New Calendar: reserving resource for event setup/teardown

The new calendar system doesn't have a way to reserve time when creating an event for setup and cleanup, which means that the only way to make sure that a conflict isn't created is for all participants to create (up to) three events for every real event.

For example, if there's a "Meet your teacher" breakfast for the primary organization, the primary leaders will want to reserve the Kitchen and Cultural hall for at least 1/2 hour before the breakfast actually starts, but they don't want the setup time to show up on the calender, or else they'll have primary children getting there early and have to have someone ride herd on the kids.

Since the breakfast is scheduled to run for 1 hour only, and some parents will be returning to pick them up based on the ending time on the calendar, they don't want to allocate 1/2 hour of cleanup time in the actual event.

Although I can think of ways to handle this in a conceptual way, I'm not sure of the way to deal with this in an ical/vcal way, but the problem does exist.

BTW, we LOVE the calendar system. Even with the problem noted above, it's much nicer to deal with than the old system.

unixguy wrote:The new calendar system doesn't have a way to reserve time when creating an event for setup and cleanup, which means that the only way to make sure that a conflict isn't created is for all participants to create (up to) three events for every real event.

For example, if there's a "Meet your teacher" breakfast for the primary organization, the primary leaders will want to reserve the Kitchen and Cultural hall for at least 1/2 hour before the breakfast actually starts, but they don't want the setup time to show up on the calender, or else they'll have primary children getting there early and have to have someone ride herd on the kids.

The way I handle this requires only one extra event. I created a "Resource Only" calendar that is used for situations like this. No one needs to subscribe to this calendar except for the building scheduler and an administrator. On the Resource Only calendar I put the full time the building is reserved and include whatever specific resources are needed. On the event calendar I leave the location as "Other Location" and then specify the place in the location field so people know where to show up.

Alternatively, you could create a setup event and a cleanup event on the Resource Only calendar and schedule the event, including resource reservation, on the Primary calendar or whatever calendar is appropriate.

Didn't I read somewhere that a new feature dealing with this problem might be on the roadmap for the New Calendar application?

Yes, a Church employee answered something similar to this in another thread. I thought it was listed in the Local Unit Calendar Known Limitationspage. But it is not there, yet.

There's a section I added in the help a while ago that addresses this issue. See Allow Time for Setup and Takedown. The workaround I suggest is to just add another event for setup and another event for takedown. I think that if people were looking at a ward Christmas party calendar, and the event said Setup Time for Christmas party, not many would get confused. And if they did, wouldn't their arrival to help be welcomed? Alan's use of an additional Resource calendar is also a good option. I'll add a note about that alternative as well in that section.

What I have used is in the Event line put "XXX Funeral @ 11am" but I have the building scheduled starting from 9am, then in the Description I have other things like, "viewing starts @ 10am, Funeral service @ 11am, family luncheon @ 1pm etc ". then in the calendar it reads "9 XXX Funeral @ 11am"

aebrown wrote:The way I handle this requires only one extra event. I created a "Resource Only" calendar that is used for situations like this. No one needs to subscribe to this calendar except for the building scheduler and an administrator. On the Resource Only calendar I put the full time the building is reserved and include whatever specific resources are needed. On the event calendar I leave the location as "Other Location" and then specify the place in the location field so people know where to show up.

Alternatively, you could create a setup event and a cleanup event on the Resource Only calendar and schedule the event, including resource reservation, on the Primary calendar or whatever calendar is appropriate.

Thanks for the "work-around." I hadn't thought of it.

It seems your second option is more "transparent" for the membership, as it allows for the event to have the resource not only scheduled, but displayed, appropriately. In other words, using the second option, a ward member pulling up the event would see which area of your building the event is scheduled to take place in. For stake events this may be even more important as a stake event may happen in various ward buildings and "other resource" would not convey this. While probably not a big deal, using your first option, members would only see "other resource" as the location if they pulled it up on the calendar. Of course, the description should tell all of these details anyway....

We once had two "blue and gold banquets" held at exactly the same time in our building, but in different rooms, for two different cub packs, because of a scheduling conflict at another ward building. There was indeed mass confusion about what room "your" dinner was in!

unixguy wrote:The new calendar system doesn't have a way to reserve time when creating an event for setup and cleanup, which means that the only way to make sure that a conflict isn't created is for all participants to create (up to) three events for every real event.

Set-up sometimes is much longer than an hour before, and any upcoming "fix" needs to accommodate much longer set-ups to truly be a scheduling solution.

For example, a big event in the cultural hall may take all saturday morning for set-up, or a week-day morning funeral dinner is often set-up the night, or even the afternoon before, to take advantage of "helping hands" that are available then, but may not be available the usual "hour before" an event. aebrown's "resource only" calendar may be the interim fix here.

kisaac wrote:Set-up sometimes is much longer than an hour before, and any upcoming "fix" needs to accommodate much longer set-ups to truly be a scheduling solution.

For our annual Christmas concert, the setup is several days.

kisaac wrote:While probably not a big deal, using your first option, members would only see "other resource" as the location if they pulled it up on the calendar. Of course, the description should tell all of these details anyway....

Just to clarify, I was not talking about the "Description" field, but the "Location Details" field; that field is there specifically to tell people the details of the location. It's almost essential if the Location is set to "Other Location" but it is very helpful even if you have specified a meetinghouse location, including specific resources. For example, a baptismal service may reserve the Relief Society room, the baptismal font, and the Primary room (because it adjoins the font). It's not a good idea to assume that people can look at those three resources being checked off and know where to show up; specifying "Relief Society Room" in location details avoids confusion.

And in the scenario I was talking about, the Location Details could say "Stake Center Relief Society Room", even if the location was set to "Other Location" rather than "Stake Center". But either method can work -- that's why I mentioned two options.