Locations assigned to units

My understanding was that a unit could only schedule an event at a location if they were assigned to that locations under Settings>Rooms & Locations. I had a bishop who was able to schedule an event at the Stake Center even though his ward is not assigned to that location in Settings>Rooms & Locations. Is this function not working correctly or am I misunderstanding how it works?

When a stake administrator sets up the locations there is an option to allow the location to be scheduable. The option is titled "This location can be scheduled by Wards and Stakes". Checking this option is all or nothing. In other words, either all wards within the stake can schedule events at the location or none can schedule events. The location is not limited to any one ward or a group of wards but rather open to all wards within the stake.

If a location is to be exclusive to a ward then the building scheduler sets up a restriction for the entire year for the ward.

See "Managing Locations" for more information.

bjlast wrote:My understanding was that a unit could only schedule an event at a location if they were assigned to that locations under Settings>Rooms & Locations.

Where did you get this understanding?

bjlast wrote:I had a bishop who was able to schedule an event at the Stake Center even though his ward is not assigned to that location in Settings>Rooms & Locations.

Perfectly acceptable to do by anyone who has editor rights. I think its a rather nice function to be able to do after all the buildings are there for all to use not just the wards who are assigned to meet in the building.

bjlast wrote:Is this function not working correctly or am I misunderstanding how it works?

I think you are just misunderstanding how it works. I would suggest you review the calendar helps.

bjlast wrote:My understanding was that a unit could only schedule an event at a location if they were assigned to that locations under Settings>Rooms & Locations.

That's what many of us thought at first. After all, why else would you assign units to a location? But it doesn't work that way.

Assigning a unit within the stake to a location does only one thing: it allows a building scheduler to set up restrictions for that location that involve that unit. As has been mentioned before, scheduling events is open to all units in the stake.

It's not relevant to this topic, but just to be complete I would note that assigning a unit from outside the stake to a location has the additional function of making that location visible to and schedulable by members of that outside unit.

Those are the only effects of assigning a unit to a location.

The reason I was under the impression that you could only schedule events at buildings that you were assigned to is because of this statement made on page 57 of the LDS Calendar How To Guide as well as in the online Calendar Help under the topic "Event Scheduling."

5. In the Where column, do the following:
a. Select the location where the event takes place. You can
schedule events only at locations your unit has rights to
schedule.

This statements seems to be a little misleading. At first I thought this was referring to Reservations. But Reservations don't restrict who can schedule events solely based on location, but rather on blocks of time at a location. Is it referring to the fact that locations can be restricted to all units by not checking the box that says "This location can be scheduled by Wards and Stakes" when the location is setup? If that is the case does the location even show up on the list of locations at all? It just seems that this statement is a little misleading and could use some clarification in the Help documentation. I see that I am not the only one who has had this misunderstanding. I have been telling the people in my stake who I have been training the wrong thing regarding this topic. Now I will correct that.

bjlast wrote:At first I thought this was referring to Reservations. But Reservations don't restrict who can schedule events solely based on location, but rather on blocks of time at a location.

That's correct. It doesn't mention reservations, and I don't think it implies reservations. That statement has nothing to do with reservations.

bjlast wrote:Is it referring to the fact that locations can be restricted to all units by not checking the box that says "This location can be scheduled by Wards and Stakes" when the location is setup? If that is the case does the location even show up on the list of locations at all?

Possibly. But you're right that a location that is not enabled for scheduling will not appear in the dropdown list of possible locations when you are creating an event.

You haven't mentioned one additional thing it could be referring to: if a ward uses a building that doesn't belong to its stake, then the agent stake can assign that ward to that location, and then the ward will have rights to schedule that location.

I think the statement is referring to the totality of the situations that control whether a unit can schedule events at a location. I don't think it's helpful to try to pick only one meaning for it.

bjlast wrote:It just seems that this statement is a little misleading and could use some clarification in the Help documentation.

I'm having a hard time seeing what is misleading. The statement is 100% accurate. You can indeed only schedule events at locations your unit has rights to schedule. I'll agree that it could be helpful to add an explanation about what it means to have "rights to schedule," but there's nothing wrong about the statement itself.

bjlast wrote:I see that I am not the only one who has had this misunderstanding. I have been telling the people in my stake who I have been training the wrong thing regarding this topic. Now I will correct that.

The documentation is very clear that assigning a unit to a location is done for the purpose of allowing reservations. You can read that in the "Specify Locations Units Can Reserve" section of the Managing Locations topic.