Calendaring: Sorry, the data service has failed. Please cont

I am the stake clerk and was called by a building scheduler for assistance regarding creating a reservation. Neither he or I can reserve a room (any room) in the building in question. I get the message - "Sorry, the data service has failed. Please contact support" when I try to schedule any room.

Once I click OK. I get the spinning wheel, which spins as long as I let it (ie.close the window, hit the back button ...) I've tried to schedule the room using both Chrome and Firefox and have the same issue with either browser. Any suggestions?

I would call Local Unit Support. They have a catagory for "lds.org issues" in the phone menu.

Called them and they said not there was not much they could do for me and suggested posting something here i.e. your cause is just but there is nothing I can do for you.

I also tried creating a reservation for another building same issue, and tried IE and had the same issue. I would call this a severe issue for our stake as there is no work around other than to go manual.

I tried the Stake Center and I could schedule it. That means we cannot schedule 2 out of 3 buildings in the stake.

mannrw wrote:I would call this a severe issue for our stake as there is no work around other than to go manual.

Although I certainly don't want to minimize the severity of the problem, I'm wondering why a problem with creating reservations would prevent you from doing your day-to-day scheduling work. If you feel the need to modify reservations frequently, chances are that you are using reservations when you should be using events to actually book the building (rather than reservations, which only restrict which units can create events for a location/room at a particular date/time).

I haven't touched any of our stake's reservations in over 4 months. I change events frequently, but for the most part, we put reservations in place and don't need to change them. If only there weren't a 2-year limitation on the extent of repeating reservations, we could probably go multiple years without touching our reservations.

Just noticed something else. When I go to Calendar Locations & Rooms - Highland Utah East Stake and look at the stake center I can see the option to "Edit" and "View Reservations" at the top of the middle panel. However, for the other two building I see only "Edit". I wonder if the missing "View Reservations" is a symptom of the underlying problem.

aebrown,

Good point. We use the reservations for the stake center frequently (a few times a month) to add wedding receptions, firesides, blood drives, funerals and other one time events ... . However, some of these events (e.g. wedding receptions, weddings, family events) don't really belong on a stake or ward calendar as an event and so are best scheduled using the reservation feature.

I can reserve the building using the stake or ward calendar for the two buildings I cannot do it using the add reservation feature but this does not fully resolve the problem.

mannrw wrote:Just noticed something else. When I go to Calendar Locations & Rooms - Highland Utah East Stake and look at the stake center I can see the option to "Edit" and "View Reservations" at the top of the middle panel. However, for the other two building I see only "Edit". I wonder if the missing "View Reservations" is a symptom of the underlying problem.

The fact that you can't see "View Reservations" for a particular location should be an indication that you have not been assigned as a building scheduler for that location. If you are indeed a building scheduler for that location, then I would tend to agree that the absence of "View Reservations" for that location is quite odd and might be a clue to the underlying problem.

mannrw wrote:We use the reservations for the stake center frequently (a few times a month) to add wedding receptions, firesides, blood drives, funerals and other one time events ... . However, some of these events (e.g. wedding receptions, weddings, family events) don't really belong on a stake or ward calendar as an event and so are best scheduled using the reservation feature.

No, such events are most definitely not best scheduled using the reservation feature. They should be scheduled as actual events on some actual calendar. A private calendar would be a good choice. And several of the events you mentioned (firesides, blood drives, and funerals) should certainly be on a public calendar; it's irrelevant if they are one-time events -- they should be visible to the members.

If you use the reservations feature instead of actual events, you run multiple risks. One huge and fairly likely risk is that another building scheduler (it seems clear to me that you have at least two in your stake -- yourself and someone else you have referred to with the title of "building scheduler") could inadvertently schedule a new event (or move an existing event) on top of the reservation. Building schedulers have the power to do that, and don't even get warned that they did it. With actual events, inadvertently moving an event on top of an event for the same room is impossible.

mannrw wrote:However, some of these events (e.g. wedding receptions, weddings, family events) don't really belong on a stake or ward calendar as an event and so are best scheduled using the reservation feature.

We place these type events on a private calendar at the ward level, the ward clerks are the point of contact for these.