Are Calendar Editors Restricted from Scheduling Events to Just Their Building or ?

It appears that a Ward Calendar Editor can schedule an event on their calendar and reserve a building/room in any building in the Stake.

I thought they could only schedule in the building that they use. For example on the Locations and Rooms area, specific Wards are assigned to specific buildings. I thought this was the way to only have these Wards schedule for these buildings. But it looks like this doesn't. I just has a Ward Editor from one building schedule an event in a building that they aren't assigned to in locations.

So what is the value of the assignment in locations of individual Wards?

ebastow wrote:I thought they could only schedule in the building that they use.

That's a good point. I thought the same thing, and that's what the documentation says at Add units to a location.

ebastow wrote:So what is the value of the assignment in locations of individual Wards?

There is definitely value in adding wards that are outside your stake. For example, we have two YSA wards (which are in a YSA stake, not our stake) that use one of our buildings. They are only able to schedule that building because we explicitly added them to that location.

But it is a bit difficult to see the value of adding wards from your own stake to a location owned by your stake if it indeed works this way (and my quick initial test does seem to confirm this).

This is a problem that units not assigned to a location can still schedule events at that location. Members of our stake high council are concerned about units in other buildings being able to reserve another building without approval. Do the calendar support people know that this isn't functioning as documented?

It seems like administrator of any calendar can reserve any resources available in any of the available buildings. Is there a way to limit or block certain calendars from reserving or scheduling available resources?

This is another area where it seems the documentation differs from the actual functionality of the calendar. The intended purpose of adding a unit to a location is twofold:

1. Provide a mechanism to add a ward from outside the building's agent stake.
2. Control the list of units that a Building Scheduler has available when creating Reservations.

Another, but less important purpose is just to provide a way inside the calendar to keep track of which wards are assigned to the building. But that is more of a side-benefit, rather than an intended purpose.

The intention was that Reservations would be used to control when certain units had access to particular buildings or resources within a building.

jdcr256 wrote:The intention was that Reservations would be used to control when certain units had access to particular buildings or resources within a building.

Except we can't "reserve" a location for more then one unit at a time.

So far, no one seems to be defending the way it currently functions. If anyone wanted it to function that way, the stake can always add all of the units to all of the locations.

mnmpeterson wrote:This is a problem that units not assigned to a location can still schedule events at that location. Members of our stake high council are concerned about units in other buildings being able to reserve another building without approval. Do the calendar support people know that this isn't functioning as documented?

I don't see that as a problem at all. Instead, it's a way to maximize the use of all of the stake's resources. For example, my ward meets at the stake center with two other wards. Because our ward council didn't try and reserve a time and place for the Christmas party until November, all of the available Saturdays were already taken. One was even taken by a ward that didn't meet at the stake center, probably because the cultural hall was quite a bit bigger. After doing some checking, I was able to reserve another building in the stake, at a time when noone else was using it (caveat: I warned the ward council that just because no one had scheduled it, didn't mean that no one might be expecting to use it. See below).

As long as everything gets put on the calendar, and the events reserve the necessary resources, I don't see the problem. The problem arises when a ward that hasn't calendered an event shows up expecting an area to be empty, when someone else has actually scheduled it. Although I think it's good to reserve areas for regularly scheduled events (like Ward 1's mutual night), if no one else is using the building, why shouldn't another ward be able to use it, even if they aren't assigned to it?

allenjpl wrote:if no one else is using the building, why shouldn't another ward be able to use it, even if they aren't assigned to it?

Can anyone find a Handbook quote to indicate that this how things should be? Otherwise, is give the appearance of a new "policy" being created by the developers, not the church leaders. Also, the tool isn't working the way everyone expected it to work. That's not a compliment to the interface.

Unless someone can find a Handbook quote to the contrary, I'd assume this is a case of Stake President's prerogative. If a stake wants to go by that policy, they can certainly add all the wards to all the locations. If they don't want to follow that policy (for whatever reason - perhaps bad past experiences) all they can do now go after errant leaders after the fact.

Another downside - if a stake has two locations with very similar names, it would become too easy to schedule the wrong Relief Society room for an event. It would only be noticed if someone observed that the icon wasn't quite the right color. (Call it Murphy's Law, but my calendar tends to make everything shades of blue and purple.)

RussellHltn wrote:Can anyone find a Handbook quote to indicate that this how things should be? Otherwise, is give the appearance of a new "policy" being created by the developers, not the church leaders. Also, the tool isn't working the way everyone expected it to work. That's not a compliment to the interface.

I can't find anything supporting either position. The closest I found was Handbook 1, 8.2.5, the section explaining the agent bishop's duties, where it talks about the agent bishop coordinating scheduling with the other wards that use the meetinghouse.

Can we get a answer if it will be added to the list of "fixes" so that it will work as designed - that being only Units assigned in Locations can schedule in the building. If the Stake wants all Units to be able to reserve in all buildings, then they just add them all to all buildings.

Also a timetable of when the patch could be expected?

ebastow wrote:Can we get a answer if it will be added to the list of "fixes" so that it will work as designed...

The answer is that it is working as designed. If there is a strong consensus that it should be changed, I can add it to the list for future discussion and prioritization.

ebastow wrote:Also a timetable of when the patch could be expected?

I can't make any promises that it will be changed, or when it would be implemented.

I updated the calendar documentation to accurately describe how this works. Sorry for the confusion. See Define the locations that units can reserve.

Feel free to improve upon the explanation. It is somewhat confusing. I added a couple of screenshots to clarity the process.

johnsonth wrote:Feel free to improve upon the explanation.

I may have to take a crack at it since it's Building Schedulers that make Reservations, not wards. And since only the stake can grant Building Scheduler rights, it strikes me as odd that they need to be restricted. <shrug>

I had a sister in our stake, who is not in a leadership position in her ward, reserve the stake center, which is not her ward's building, for a Christmas party. How can that happen?

rvukich wrote:I had a sister in our stake, who is not in a leadership position in her ward, reserve the stake center, which is not her ward's building, for a Christmas party. How can that happen?

She would have to be a calendar editor of some sort in order to create an event that books the stake center. Calendar editors can be designated by any calendar administrator, either at the ward or stake level -- they don't have to be in a leadership position. And any calendar editor in the stake can book any building in the stake (as long as it has not been booked by another event or reserved for another ward).

rvukich wrote:I had a sister in our stake, who is not in a leadership position in her ward, reserve the stake center, which is not her ward's building, for a Christmas party. How can that happen?

A Reservation is a specific function of the new calendar system. Only someone designated as the Building Scheduler can create a reservation.

I assume what you mean is that she created an event that "booked" the Stake Center. The question is, what calendar did she use? Can you see the name of it?

One issue I have a concern with. If I understand correctly, anyone can create a Private Calendar. No approval is required. Private Calendars can "book" resources such as rooms. Thus, any member of any ward in the stake can create an event that ties up the resource. (Of course there's no guarantee that anyone will show up to open the building for them.)

If this is in conflict with another event, then the Building Scheduler can delete her event as he has full control over any event scheduled for that location.

RussellHltn wrote:One issue I have a concern with. If I understand correctly, anyone can create a Private Calendar. No approval is required. Private Calendars can "book" resources such as rooms. Thus, any member of any ward in the stake can create an event that ties up the resource. (Of course there's no guarantee that anyone will show up to open the building for them.)

That is not correct. Although anyone can "create" a private calendar, it would be more accurate to call that action "proposing" a private calendar. That calendar is not usable until it is approved by a calendar administrator. Therefore the proposer of that calendar cannot create an event for any purpose, and certainly cannot tie up a resource, using an unapproved calendar (whether it's private or public).

aebrown wrote:That is not correct. Although anyone can "create" a private calendar, it would be more accurate to call that action "proposing" a private calendar. That calendar is not usable until it is approved by a calendar administrator. Therefore the proposer of that calendar cannot create an event for any purpose, and certainly cannot tie up a resource, using an unapproved calendar (whether it's private or public).

Ok, as long as a private calendar requires approval, then that's a good protection against that happening.