Restrict events from being scheduled in a different building

In our stake, we have encountered an issue between buildings. For example, the Stake Relief Society schedules a stake-wide event months in advance in the Stake Center. All sisters are invited to attend. Then a ward, without being aware of the upcoming event in the Stake Center, schedules a ward party event at the same time in a different building. The calendar allows it because the events do not conflict in the same rooms. However, when the Stake event starts being promoted in the wards, the conflict may or may not be noticed until it is too late.

Is there any way to indicate conflicts in other buildings when the intending participants are going to be the same? I am fully aware of being able to see all scheduled events for all building using the Week View. It's like trying to pull teeth to get the members of our stake understand that. Most of them will still just schedule an event without switching to the Week View so I need to try and figure something out with that reality.

I remember that happening to my wife, the FHC director, several years ago. She had scheduled a Family History Day at the stake center many months prior. It was on the stake calendar. About a month before the event, our ward joined with the two other wards in our meetinghouse to plan a Relief Society Super Saturday or whatever on the same date. My wife was crushed.

Last month, we had a child-of-record baptism on Saturday. It was announced over the pulpit the previous Sunday. The mother posted a message about it on her Facebook, and the wife of our recently-released bishop asked for the date and time, since she and her husband had been out of town. When I saw them at the baptism, she said, "Thank goodness for Facebook!" I replied, "It's so nice that we have a ward calendar, a ward newsletter, ... Oh wait, our ward doesn't use ANY of those!"

I am tried of fighting. I have lost confidence that anyone in my stake bothers to look at any calendar, newsletter, lesson schedules, etc. People are still using bulletin boards and Sacrament Meeting bulletins to know which events are planned.

whiteheadka wrote:Is there any way to indicate conflicts in other buildings when the intending participants are going to be the same?

No. It's up to the person scheduling to be aware of other events.

In your example, the event is on the stake calendar (presumably public), so there's no issue with not having access to the information, but they must be subscribed to that calendar to see it. That can be an issue if the party was scheduled by a Priesthood holder as he probably isn't subscribed to the Stake Relief Society calendar.

It would take a major overhaul of the system to have "target audience" conflict checking. Currently things like "Stake Relief Society" is just a name for a calendar and the system has no understanding that a "Ward General Events" calendar would include some of the same people but "Ward YM" would not.

Its all about communication. Just placing an event on the calendar has not ever been and will not ever be enough. One must also get the information out to the membership. This can be do by sending flyers to wards to be posted on bulliton boards, placing information in the stake news letters, as well as providing the information to the organizational leaders at all levels.

For example in the OP case if the Stake RS President had sent the information to the Ward RS Presidents then when the Ward Party came up in Ward Council. The ward RS President would have been able to redirect the ward party to a different date.

Also its important for ward and stake councils to look at stake/ward activities a scheduling other activities to ensure that there is no major conflicts.

Its all about communication. While technical devices and programs are a good things to have they are only as good as those who use them.

Gary_Miller wrote:Its all about communication. Just placing an event on the calendar has not ever been and will not ever be enough.

The calendar system was designed to communicate and to help minimize the effort spent on the routine task of synchronizing paper calendars. It really shouldn't have to fall on the Stake RS to send out information until they wanted to promote the event.

What's needed is a easy way to view everything without having to reset one's subscription feed. This has been requested before.