Two stakes sharing the same building

I am the STS in the Vancouver Washington East Stake, which shares a building named McGillivray Bldg. WA with the Vancouver Washington Stake. Three wards meet in this building, two in my stake and one in the other, specifically the Cascade Park Ward. Members of this ward authorized to create calendar events can choose the McGillivray Bldg. for their events and conflicts are handled correctly between the two stakes. These members are unable to see the events in their building from the other stake. Specifically, the list of locations in the calendar week view does not include the McGillivray Bldg. However my stake is able to see the events from the other stake scheduled for this building.

I suppose it could be understandable that members of one stake are not able to view events of another, however this mandate should not be one sided, and at least the building scheduler (which rotates among all three wards) should be able to see all events in his/her building.

Is there a solution to this problem?

msd360 wrote:I am the STS in the Vancouver Washington East Stake, which shares a building named McGillivray Bldg. WA with the Vancouver Washington Stake. Three wards meet in this building, two in my stake and one in the other, specifically the Cascade Park Ward. Members of this ward authorized to create calendar events can choose the McGillivray Bldg. for their events and conflicts are handled correctly between the two stakes. These members are unable to see the events in their building from the other stake. Specifically, the list of locations in the calendar week view does not include the McGillivray Bldg. However my stake is able to see the events from the other stake scheduled for this building.

Unfortunately, life isn't fair. The agent stake gets to see all the events, but the external stake does not. This is explained in the calendar help at Locations and resources shared by multiple stakes.

msd360 wrote:I suppose it could be understandable that members of one stake are not able to view events of another, however this mandate should not be one sided, and at least the building scheduler (which rotates among all three wards) should be able to see all events in his/her building.

Is there a solution to this problem?

You said that the building scheduler role rotates among all three wards. That's not going to work out with the new Calendar system. The building scheduler has to be from the agent stake (your stake, in this case). This is explained in the calendar help system at Building scheduler role.

I imagine some of these restrictions could be changed, if it became a high enough priority for the development team. But those links do explain how it works right now.

Hmm, this is interesting. It is correctly documented in the help documentation, but as one of the project leads for this app, if you'd asked me in the street about this, I'd have told you that you would be able to see the other stakes events in the building.

Since you asked me (or rather, posted on the forum) while I'm at my desk, and can try it myself, I'll admit that you - and the documentation - are right.

However, I think this is a terrible oversight, so I'll see what I can do to change it asap.

The building scheduler will still be required to be from the agent stake, although we have some possible solutions to change this that may be implemented in the future. But we should be able to make the events visible in the week view, just as they are for wards that are in the same stake as the building.

Has this problem been solved. I live in a ward where 2 stakes share the building we can schedule the building but can not see what has been scheduled by the agent stake scheduler. We have asked the stake technology specialist about a solution to the problem but he says there isn't one and that we just have to call the other agent stake and ward schedulers for each activity. Any help would be appreciated.

marlamcleod wrote:Has this problem been solved. I live in a ward where 2 stakes share the building we can schedule the building but can not see what has been scheduled by the agent stake scheduler.

The post just before yours was only posted yesterday afternoon, so no, the problem of your stake seeing the events in the shared building hasn't been solved yet. But that post certainly offers great encouragement that it will be solved soon.

marlamcleod wrote:We have asked the stake technology specialist about a solution to the problem but he says there isn't one and that we just have to call the other agent stake and ward schedulers for each activity. Any help would be appreciated.

However, you shouldn't have to call the agent stake. Your calendar editors should be able to simply schedule events in that building. You will be notified if there are conflicts. If there are none, then you will be able to save the event and you will have reserved the building.

If you don't even have the option of choosing that building when scheduling events, then you need to ask the agent stake to add your ward unit to the location.

@jdcr256, Thank you for looking into resolving this. I came to the forum today to see if there was any discussion on this topic and was encouraged to find this thread.

The fact that scheduled activities do not display for all wards in the building when they're in different stakes is a problem for my ward as well. Just last night, our RS had scheduled the building cultural hall only to show up and find it occupied by the ward from another stake, who claimed to have looked at the calendar and saw nothing listed so they believed it was open. Sure, the other ward should have scheduled their activity in the calendar, and if they had they would have been notified of the conflict. Unfortunately, on the night of a last minute activity, they apparently only thought it was necessary to "verify" that nobody else was using the building and believed that to be the case since they couldn't see anything on the calendar. It's a conflict that happens more than it should because the wards rely on scheduling events in the calendar themselves rather than communicating with the building scheduler.

Anyway, thanks for your work!

jimmy.fuller wrote:Just last night, our RS had scheduled the building cultural hall only to show up and find it occupied by the ward from another stake, who claimed to have looked at the calendar and saw nothing listed so they believed it was open. Sure, the other ward should have scheduled their activity in the calendar, and if they had they would have been notified of the conflict. Unfortunately, on the night of a last minute activity, they apparently only thought it was necessary to "verify" that nobody else was using the building and believed that to be the case since they couldn't see anything on the calendar.

That can happen with wards within a stake as well, since wards have no ability to see events on other ward calendars, unless they go to the week view and check the box for the building under Available Locations. In my experience, very few people know how to do that, so they could easily make the same bad assumption the other ward made in your example.

That experience clearly shows a lack of training on building use. On occasion we have that problem, too, but it is rare, because we constantly reinforce the message: "If you don't have the building scheduled on an event in the Calendar, you can't use the building." Even if you have a sudden desire to use the building 30 minutes from now, it only takes a minute or two to schedule it. With multiple wards and dozens of classes and auxiliaries and quorums all wanting to use the building, that's the only philosophy that works.

jdcr256 wrote: However, I think this is a terrible oversight, so I'll see what I can do to change it asap.

The building scheduler will still be required to be from the agent stake, although we have some possible solutions to change this that may be implemented in the future. But we should be able to make the events visible in the week view, just as they are for wards that are in the same stake as the building.

Our stake is in the same situation with three buildings in our stake: our northernmost building is shared with the stake to the north (and they are the agent stake) and our two southernmost buildings are shared with the stake south of us (we are the agent stake for one, they are the agent stake for the other) so currently under "Locations" we only have 2 buildings

I know it would help out tremendously if we could see all those buildings in the "Available Locations" pane to be able to see what events are going on at those locations without having to create an event to see if it is available.

Thank you!

aebrown wrote:That experience clearly shows a lack of training on building use. On occasion we have that problem, too, but it is rare, because we constantly reinforce the message: "If you don't have the building scheduled on an event in the Calendar, you can't use the building." Even if you have a sudden desire to use the building 30 minutes from now, it only takes a minute or two to schedule it. With multiple wards and dozens of classes and auxiliaries and quorums all wanting to use the building, that's the only philosophy that works.

Thats the only way to be fair about it.
We have LOTS of out of unit people using the building (being near the historical sites here in upstate NY, in the summer we get as much out of unit use of the building as in-unit use of the building) and if you aren't on the calendar (other than YM/YW on Tuesdays, you could easily be out of luck.
There could be another stake having a Youth Conference, an EFY session, a Temple Workers meeting, a Pageant Cast meeting, a YSA dance, an Area Leadership Meeting, a Mission Presidents seminar and that's just the big "abnormal" stuff from the last year.

Aaron Z

This should be fixed now. Let me know.

jdcr256 wrote:This should be fixed now. Let me know.

Touché!

Thank you very much!

Thank you for doing this. It will be very helpful.