Access to New Youth Activities Planning Tool

I'm giving an overview of the youth activities planning tool (http://www.lds.org/youth/activities for those that aren't familiar with it) tomorrow in BYC and am trying to determine who has access to it. Is there anything official from the church on who has access and edit rights? I imagine youth leaders, quorum/class presidencies can edit, but I'm really wondering about general ward members being able to view it. Do adults need to have a youth or can anyone?

It's a great tool with a good emphasis on planning with a purpose... something that is sometimes lost in our ward. Lots of good ideas too. Will be great to see it put into action, but a little more direction from the development team would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Jordan

This is the first I've heard of it. It appears at minimum one must be a member of a ward as it does select your ward.

I can't tell how any activities link to the ward calendar, so I'm concerned that this might be creating a second, non-connected calendar.

russellhltn wrote:This is the first I've heard of it. It appears at minimum one must be a member of a ward as it does select your ward.

It appears to me that anyone in the ward can use the site. I was able to add and activity to the planner as well as review activities that are on the planner. Sadly our ward has not discovered it.

russellhltn wrote:I can't tell how any activities link to the ward calendar, so I'm concerned that this might be creating a second, non-connected calendar.

While it creates a separate planning calendar there is a link on the planning calendar page that takes you to the ward calendar so it can be added there.

russellhltn wrote:I can't tell how any activities link to the ward calendar, so I'm concerned that this might be creating a second, non-connected calendar.

From the testing I have done the youth planning activities tool is somewhat of a calendar and possibly could be used as that. Those activities planned for the youth can be added to the ward calendar after the youth activity event is 'planned' by clicking the "Add to Ward Calendar" button. Since I am a ward administrator I can't tell to whom or to what callings the "Add to Ward Calendar" button is available. I am guessing that those with calendar editor rights will have the button since the list of ward calendars were displayed after I clicked the button.

I didn't add more than two planning events using the planner tool but I did get an idea of how each event is displayed. The two events I created were not displayed in the same tabular format as the ward calendar but rather as multiple line display with the format:

[Event Title text]
"Date/Time;" Mmm dd, yyyy, t:tt (AM/PM)
"Submitted By;" [submitting user's name]
"Location:" [text]
"For:" [quorums and/or classes selected]
"Purpose:" [text]
"Description;" [text].

Each event for a month are displayed on the same page and separated by a line. To view events in another month a user selects the month/year to view on the "Schedule for:" bar.

I see the activities planning tool as a planning aid that links to, or publishes to, the ward calendar for the ward to see. The planning tool could be used as a stand alone calendar, but I don't think that is how it is intended to be used. It is intended as a planning tool in which all members of the ward can provide planning input. Those with calendar editor rights on the ward calendar would be the ones with 'approval' rights by submitting the planned activity to the ward calendar.

The important thing I noted about this site is that any member of the ward can submit an activity/event for the youth (at least my wife with general membership access rights could submit an event). The event can then be edited before publishing. I could not tell, with the limited testing I did, who can edit the activity/event after it is initially created. This could be the test ground for other methods for the general membership to suggest or submit events to be published to the ward calendar.

When transferring to the calender do you specify which one it goes to?

Yes. But I did not check to see if the event could be posted in more than one calendar. I also did not check to see if you would have to edit the ward calendar event to allocate resources. I cannot test the latter because my stake does not use the resources feature of Calendar.

I am part of the team that developed the youth activities planning tool. Let me see if I can answer a few of the questions in this thread

1. Anyone in the ward can view and add activities to the planner. This is to make it easier for the youth to be involved in the planning process

2. Anyone with Edit rights to a calendar will see thee "Add to Ward Calendar" button for each activity on the planner. If you do not have edit rights to a calendar, you will not see the button

3. Once you click on the "Add to Ward Calendar" button, a list of all of the calendars to which you have edit rights will appear. You can select one or multiple calendars and add the activity to the ward calendar on each of the calendars you selected

4. Unfortunately, there is no way to schedule resources through the planning tool To do so, you would have to edit the activity from the calendar, not from the youth activities planner.

5. There is a stake view of the planner for certain stake leaders (Stake Presidency, Stake Young Men's and Young Women's Presidencies, High Councilors, etc.) that allows stake leaders to view (read-only) the planners of all of the wards in their stake. They can also create stake level activities that will put the activity on the planner for every ward in their stake.

Obviously the planner will be used in many different ways, but the intended workflow was something like this:

Youth adds one or more activities to the planner -> Youth and youth leaders help finalize dates and assignments in the planner -> Youth leaders push the activity to the ward calendar when plans are finalized.

At that point, the youth leader can then use the planner to send reminder emails to the youth or their parents using some pre-built lists for your ward, or you can create custom lists specific to your account.

I hope that answers most if not all of your questions. If not, please comment.

jbhutch wrote:-> Youth leaders push the activity to the ward calendar when plans are finalized.

At that point, the youth leader can then use the planner to send reminder emails to the youth or their parents using some pre-built lists for your ward, or you can create custom lists specific to your account.

I hope that answers most if not all of your questions. If not, please comment.

I have to say that I'm leery of the planner becoming the default calendar for the youth. The Franklin Planner class I took in the 90's stressed that you shouldn't have multiple calendar systems - it just leads to problems. If the planner becomes a calendar, that means ward leaders have to look in two places for ward events. Youth events will not automatically book building resources leading to building conflicts. If an event is moved in one location, will it be moved in the other? What about event conflicts? Who is going to keep the two systems in sync?

The fact it can be used to send reminders just reinforces that concern.

I have no objection to it being used as a planner, but I'd prefer that it have no functionality that would encourage it's use as a calendar. Not unless it has tighter integration that assures that both act as one.

This make sense to use the functionality as currently planned. As young men and young women add to the planner, we do not want them in charge of scheduling buildings, that is a responsibility of auxiliary heads.

In this way, the youth may have edit rights to the youth calendars but only leaders schedule the use of church resources once all the plans are in place.

It isn't making two separate calendars.

darienrhoton wrote:It isn't making two separate calendars.

While that is how it is intended to work, I can see how the planner could be used as a calendar. Even after an event is pushed to the ward calendar the planning calendar still retains events for message reminders. I can see units using the planner as a separate calendar. Unless there is any obvious message or annotation that warns a user that the event must be pushed to the ward calendar to become 'official' there is real potential for the planner to be used as the youth calendar.

That said, rather than suggesting that calendar-related functionality be removed from the youth activities tool, we should instead be suggesting that the LDS.org Calendar adapt some of the useful features and thought that has gone into the youth activities tool. No need to step backwards.

sbradshaw wrote:That said, rather than suggesting that calendar-related functionality be removed from the youth activities tool ...

I re-read this thread several times and I did not see where anyone has made that recommendation. Rather there are concerns that the planner could be used as a separate calendar. Those ward members who are not calendar editors could see this site as a separate calendar and use it as such since they may not be aware of the ability to add the fully planned event to the ward calendar.

When something looks, feels, and functions like a calendar then it will be used as a calendar - unless it is clear that it is only a planner and should not be used as a calendar.

sbradshaw wrote:... we should instead be suggesting that the LDS.org Calendar adapt some of the useful features and thought that has gone into the youth activities tool.

I made such an observation in the last paragraph in this post.

Can we get access to the activity ideas in list format, for youth to look at in paper form?
Thanks

Has there been any more updates to the youth planner calendar, we are just now starting to find these tools.

We also are wanting to integrate the planner, but even our bishopric cannot find the button to add it to our ward calendar. Nor will the email lists for the different groups populate, we would have to manually create each group. Is this function no longer being supported with the newest technology or is there something we are missing here? I never even heard of the planner until just now and I have been in YW for 4 years. It would be a great addition if we could connect it to the ward calendar and email groups easily.

AthenaLee wrote:We also are wanting to integrate the planner, but even our bishopric cannot find the button to add it to our ward calendar.

There is no connection. At one time, I thought there was a link to help copy an activity to a calendar that the user had edit rights to, but I'm not seeing it. The only calendar button became broken with the roll-out of Calendar 3.0.

Am I understanding correctly there is no integration between the youth planner tool and the ward calendar? If so, why? Is an integration planned?

I really like how helpful the youth planner tool is. However, if it's completely disconnected from the ward calendar, that feels like taking the engine out of a Ferrari.

As a workaround, is it possible to sync the youth planner with my personal calendar, like I can with the ward calendar?

I know when i started using this tool at the beginning of the year, I was able to add events and push them to the ward calendar! is there a reason that is now broken, and is there an ETA for fixing it? thank you!