SUGGESTION: Individual Events Visible to Particular People

I'm new to this forum, so perhaps this idea has been bounced around before, but I think it would be really nice to be able to customize individual events so that they are visible only to certain individuals or callings.

Right now, our ward has 11 calendars, the stake has 10, and we have 1 church-wide calendar. It is really cumbersome to manage subscriptions and to know which calendar to use, and are ward is just getting started (might need to create many more calendars to reflect all the different organizations , etc.).

What if, instead of having separate calendars, each even could be customized to be visible or applicable to specific organizations, individuals, and/or callings. I could create an event for bishopric meeting that is visible to those who attend, a separate one for PEC, and another for Ward Council (without having to create separate calendars with access rights for each of those groups). It would be a bit of a paradigm shift for this program, but it would be a lot more useful and user-friendly in my estimation.

I think it would be management nightmare. One generally tries to manage things as groups, not as individuals.

Under your suggestion, you'd have complaints about people who can see one thing on a calendar but not another. You'd be constantly be looking at each individual event to make sure it's visibility settings have been set correctly.

I agree that it makes sense to manage things as groups. But why are we duplicating all of the groups that are already an inherent part of a particular individual's calling or membership?

Imagine someone logging into the calendar for the first time and immediately seeing pertinent events based on their ward & stake membership, age & genger (quorum or class membership), household, and calling(s), etc.

I don't know that I am explaining very well what I am envisioning, but I don't see a management nightmare, I see much more simple management and a more intuitive experience for users. Currently, if someone adds an event that a certain group of people needs to see, before even creating the event he has to make sure a calendar is set up with access rights for that group, and that those users are subscribed to that calendar. Then he creates the event and selects that calendar. What I'm suggesting would just be to select the group (rather than the calendar) to view the event at the event level. Perhaps the new event page could include a list of checkboxes for visibility: [ ] whole ward, [ ] bishopric, [ ] young men, [ ] young women, etc. with the option to add specific members or callings.

I'm suggesting deleting an unnecessary layer of complexity. It would take some work for the engineers to code and integrate with other systems, but it is clear that we have some very savvy computer programmers working and volunteering for the church.

danielneeley wrote:I'm new to this forum, so perhaps this idea has been bounced around before, but I think it would be really nice to be able to customize individual events so that they are visible only to certain individuals or callings.

Right now, our ward has 11 calendars, the stake has 10, and we have 1 church-wide calendar. It is really cumbersome to manage subscriptions and to know which calendar to use, and are ward is just getting started (might need to create many more calendars to reflect all the different organizations , etc.).

Management of the calendars, which ones to create and what to call them, should be carefully considered. Too many calendars creates problems as does too few calendars. There are many threads discussing the strategies of what calendars to create and what to name them.

With the exception of private calendars the decision of what calendars and therefore what events are displayed to a user is left to the user to decide through subscriptions and then through the selection of subscribed calendars to be displayed on the main calendar page.

Outside private calendard events, I don't think an event creator should decide whether I can view an event soley based on my calling, position, organization membership, or group membership. How can the event creator know what I personally need to see or not see? If I should not see it then it should be private. That capability is currently implemented in the calendar system.

danielneeley wrote:What if, instead of having separate calendars, each even could be customized to be visible or applicable to specific organizations, individuals, and/or callings.

I think this unnecessarily limits who can view an event. This becomes exclusionary and takes away the ability of users to see what is happening in their ward or stake. The users need to decide what events they want to know about rather than the event creator. When events need to be exclusive or include only a specific group of people then a private calendar is appropriate.

Considering the groups and organizations when creating and naming calendars satifies targeting specific organizations, individuals, and callings.

danielneeley wrote:What I'm suggesting would just be to select the group (rather than the calendar) to view the event at the event level. Perhaps the new event page could include a list of checkboxes for visibility: [ ] whole ward, [ ] bishopric, [ ] young men, [ ] young women, etc. with the option to add specific members or callings.

The problem with this suggestion is that it breaks the current model of distributed scheduling, where organization leaders (or anyone specifically designated) have permission to add/update events on their assigned calendar, but not the calendars of other organizations.

Also, calendars are not connected directly to a particular group of people; they get to subscribe to whatever calendars they want. For example, the wife of an elder might want to subscribe to the elder's quorum calendar; the father of a deacon might subscribe to the deacon's quorum calendar; etc. For that matter, a grumpy old high priest like me might choose to unsubscribe from the high priests' calendar.

But if you eliminate the concept of separate calendars, you take away the ability to manage editor rights and subscriptions on a calendar basis. I could see that it has the potential to provide a nicer initial experience for new users, but I think it would make management much less flexible.

danielneeley wrote:Imagine someone logging into the calendar for the first time and immediately seeing pertinent events based on their ward & stake membership, age & genger (quorum or class membership), household, and calling(s), etc.

As aebrown point out, the problem with that is deciding what is and is not pertinent to each individual's situation. As it stands now, each member decides for themselves.

It would be nice if calendars defaulted that way on move-in, but that's going to take considerable programming effort that's not likely to happen any time soon.

danielneeley wrote:I agree that it makes sense to manage things as groups. But why are we duplicating all of the groups that are already an inherent part of a particular individual's calling or membership?

This sounds very narrowly focused and assumes only those with callings or membership in an organization or group have a need know or want to know what is going on in that organization or group.

danielneeley wrote:Imagine someone logging into the calendar for the first time and immediately seeing pertinent events based on their ward & stake membership, age & genger (quorum or class membership), household, and calling(s), etc.

Also imagine someone new to the ward and logging on to the calendar for the first time and not being able to see an event because they do not have a calling or because they do not belong to the organization or group. One such example would be a husband who wants to plan his schedule to support his wife's Relief Society activities and events participation. Because he is not a member of RS he does not see any RS events. That choice to see those RS events was taken away from him by the person who created the event and only allowed the RS sisters to see the event. I know under your model the event creator can include the husband by selecting "entire ward". But is every event creator going to know who really needs or wants to see an event? I really doubt it.

danielneeley wrote:I don't see a management nightmare, I see much more simple management and a more intuitive experience for users.

Intuitive for whom? I see event creators worrying they may have inadvertently left out someone or some group of people when they unilaterally decided who needs to see an event. What about the backlash from those who have a valid reason to see the event but are left out from being able to see the event?

danielneeley wrote:Currently, if someone adds an event that a certain group of people needs to see, before even creating the event he has to make sure a calendar is set up with access rights for that group, and that those users are subscribed to that calendar. Then he creates the event and selects that calendar.

This description shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works. The administrators play a key role in deciding what calendars are needed for the ward and then either create them or approve/disapprove those submitted. A ward council is the best source to work out the calendars needed to support the ward. Once those calendars are in place and the editors for those calendars established, most every event should be able to be put on one or more of those calendars.

An event creator does not have to concern himself/hershelf with access rights to a calendar, unless it is a private calendar, because there are no access rights for calendars. Users can view any public calendar.

Event creators should not be concerning themselves with who has subscribed to a particular calendar. If someone who should see an event in a particular calendar and they have chosen not to subscribe to that calendar then that choice or decision is theirs.

danielneeley wrote:What I'm suggesting would just be to select the group (rather than the calendar) to view the event at the event level.

That is what is done when an event is placed on a particular calendar. If the event is for the RS then the event is placed on the RS calendar. But unlike having only those directly associated with RS viewing the event, all who have a need to view it, or want to view it, can.

danielneeley wrote:I'm suggesting deleting an unnecessary layer of complexity.

This sounds like added complexity and discrimination.

jdlessley wrote:Management of the calendars, which ones to create and what to call them, should be carefully considered. Too many calendars creates problems as does too few calendars. There are many threads discussing the strategies of what calendars to create and what to name them.

Can you point me to some of these threads? This is a conversation we need to be having in our unit.

jdlessley wrote:I think this unnecessarily limits who can view an event. This becomes exclusionary and takes away the ability of users to see what is happening in their ward or stake. The users need to decide what events they want to know about rather than the event creator. When events need to be exclusive or include only a specific group of people then a private calendar is appropriate.

Yeah, that is a good point. Perhaps events the visibility (public or private) could be separate from those who are invited to the specific event. Perhaps events to which the calendar user is specifically invited could be highlighted in some way.

aebrown wrote:Also, calendars are not connected directly to a particular group of people; they get to subscribe to whatever calendars they want. For example, the wife of an elder might want to subscribe to the elder's quorum calendar; the father of a deacon might subscribe to the deacon's quorum calendar; etc. For that matter, a grumpy old high priest like me might choose to unsubscribe from the high priests' calendar.

Yes, and this is probably an important feature of the calendar as it is currently implemented. Perhaps members of the same household could view each other's calendar events. It may be useful to be able to restrict completely unrelated members of the ward from viewing the primary or activity days calendar.

aebrown wrote:But if you eliminate the concept of separate calendars, you take away the ability to manage editor rights and subscriptions on a calendar basis. I could see that it has the potential to provide a nicer initial experience for new users, but I think it would make management much less flexible.

Unless those calendar editor and administrator rights were just ported over to who could create events and who they could invite to events.

Thanks for all of your replies and comments. As I mentioned earlier, I'm new to this forum (and to helping with the calendars). I can see it will be very helpful in understanding how others have approached various issues. The church has provided some very powerful tools to help us minister to individuals and serve in our respective callings.

danielneeley wrote:

jdlessley wrote:There are many threads discussing the strategies of what calendars to create and what to name them.

Can you point me to some of these threads? This is a conversation we need to be having in our unit.

I would suggest that you might wish to start with the actual Calendar Help pages. You can get there from the Gear drop down menu near the top right of the Calendar itself. (Or, you guessed it, the link in the last sentence.)

I found this to be the best way to understand the concept of the layered calendar system now being used. It is a total shift from the former practice of a building scheduler managing the entire calendar. The new calendar does not work that way at all.

After that (or if you have a specific question right now), if you will click on the Calendar link in the breadcrumb trail at the top of this page, you will see that there are over 1,000 topics that have been created to discuss the Calendar. Many of them are well titled, and you will notice threads of interest to you.

And finally, the Search bar (right above the breadcrumb trail at the top right, works really well with this new forum software.

I am not trying to dodge your request. I just don't really know where to point you at this point. And it would be a bit problematic just to read all the topics, even if you had a few uninterrupted weeks to do it. [grin]

I have found the best way to think of the calendar is that an individual has "ONE" calendar made up of different organizational layers. For instance in my ward there are 21 different organizational layers, one layer for each organization. As the organizations place events on their organizational layer my individual calendar is made based on the organizational layers I have subscribed too.