Calendaring issues: Sorry, the data service has failed messa

I am getting the error "Sorry, the data service has failed. Please contact support." error when I try updating the repeating reservations. At first I thought it was because I had an inconsistency, but I double and triple checked my information and nothing seems to be out of line. I even rewatched the video "Editing Repeating Events" and did as it told me. I also tried to move an reservation, but the weeks were different, so in week view I cannot just slide the reservation to another day since it is in a whole different week. Any suggestions on how to resolve? I did find an end run around the problem, schedule a repeating reservation up until the conflict, then schedule a single reservation to resolve, the another repeating series of reservation to continue.


Note: I am trying to do reservations and not events. If this states events above, please know I am trying to resolve this error message regarding reservations, not events. If you have an idea on why I get this message, please reply why and how I might resolve it. Thanks for your assistance.

When you were updating the reservation, was it in "week view" on the main calendar or the reservation page?

And when you say "conflict" was this the situation you were trying to adjust for in the first place, or did you identify something on the calendar that was giving the reservation some problems?

I am trying to update a single event from a reoccuring event, in the reservation screen, and in the month view setting. What I need to do in this example, a pack meeting needs to be changed from a Thursday to a Friday. I change the date, and choose "Only this even" and then I get the message. Please assist, thanks

Not sure what is going on, but trying to use reservations for events is not a good idea. What should be done is the pack meeting should be scheduled as an event.

Reservations can be overridden and does not block other organizations in the same unit from creating conflicting events.

But to use events, you may need to have someone create/authorize or otherwise grant you edit rights to the appropriate calendar.

I am sorry if I am being obnoxious, but this doesn't make sense to me. If I need to get access to another ward's calendar to schedule events, then why have a building scheduler (me) in the first place? Why would anyone need to call me if they can just schedule their events, and not call me for a reservation. Perhaps I just don't understand my calling yet, but as I understood it, I am to schedule the building and to make sure there are no conflicts. I am allowed to make reservations, but not events. I have reviewd the tutorial about the difference between events and reservations. It could be that I still don't understand the difference. In this particular case I had scheduled pack meeting to the cub's on an annual reoccuring reservation. It needed to be changed to a friday to accomodate other issues by the cub master. If she coudl have done this on her ward's calendar, then I am not needed. Also, I am sure that this ward will not grant me access to their calendar, I can't even get access to my own ward's calendar to make changes or schedule events. I am confused.... I am finding end runs around the problems, but I don't know if I am causing other issues in that process.

bkt64 wrote:Why would anyone need to call me if they can just schedule their events, and not call me for a reservation. Perhaps I just don't understand my calling yet, but as I understood it, I am to schedule the building and to make sure there are no conflicts.

If the distributed scheduling model is followed, then assigned calendar editors and administrators in the individual wards can schedule events. The system will take care of making sure there is no double booking. If conflicts are reported and someone wants to work out a change in an existing event, the building scheduler can help resolve the conflict.

bkt64 wrote: I am allowed to make reservations, but not events. I have reviewd the tutorial about the difference between events and reservations. It could be that I still don't understand the difference.

It's best to think of reservations as "restrictions" -- limitations on which ward can schedule the building at a particular time. In fact, that terminology change will be made in an upcoming update to the Calendar.

bkt64 wrote: In this particular case I had scheduled pack meeting to the cub's on an annual reoccuring reservation. It needed to be changed to a friday to accomodate other issues by the cub master. If she coudl have done this on her ward's calendar, then I am not needed.

You indeed don't need to schedule individual events. But that hardly means that you are not needed. It's just that with the distributed scheduling model, the building scheduler has a much smaller role than in the past.

Focus on using reservations as they are intended, and help resolve the occasional conflict that may arise. Leave the individual event scheduling to the wards.

bkt64 wrote:I am sorry if I am being obnoxious, but this doesn't make sense to me. If I need to get access to another ward's calendar to schedule events, then why have a building scheduler (me) in the first place?

I have often wondered this myself. Apart from scheduling reservations (restrictions) which could be done through the clerks office of the agent bishop. There is no need to have the calling of "Building Scheduler" anymore and its confusing to both the Schedulers and the membership.

bkt64 wrote:Why would anyone need to call me if they can just schedule their events, and not call me for a reservation.

No one should ever have to call you unless it a bishop, or someone he designates, in the building who needs to restrict access of other wards on a given date, time, and resources for an extended recurring period of time. And even after the restriction is added the ward still needs to place an event on the calendar. So all that was really needed was a recurring event added to the calendar as it does the samething of blocking out a given date, time, and resource in the building.

bkt64 wrote:Perhaps I just don't understand my calling yet, but as I understood it, I am to schedule the building and to make sure there are no conflicts.

Yes and no. Your job is not to schedule events in the building but to add building restrictions as needed, wards in the building are to schedule events.

The other part of your job is to help member with any conflicts that may ac-cure by working with both parties to solve a conflict that could not me solved on their own. For instance one ward may have a restriction for the entire building on a given day, and another ward may want to schedule an event for part of the building on that day. Your job as a building scheduler, after working with both units to solve the conflict, would to adjust the restriction on that day so the other ward could schedule the area they need.

Here again this could of all be solved by the use of events with ward only scheduling the areas of the building they really need.

bkt64 wrote:I am allowed to make reservations, but not events.

Correct, as a matter of fact you can't make an event unless it for your own ward and you have been given editor rights from one of your ward administrators.

bkt64 wrote:I have reviewd the tutorial about the difference between events and reservations. It could be that I still don't understand the difference. In this particular case I had scheduled pack meeting to the cub's on an annual reoccuring reservation. It needed to be changed to a friday to accomodate other issues by the cub master.

Pack meeting should have been added as a recurring event by a ward editor, I would hope the Cub Master was an editor, for the appropriate calendar for that ward. The ward then could make the change to just the one event.

bkt64 wrote:If she could have done this on her ward's calendar, then I am not needed.

Correct you are not needed in this instance.

bkt64 wrote:Also, I am sure that this ward will not grant me access to their calendar,

Even if they wanted to the calendar program will not allow it.

bkt64 wrote: I can't even get access to my own ward's calendar to make changes or schedule events./quote]
Unless you are an auxiliary leader or your ward whats to give you those rights you don't need them.

bkt64 wrote:I am confused.... I am finding end runs around the problems, but I don't know if I am causing other issues in that process.

You could be causing problems by adding restrictions when an event was all that's needed.

Don't be confused just start telling members who call you to schedule something that they need to call a ward calendar editor. Then make sure the leaders of the wards in the building your responsible for are trained on the proper use of the calendar.

bkt64 wrote:If I need to get access to another ward's calendar to schedule events, then why have a building scheduler (me) in the first place?

The big problem is that the new calendar represents a cultural shift from the past. But few units have recognized the change, so they follow the old model of referring everyone to a central "building scheduler".

If desired, each unit can have a central calender administrator, but the new system doesn't support one person handling multiple units.

Wonderful! This is so much easier and thanks for the continued assistance. I look forward to "resolving issues" rather than creating them. Having individual wards schedule their events will be much easier in the long run. I again thank you for your assistance.

Since "Building Scheduler" duties are minimal, one proposal I'm making is that the "Building Scheduler" should also be something like a "calendar administrator" in his or her ward. That person would be familiar with the calendar and would be responsible for teaching the "calendar administrators" in other wards in the building how to use the calendaring tool, answering questions about it, etc.

I am getting the same error message. My intention is to modify a single reservation in a recurring reservation. The error message is: "Sorry, the data service has failed. Please contact support."
Can we get an answer as to why we can't modify a single reservation date only. This has been going on for a few months and worked properly prior.
Thanks,

My goodness! After weeks of fiddling, I thought I would try this forum out to see if anyone else was getting the same error as me. Apparently so. I get the error message "Sorry, the data service has failed. Please contact support." when attempting to block a location for any time or day. (Of course, there is no information as to who or how to contact support.) Is this operator error?? or do I need to call Salt Lake? This is quite problematic as people are creating reservations at will. Again, I have read the instructions and thought I understood them as well as the calendering model. I would welcome some help on this.

I'm trying to modify an existing reservation (adding an additional room) and I keep receiving this error. The error message isn't helpful and asks you to contact support without giving you instructions for doing so. It took some digging just to find this forum.

torybriggs wrote:I'm trying to modify an existing reservation (adding an additional room) and I keep receiving this error. The error message isn't helpful and asks you to contact support without giving you instructions for doing so. It took some digging just to find this forum.

[Moderator note: I moved this post into the existing topic for this issue.]

Although you can see from the other posts in this topic that you are not alone, I would note that it is by no means a universal problem. I am able to edit existing reservations with no problems. However, I don't think anyone has any good theory as to why some units have no problems and others seem to be unable to edit any reservations.

Thanks for the response aebrown. I didn't initially add my post to this topic because my question is different. My issue is with the error messaging and contacting support. The error message tells me to contact support but I don't have any contact information for support. How do I contact support? Is posting to this forum considered contacting support?

torybriggs wrote:Thanks for the response aebrown. I didn't initially add my post to this topic because my question is different. My issue is with the error messaging and contacting support.

Okay, that's understandable, but I think it's still helpful to have the post with the others that are related to this issue so that we can get a feel for how many people have this problem. It also gives us one central topic to post any responses to, if we happen to get any information from the Calendar developers.

torybriggs wrote:The error message tells me to contact support but I don't have any contact information for support. How do I contact support? Is posting to this forum considered contacting support?

This forum is definitely a good place to start; in many cases you'll find that someone knows the answer or can at least provide a workaround. Unfortunately I don't think that's the case for this issue.

When that message says "support" I assume they are referring to Local Unit Support, which your ward or stake clerk could contact.

In answer to the question, "Why have a building scheduler at all?" It depends entirely on your building. I am the the scheduler for the stake center which is a circular building, all on one floor with a full sized basketball court/cultural hall/chapel in the middle. The person who can see the reservation calendar is the ONLY one in the building who can see the big picture. We are able to see ALL events that have been entered by ALL groups/auxillaries/ward or stake leaders on to their ward/stake calendars in our stake. In a building such as mine, with the high building usage of five wards, the region, the stake and individuals (like weddings) - it would be very easy for ward A to schedule an incompatible activity during say a child of record or convert baptism for Ward B, C, D, or E. Loud, noisy ward activities are incompatible with the reverent atmosphere you expect at a baptism and there is NO getting away from that in my building. I can't "reserve" a room anymore - that has to be done by the individual entering the event on their ward or stake calendar but I can see if there is anything incompatible with the activity being scheduled.

Most events are scheduled on ward/stake calendars at the beginning of the year so concievably it would be possible to do without a building scheduler or to make building scheduling an adjunct responsibility for an assistant stake clerk. Calendaring among the wards in my building is more fluid and things are added and events are often scheduled month to month as the wards are inspired and as the missionaries ready converts for baptism.

I am in the process of training everyone in my building to call to check for incompatible events and then telling them to place their event on their wards e-calendar on LDS.org in order to insure that they have the rooms they want.

I still have not read a satisfactory response to "Sorry the data service has failed. Please contact Support." I, too, tried to correct for the entire year the start time for a regular occuring "reservation" but was unable to do so that I had entered. Although we have never been able to enter an "EVENT", we were able to make adjustments to time and date to "EVENTs" already on the calendar. We have also had no problem correcting "reservation" start times that we input ourselves. Has that too been taken away?

nancypalemany wrote:In answer to the question, "Why have a building scheduler at all?" It depends entirely on your building. I am the the scheduler for the stake center which is a circular building, all on one floor with a full sized basketball court/cultural hall/chapel in the middle. The person who can see the reservation calendar is the ONLY one in the building who can see the big picture. We are able to see ALL events that have been entered by ALL groups/auxillaries/ward or stake leaders on to their ward/stake calendars in our stake.

Everyone with an LDS logon can see all events and reservation for any building in there stake which they have flagged by using the week mode.

nancypalemany wrote:In a building such as mine, with the high building usage of five wards, the region, the stake and individuals (like weddings) - it would be very easy for ward A to schedule an incompatible activity during say a child of record or convert baptism for Ward B, C, D, or E. Loud, noisy ward activities are incompatible with the reverent atmosphere you expect at a baptism and there is NO getting away from that in my building.

This is easily rectified by those scheduling more reverent type events to ether schedule the whole building or the area adjacent to the room they are using to try and provide a reverent atmosphere. Some training on what to look for to prevent a problem is all that's needed.

nancypalemany wrote:I can't "reserve" a room anymore - that has to be done by the individual entering the event on their ward or stake calendar but I can see if there is anything incompatible with the activity being scheduled.

And so can everyone else.

nancypalemany wrote:Calendaring among the wards in my building is more fluid and things are added and events are often scheduled month to month as the wards are inspired and as the missionaries ready converts for baptism.

Not anymore fluid than anyone else. Wards a very capable of making decisions and looking for an opening in the building to schedule their events.

nancypalemany wrote:I am in the process of training everyone in my building to call to check for incompatible events and then telling them to place their event on their wards e-calendar on LDS.org in order to insure that they have the rooms they want.

Since everyone can see the whole calendar in the week view I see no need for such micro management. The new calendar is designed to eliminate this call.

I am sorry, but I CANNOT agree with you about every member in the stake being able to see all of the events that have been placed on every ward calendar in the building or throughout the stake. I have logged into my ward's calendar and am unable to see that the Chinese Branch has scheduled the Primary Room for every Thursday for an event. I suppose if I went ahead and tried to schedule an event for that room on that day it would tell me it was in use and if that is what you mean then I understand what you are trying to say. HOWEVER, this ONLY works when you are living in an area where everyone has internet access and where everyone is using the calendar system. We have some areas in our stake where the families are so poor that when we ask youth register online for something - it becomes a hardship for their leaders to get their youth registered. Most of the other buildings in our stake are not fully utilizing the calendar system as we are in mine - so jumping around the stake and scheduling your event willy, nilly in any building could get you into lots of trouble. Then it becomes the wild, wild west and we already have that in one building already (it's not scheduled by our stake).

nancypalemany wrote:I am sorry, but I CANNOT agree with you about every member in the stake being able to see all of the events that have been placed on every ward calendar in the building or throughout the stake. I have logged into my ward's calendar and am unable to see that the Chinese Branch has scheduled the Primary Room for every Thursday for an event.

The procedure to view all events scheduled at a location is to select "Week" view, then select only the location of interest in the "Locations" box and click the "Hide all calendars" link in the "Subscribed Calendars" box to declutter the calendar. All events scheduled for the week at the location selected will be displayed in color on the calendar. Reservations will also be displayed. Reservations will have gray time headers and a white time range box. For more information see the "Agenda, Month, and Week Views" section of the Calendar Views page in the Calendar Help.

Are you saying there are members in your stake who cannot see all events scheduled at a location using the procedure above? If they cannot, then there definitely is a problem somewhere. Note that events scheduled using the "No location" or "Other Location" option for "Location" will not be displayed using the above procedure.

OMGosh, I'm out of a job. Well actually, my job now is to train others, so that the entire stake is up to speed and everyone is using the e-calendar efficiently. Wow.

jdlessley wrote:Note that events scheduled using the "No location" or "Other Location" option for "Location" will not be displayed using the above procedure.

But in that situation, the building scheduler can't see it on the Reservation calendar either.