LockedRetiring calendar restrictions

Calendar “restrictions” have always been a source of confusion in the calendar system. They are helpful for the few users that really know how to use them, but very disruptive to a vast number of those who don’t understand them but use them anyway. Over the years we have tried various approaches to increase understanding and get them used right. It has been decided to remove this feature from the calendar and instead have units sharing buildings work out their agreements for exclusive nights through coordination and not enforce it in the calendar system. The building scheduler should be aware of the agreements and can monitor and resolve exceptions.

We plan to remove the ability to create new restrictions in the next few weeks and then give a few months before we delete any existing ones in the system. We are will probably be notifying all building schedulers about this change.

We welcome feedback on this change.

Dave Crockett – calendar product manager

CrockettDR wrote:We welcome feedback on this change.

Wow.

Out of curiosity, what's been the calendar adoption rate among units? From being here in the forum, the whole idea of allowing "anyone" to schedule a building sounds chaotic, not outright frightening to some units. In my stake, the SP still wants people to schedule the stake center though the Executive Secretary. Eliminating restrictions is likely to feed this fear. (I'm not saying the fear is rational, I'm just saying it's there and affects the decision to use the calendar.)

For a time, we did have a problem of people not understanding restrictions and complain of "double-booking" but I can't remember any posts like that for several months now - probably not since the beginning of the year.

OTOH, perhaps this will spur some units in my stake to actually use the calendar. I think they've been relying on the restrictions to protect their events. Now, if they don't schedule things, it will appear the building it open for another unit to use. On the downside, I can already see the conflict: Two units show up at the same time. One unit saying they scheduled it, while the other says there's a "gentleman's agreement" (not documented anywhere in lds.org) that says they shouldn't have scheduled their event.

Adoption by units has been good, about 79% in North America, up from 61% a year ago. Other countries slower, at 23% up from 11% a year ago. International use being slow is expected because we didn't have the help articles translated until this year and we still have some localization issues (date/time formats). The way your stake is operating, is definitely an outlier, but we do here from a few stake presidents who want tighter control on who can schedule, but they are few. As you know in the UI we put in warnings about using restrictions and the usage has gone down this past year. In the help articles we also put in warnings and mentioned that they could go away in the future. There are about 350 stakes that are using restrictions. About 25% of the retrictions are "blocked" restrictions, blocking all units. Those can simply be turned into building events which we will change automatically. My stake was using restrictions in one building, a repeating restriction, but the new building scheduler had no idea it was there and it was stopping people from scheduling.

When a "feature" feels like a bug, good on you for getting rid of it.

I had a situation where one of the wards in our building was having Ward Conference on a Sunday so someone from the Stake put it on the calendar and reserved the whole building for that whole Sunday. So that meant that our ward's Bishop's office was technically unavailable for a PEC or Ward Council meeting I was trying to put on the calendar. Of course, it was a misunderstanding by the person from the Stake who was trying to set up the event on the calendar. And, of course, just because the calendar said we couldn't use the Bishop's office didn't mean that we couldn't really use the Bishop's office.

It seems to me that people trying to schedule an event would notice a competing event at the same time and location, whether or not the calendar software slapped their wrists and said, "Hey! You can't have that room!"

My stake uses restrictions for exactly what they were intended for. Every building in our stake has three wards, and there are long-standing rules as to who gets to use the building (particularly the cultural hall) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The restrictions enforce those rules, and it has been working very smoothly ever since we set up those restrictions. I have no idea just how many times someone tried to schedule a building that their ward was restricted from using, but I certainly heard about several and was able to educate people as to what the rules were. I'm sure that such attempts were thwarted many more times than I heard about.

I know there have been some problems with people using restrictions for other purposes, and some people don't understand them (it is indeed a somewhat complex concept). But I really don't like the decision to simply remove a very useful feature. I don't share your faith that it will work out well to "have units sharing buildings work out their agreements for exclusive nights through coordination and not enforce it in the calendar system." There is a lot of turnover in callings, and I think you are far too optimistic if you think that everyone with scheduling permissions will understand those details. Once restrictions are removed, I think it will be quite common for people to schedule events on days they have no right to schedule. There is no notification that that happened until someone in the correct ward tries to add an event. At that point, the ward that incorrectly scheduled the event may have plans that are difficult to change.

I'm curious how you came up with the numbers that would justify your statement "They are helpful for the few users that really know how to use them, but very disruptive to a vast number of those who don’t understand them but use them anyway." Really? There are only a "few users" that use restrictions properly? There are a "vast number" who don't? In a stake you really only need one or perhaps 3-4 people who understand how to implement the restrictions. Surely that can't be an insurmountable obstacle. Everyone else simply gets blocked if they try to schedule a building their ward is restricted from using.

gregwanderson wrote:I had a situation where one of the wards in our building was having Ward Conference on a Sunday so someone from the Stake put it on the calendar and reserved the whole building for that whole Sunday. So that meant that our ward's Bishop's office was technically unavailable for a PEC or Ward Council meeting I was trying to put on the calendar.

That certainly sounds like a problem where some training is needed. But that scenario has nothing to do with restrictions, so I don't see how it is germane to this discussion.

CrockettDR wrote:About 25% of the retrictions are "blocked" restrictions, blocking all units. Those can simply be turned into building events which we will change automatically. My stake was using restrictions in one building, a repeating restriction, but the new building scheduler had no idea it was there and it was stopping people from scheduling.

I agree that "Blocked" restrictions are of limited usefulness -- a real event is a much better choice. I have no problem at all with removing that aspect of the restrictions feature.

CrockettDR wrote:The building scheduler should be aware of the agreements and can monitor and resolve exceptions.

What tools will be added to aid the Building Scheduler in monitoring the situation? Currently, everything on the facility calendar is the same color. I don't see any way to monitor this short of opening each event. Worse, some units allow units to share a building, but place limits on what rooms they can use. For example. two units may share a night, but they get the cultural hall on alternating weeks. This would be quite hard to pro-actively monitor in the existing system. And they'd have the most need for this since the agreement is more complex and harder to track than "Tuesdays are yours".

I wonder if the solution is to rename the feature (yet again). Perhaps calling it "ward night". And perhaps removing it from the calendar main page and placing it in a different section that guides the user into creating a repeating "ward night". The idea being that it's something set up at the beginning of the year and largely left alone, as well as to make it look less like an event or a one-off scheduling solution. Perhaps make it always a repeating schedule (which can be set to repeat zero times).

Edit: I think one significant issues with the current restrictions is it behaves too much like an event. If you do set up "ward night" at the beginning of the year, it's difficult to grant exceptions. I'm thinking a UI change that better supports the ward night usage would take care of the confusion. Along with that is a change in the message from conflicts to better communicate the requested event is in conflict with "ward night" and not another event.

I agree with russellhltn that restrictions behave too much like events, so as they are I think it's good to remove them. However, one way this feature could be replaced would be to allow the stake schedulers to put a text note above or under the calendar that they can list, for example, which nights are assigned to which wards. So, just text above or below the calendar that doesn't enforce, but does inform.

I've been trying to think of a better name for this function. I'd suggest "Scheduling Template", with a UI that encourages setting things up for the whole year and making it easy to add one-off exceptions. And when someone schedules something that goes against the template, they'd be told it doesn't fit the template and to either reschedule or ask for an exception.

And when you select to display a facility calendar, the background is grayed out for times not allowed by the template.

aebrown wrote: But that scenario has nothing to do with restrictions, so I don't see how it is germane to this discussion.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Please delete my post.

aebrown wrote:I know there have been some problems with people using restrictions for other purposes, and some people don't understand them (it is indeed a somewhat complex concept). But I really don't like the decision to simply remove a very useful feature. I don't share your faith that it will work out well to "have units sharing buildings work out their agreements for exclusive nights through coordination and not enforce it in the calendar system."

I agree with this feedback. We had issues in our stake center this last year where some ward organizations jumped the gun and starting grabbing nights before coordination between wards in the building had begun -- this caused havoc and frustration, so we've already put temporary restrictions in place to essentially block anyone from booking the building in 2017 until coordination for that year is complete. To top it off, we have two buildings that are shared between two stakes -- so, this is an inter-stake scheduling consideration for us. I think our building schedulers have been able to effectively use the restrictions, so I'd prefer the feature to remain -- if a stake is confused by this capability, they have the option to not use it.

One thought is to relegate the restriction option to a parameter in the calendar admin options -- it could be set to 'disabled' by default, with the option of the stake 'enabling' it.

ericb wrote:One thought is to relegate the restriction option to a parameter in the calendar admin options -- it could be set to 'disabled' by default, with the option of the stake 'enabling' it.

On a per-building basis. (Much like how rooms are done). I like that.

I like @russellhltn's calendar admin option idea. We have had problems in my ward with real double-scheduling, which is exactly what the restrictions are useful for preventing.

AdRiet wrote:We have had problems in my ward with real double-scheduling, which is exactly what the restrictions are useful for preventing.

You mean someone scheduling an event on another ward's night? Or just two events for the same time/place?

I am simply sad to see this feature go away. But then I am apparently one of the few who understand and use Restrictions. As such my ward has always laid out the year in advance and restricted the build and specific rooms assigned to us for the entire year. Our ward schedules events with no problem and we always get the call when another ward attempts to use our night. It is sweet. I've been called to the High Council and I have been assigned to schedule the Pavilion (currently associated with the Stake Center. It was easy to set up a restriction for the one resource and make it non-bookable, thus every attempt to schedule it was thwarted ... however, in this case I really think this should simply be opened up to first come first serve, I don't think the High Council needs to intervene in the scheduling of the Pavilion, let technology work for us. But, I will really miss the ability to preserve our ward's assigned times via the restriction ... it has worked so well for the past 5 years.

Please don't remove this feature. Though we have generally opened up the calendar to "anyone" to reserve the building, the restrictions are essential to let the calendar work mostly "hands-off". Perhaps you are just hearing the extreme cases of displeasure, but there are a number of us that use the restrictions correctly and they are working for us.

+1 on the plea to not remove. Our stake uses restrictions as they are intended and we see a great benefit to them.

Please, do not remove the restrictions feature. Perhaps rename (scheduling template) or a "building hold" or a "unit hold" ?

A feature shouldn't be removed because a training gap or lack of knowing how to use it prevents it from use or that it's confusing. The useful function this feature serves far outweighs past confusion. I really feel (and see in our wards and stake) that this is simply a training and understandning gap that people don't understand. Let's elevate peoples' skills and knowledge and move toward a better use of the product that has been developed and works quite well when people know how to use it. Don't 'punish' those who take the time to have people who understand and use the features ... it sounds a bit like reducing functionality to meet the lowest level of understanding rather than raising others up to a more trained level.

If the feature is destined to be removed, then going to back to an "assisted collobration model" where the various leaders, etc. can input events as they can in current state, but bookings/events are booked in limbo or tentative status until a stake or building scheduler 'validates' or accepts the bookings in their queue would be great. Basically - putting in an approval queue where there schedulers or admins act as the "human restrictions" .... takes away from what the features and current product are intending - which is less 'moderation' ..... but there is some need to have oversight and moderation .... my opinion Restrictions can do this - but people need to get to a level where they are trained to use it properly.
Restrictions currently are trying to give some segmented control or segmented moderated environment without having to have a human moderator at hte booking by booking level. This is good - but needs to be used and trained properly - otherwise, let's go back to the Schedulers actually just moderating calendar input via a queue.

I like previous comments about somehow shaping hte restrictions feature to be more "planning themed" ... so people see that they put in restrictions for youth nights, etc. in a template that populates the year, etc. .... that might make it more clear what/how they are intended to be used.

Again, please do not remove this feature.

I note ... that when I go to make a Restriction today, the warning message about "this feature is going away in July" has stopped showing up on the new calendar restriction screen .... I am hopeful this means it's being reconsidered and will be kept alive?

Again, more training and awareness can be had/made around this feature - it should stay. LIkely a training video or recorded webinar where someone actually explains how / what on restrictons and then how/what for booking actual events after that on the video may be more productive training than a PDF showing screenshots. This really is only an understanding gap that with modern tech media can be explained in a more clear way (i.e. likely video type training) and shoudl work just great.

Does the removal of the "warning" of feature removal mean that Restriction feature has hope of new or prolonged life?

Add my voice to those not wanting the feature to be removed. I believe we are using it properly and it keeps people from reserving the building on Activity Nights assigned to Wards.

An update on this. We have decided to not retire restrictions at this time. Thanks for the feedback. We have figured out a couple other things to do to avoid some of the current confusion.

That is great news! Onward and upward.

Hooray!

Great to hear

CrockettDR wrote:An update on this. We have decided to not retire restrictions at this time.

Ultimately, my belief is that simplifying the calendar from its present state WILL INCREASE its adoption....

I fully understand and have used restrictions, but in the hope of gaining "truer" adoption, I would PREFER to see a much simpler method in place to reserve Tuesdays for Ward A and Wednesdays for Ward B.

In some areas, they have already solved the complicated restriction issue.

WARD A makes a repeating event every Tuesday that runs the whole year titled "mutual", and WARD B makes a repeating event every Wednesday that runs the whole year titled "mutual." Problem solved. They each have effectively grabbed "their night."

This isn't true adoption....

I understand the fix for Activity Night. If you don't have the restriction, what do you do for Funerals, Wedding Receptions, Family Receptions, Closing off Cultural Hall for new floor, etc?

davidrichey wrote:If you don't have the restriction, what do you do for Funerals, Wedding Receptions, Family Receptions, Closing off Cultural Hall for new floor, etc?

Schedule an event. That's a far better solution.

There's things behind restrictions that can some back and bite you if you try to use restriction in place of an event.

I would and do greatly prefer restrictions rather than recurring events to schedule the building. The only one that really needs to understand restrictions is the building schedule and everybody else is limited when they try to schedule a restricted resource. This allows individual calendar event to schedule a portion of the building (i.e. the RS room or the Serving Room) and let others in the same ward know what the plan is.
I find the biggest limitation to adoption to be either the "I don't schedule" types that don't look at calendars or schedules OR that the people that find that the calendar is a bit hard to access, view and edit. Restrictions are a great part of the tool that I wish our entire stake used a bit better.

Yes, restrictions are staying for now. We are working on a new major release of the calendar. In the new version we will do a few things that make restrictions a little less confusing.

CrockettDR wrote:Yes, restrictions are staying for now. We are working on a new major release of the calendar. In the new version we will do a few things that make restrictions a little less confusing.

Awesome. Thanks for listening to feedback.

Yep, in this case, we really used forum input. Trying.....

Restrictions do get in the way when not properly configured. But I think the bigger problem is that there are just too darn many people allowed to procure rooms. We had a situation a few weeks ago where a ward relief society president scheduled the building for a relief society event on a calendar that apparently she could only see. I have very broad access/privileges to our calendar, and I could not see it. When I tried to over-book that event, I was prevented. I double checked that all calendars I had access to were visible (they were) yet I could not see any event scheduled for that day. As it turns out, that hidden rogue event was not authorized for the building on that night, but there was nothing we could do about it. Yet we, the building schedulers, took the heat for it for "double booking" and booking a non-stake event on a night "reserved" for stake events. If the time slot were truly reserved for stake events, then why was someone without a stake calling able to reserve it?

Rather than removing restrictions, why not instead refactor them in a way that they can be scoped by calling. For example, a ward building scheduler is the only one that can schedule ward events. A stake building scheduler (or Stake Executive Secretary) can only schedule stake and community events. Ward Building Schedulers (or Ward Executive Secretaries) are the only ones who can schedule funerals, ward baptisms, marriage ceremonies, etc. All of these events should be configurable to allow scoping to blocks of time with priority. So for example, blocks of time can be set aside for stake-level events. What's left is given to ward auxiliaries. What's left is given to the ward in general. Giving the local leaders the ability to configure the scoping allows for flexibility for building-specific/cultural differences.

So for example, if a ward executive secretary tries to schedule a wedding on Saturday morning, and that's reserved for stake baptisms, he will be told it's reserved for stake baptisms. But he should have an easy way to request an exception. Doing so should send a notification to every person authorized to schedule stake events, and any of those people should be able to easily authorize it.

This kind of permissions/scoping goes hand-in-hand with my scheduling request portal which I've described in a different post

blainesinsane wrote:We had a situation a few weeks ago where a ward relief society president scheduled the building for a relief society event on a calendar that apparently she could only see. I have very broad access/privileges to our calendar, and I could not see it. When I tried to over-book that event, I was prevented. I double checked that all calendars I had access to were visible (they were) yet I could not see any event scheduled for that day.

My guess would be that she scheduled the event before the restrictions where put in place. IIRC, restrictions will go overtop of "conflicting" events with no error messages. If you'd switch your calendar on lds.org to view "locations", then, as a building scheduler for that building, you'd be able to see the event. As a building scheduler, you'd then be able to modify it (assuming it was taking place in "your" building.) Note that location calendars do not appear anywhere outside of lds.org. So the LDS Tools app is not usable for that purpose.

Note, that expect for a handful of people at the stake level, no one can see all the event calendars in the stake. If this is a multi-stake building, it goes down hill rapidly. You have to use the location calendar.

blainesinsane wrote:Rather than removing restrictions, why not instead refactor them in a way that they can be scoped by calling.

Only the person who is set up in the calendar system as a building scheduler can place restrictions. Everyone else does events.

The rights to the calendars are set up by each unit, but generally stake calendars can only be access by those holding stake callings and ward calendars can only be accessed by those holding ward callings. So there is already a hierarchy by calling in place.

I totally understand the restrictions and feel like it is needed. The problem is a new person being called every single year and them not understand how this works. Now I'm told they are not to use restrictions so they are actually scheduling, which is also wrong on how to do this. If someone higher up would educate the stakes, that would be great! I don't have this calling any more, but it drives me nuts that it's a mess because of the lack of education on how to use the calendar. I realize the documentation is on lds.org and it's well written and understandable, but some people dismiss this information and go off of what someone else has said instead.

There are no longer plans to remove restrictions.