
• Go to the Reservations screen (Settings > Reservations), where he can see all reservations (in gray text) and all events (in black text) for the location on one screen, in either a monthly or weekly view. This is available only to building schedulers, and seems to be the best place to work for conflict resolution.

From either place, the building scheduler can edit events that take place at his building as needed to resolve conflicts.

alrobo wrote: This sounds unworkable. When it was done manually, it was a big burden, but at least the scheduler could determine what to do and effectively resolve it.

Now that you know that the building scheduler has tools for seeing and resolving conflicts, I think the rest of your concerns should go away.

I added a new page in the help that provides step-by-step instructions for viewing other ward calendars (or rather, for viewing all events by location). See https://tech.lds.org/wiki/View_other_ward_calendars.

I also updated summary information here about the same topic: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Viewing_calendars#View_calendars_of_other_wards.

Note that at some point, a future release of the calendar will allow you to see other ward calendars. It's not a restriction by design, but rather planned as a future enhancement.

Thank you for your quick response. I wonder if I should have been able to find this myself. I looked at the general documentation and did not find what I thought was appropriate. I also looked at frequently asked questions and found others that seemed to be having the same or similar problem. Is there an easy way to determine where to find the most current and accurate information?

aebrown wrote:The building scheduler can indeed see everything scheduled. There are two ways:

• Under Week view of the main Calendar screen, check the box for the building (location) under Available Locations. This technique is available to all members assigned to that building.
• Go to the Reservations screen (Settings > Reservations), where he can see all reservations (in gray text) and all events (in black text) for the location on one screen, in either a monthly or weekly view. This is available only to building schedulers, and seems to be the best place to work for conflict resolution.

From either place, the building scheduler can edit events that take place at his building as needed to resolve conflicts.




Now that you know that the building scheduler has tools for seeing and resolving conflicts, I think the rest of your concerns should go away.

Alrobo, I just added a section that describes the information you're looking for. In the sidebar of the calendar help, under Making Reservations, click View other ward calendars.

I also added summary information on the Viewing calendars page.

If you have any suggestions for making this information more visible and readily findable, please let me know.

alrobo wrote:Thank you for your quick response. I wonder if I should have been able to find this myself. I looked at the general documentation and did not find what I thought was appropriate. I also looked at frequently asked questions and found others that seemed to be having the same or similar problem. Is there an easy way to determine where to find the most current and accurate information?

The documentation is all in the wiki, starting with the Calendar topic. Tom Johnson, who posted information about a new help page right after my post, is the principal author of that help system.

I'm sure that Tom and I would be interested in hearing some more details about just where you looked, what you expected to find, what searches you did, etc. That could help us improve the documentation so that others in your situation will be more likely to find the help they need more quickly. We certainly don't mind answering questions on the Forum, but most people would love to be able to find the answers themselves without having to post a question and wait for a response.

aebrown wrote:I'm sure that Tom and I would be interested in hearing some more details about just where you looked, what you expected to find, what searches you did, etc. That could help us improve the documentation so that others in your situation will be more likely to find the help they need more quickly. We certainly don't mind answering questions on the Forum, but most people would love to be able to find the answers themselves without having to post a question and wait for a response.

Definitely, I would love to hear more feedback about how to improve the organization, visibility, and general findability of calendar information (as well as other LDSTech information). I am trying to shift my documentation process to drive more of the help based on forum and other user feedback *post-release* rather than pre-release. This forum is a goldmine of helpful feedback about the calendar. I am trying to monitor and respond to threads in this calendar subchannel more carefully.