Troop Calendar visible by non-member parents

I would like to encourage the troops in our stake to use a ward troop calendar. This would allow members and ward leadership to see various upcoming events. This idea works great for member families. We have some troops that have populations that are up-to 25% non-members. How do these non-members view a ward troop calendar that requires an lds.org account?

As the stake YM counselor over scouting, I would like to add district and stake events on the ward troop calendars?

dwiltbank wrote:How do these non-members view a ward troop calendar that requires an lds.org account?

They can't. I don't know if that's being addressed or not.

dwiltbank wrote:I How do these non-members view a ward troop calendar that requires an lds.org account?

Note that a nonmember can get an LDS Account, but it won't be helpful in this regard, since accessing the calendar requires not only an LDS Account, but one whose membership number is connected to the ward or stake that owns the calendar -- and a nonmember clearly can't configure their LDS Account that way.

dwiltbank wrote:As the stake YM counselor over scouting, I would like to add district and stake events on the ward troop calendars?

That is contrary to the underlying philosophy of the calendar; each ward maintains its ward calendars and the stake maintains stake calendars. Instead, you should create a stake calendar that has the stake and district events. That way there is only one calendar with these events (much easier to maintain) and members can choose to subscribe to that calendar if they'd like.

aebrown wrote: Instead, you should create a stake calendar that has the stake and district events. That way there is only one calendar with these events (much easier to maintain) and members can choose to subscribe to that calendar if they'd like.

This is what our stake did. It was quite easy since one of our Stake Tech guys is also our District Web master.

dwiltbank wrote:I would like to encourage the troops in our stake to use a ward troop calendar. This would allow members and ward leadership to see various upcoming events. This idea works great for member families.

In the intial calendar set up there is a default calendar for each AP Quorm, since scouting is the activity arm of the AP this is where the Young Men Quorm leaders should be posting there activities.

dwiltbank wrote:We have some troops that have populations that are up-to 25% non-members. How do these non-members view a ward troop calendar that requires an lds.org account?

The best way to do this is for the troops to each setup and maintain a Troop Web site that is linked to the district web site. They may even be able to link/sinc the church calendar to the web page. It could be one of the projects for a YM working on his Computer Meritbadge. There is also a postion call Troop Web Master.

Gary touched on something that might help. You could easily set up a Google calendar (or multiple calendars, assuming you want one for each unit, i.e. you might want separate calendars for your Scouts, Varsity Scouts and Venture Scouts) and then have each BSA unit sync the Google calendar with the related ward calendar and the related stake calendar(s). This then gives non-member scouts and their families somewhere to go to see the calendar that applies to them.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the sync only goes one way. Events added to the Google calendar will not sync to the LDS.org calendar.

failproof wrote:You could easily set up a Google calendar

While that's technically possible, I would check with local leaders. Having information about the troop's activities publicly available could be a security risk.

Handbook 2: 21.1.2 is quite strict on what is allowable, but is silent on what a troop can and cannot do.

I completely agree. Please stay within church and scouting policies when it comes to using the web. There is some gray area about what may be allowed for scouts vs what is allowed for church, but ultimately for a church sponsored scout unit, the church still has authority to dictate some restrictions. My suggestion is to err on the side of caution and make every attempt to follow policy for both organizations.

Yes we should certainly stay within the church guidlines as well as BSA guidlines, as scouting is a church activity.

However I don't see it as a problem if you just follow the proper procedures as outlined in the handbooks.

I guess I find this answer not very satisfying.

First of all, the sync feature specifically tells me that I'm not to share the url and that is only for my personal use. Even if I ignored this, it automatically syncs all my subscribed calendars, I only want to share our Scouting calendar.

As for policy of running a google calendar for this, it isn't clear to me that sharing a non-public, non-searchable google calendar with a few scout families violates the Church-sponsored internet presence policy. It wouldn't be much different than emailing them a pdf of the calendar.

Gary_Miller's advice would work but defeats the purpose of having an integrated lds.org calendar. Now families have to go to 2 calendars to see what is going on. Not to mention the scheduling conflicts that can arise and the duplication of effort (lds.org to reserve resources and deconflict ward activity and troop website to show to families).

We were specifically encouraged by Bro. Beck to serve the community by inviting non-member families to participate in our scouting units. It seems like the calendar needs a share feature that meets that reality. Our Pack and EYO patrol or currently more than 50% non-LDS and is very challenging to have two calendaring systems.

tilaloz: you might try multiple avenues of escalating this concern. Besides posting here, you might try the following:

• Submit feedback at https://www.lds.org/tools/feedback.
• Have your priesthood leaders provide this feedback. I've heard that headquarters is asking priesthood leaders for feedback on the online tools now, so it might be good timing.

I wouldn't expect that there is a quick fix to this problem, but it seems like a legitimate request. If they get enough requests, that increases the chances that it will get done (unless the church leadership decides this is not something they want to provide).

Does creating an MLS record for the non-member scouts/families of scots/scout leaders then provide access to the calender for those individuals?

We have the same situation in our ward in Düsseldorf.

gxwheel wrote:Does creating an MLS record for the non-member scouts/families of scots/scout leaders then provide access to the calender for those individuals?

I don't know, but the conditions for creating one is too limiting to be a good fix for most situations.

This request doesn't seem too different from requests by missionary leaders to have public-facing ward homepages that non-members can access. The restriction by LDS Account of the LDS.org applications has challenges. How do you personalize the experience of information for members, keeping the information private and accessible to a specific group while also allowing for non-members to access similar information when needed?

Although we don't have any specific plans for non-member access to the calendar right now, I'll add this to the backlog of requests. One workaround is print off a PDF of the troop calendar and email it to your non-member group. A lot of people seem to prefer printed calendars anyway. The LDS.org calendar does have excellent PDF/printing capabilities.

johnsonth wrote:This request doesn't seem too different from requests by missionary leaders to have public-facing ward homepages that non-members can access.

I view this as quite different from the public-facing ward homepages. In Classic, the public-facing pages could be accessed via Mormon.org (and based on many pages I've seen, it doesn't seem like many wards and stakes were aware this was public). They might serve as a bit of an introduction or public face for local congregations. Some people mentioned that local convention/tourist/etc. groups would even link to these pages so out-of-town visitors would know where to find religious services. Or maybe cities and such who list things like restaurants, businesses, churches, etc. in their city could link to the page.

What I see people asking for in the calendar has to do with helping non-members who have established some kind of relationship with a congregation to be more integrated. I could see many situations where this need exists. Here are a few I thought of quickly:

• non-members involved with cub scouts and boy scouts
• investigators (including those who have been investigating for years)
• non-member youth who like to participate in some of our youth activities
• non-members who like to participate in church sports leagues and want to get game/practice schedules

I agree that this isn't a simple problem to solve. Developing a solution for this might also result in online tools that have too much administrative overhead, as someone will have to associate non-member LDS Accounts with a unit and specify what permissions the individual can have, etc. To reduce the administrative burden, you'd probably want to give people access to selected tools for a certain number of days (30, 60, 90, etc.) and then access needs to be renewed and an administrator would need to re-approve it.