Building scheduler can't change location

On the new calendar, the building scheduler is missing an important permission. When an event is scheduled for his building, if he discovers that the wrong resources were reserved, he can change those resources. For example, he can change it from "entire location" to "Primary Room".

But it may be that the event should not have reserved the building at all. In that case, the correct action is to change the location to "Other Location". But when a building scheduler tries to do that, he is told that he does not have permission to edit the calendar. That doesn't work. Although I can understand that a building scheduler would not have rights to deal with buildings other than his own, he should be able to choose "Other Location" to completely free up his building. That seems particularly obvious, since the scheduler has power to completely delete the offending event.

We have just such a situation in our stake right now. As it is, the only option is to pick some other resource within the location that you hope might not be needed or to delete the event. The first option is a hack, and the second is far too drastic.

Am I missing something?

aebrown wrote:For example, he can change it from "entire location" to "Primary Room".

Have you found this is a common problem, and you have to do this often to fix scheduling mistakes others have made?

When saving an event and selecting a resource, (not "other location"):
Having "entire location" as the calendar app's default selection, as it is now, would seem to lead to mistakes of reserving the entire location when an editor didn't understand he could make other choices, or didn't remember to uncheck the default and further select an individual resource.

This could be corrected by reversing the default offered by the calendar. By having the box "use entire location" unchecked by default, and open up the "resources available" box (primary room, etc,) it would force each user to make a decision before saving-because having no boxes checked is not allowed and an error message directs you to chose a resource.

A user would then either decide consciously to use the entire location, or they would select from the boxes they could see, and it would be far more obvious that there are additional options, and the process more self-explanatory.

Adding a help botton next to each option that pulls up a "help" balloon to explain wouldn't hurt!

kisaac wrote:Have you found this is a common problem, and you have to do this often to fix scheduling mistakes others have made?

It's not rare. I'd say it's happened about 10 times.

I agree that the "Use entire location" being the default is a big part of the problem. But the other point of confusion is that some people don't realize that they are actually making a reservation. In their minds, they're simply saying where the event is happening. In most cases, that requires a reservation, but not always.

A recent example is a group of RS sisters going to the temple. They were meeting in the stake center parking lot at 10:00am. The person who scheduled the event seems to have thought to himself, "They are meeting at the stake center, so the location must be 'Stake Center.'" So he picked the Stake Center as the location on the event. Now what's the next step? The event doesn't require the entire resource but it doesn't really matter, since they don't need to reserve anything. So he just ignored the resource part of the scheduling and saved it -- not realizing, of course, that he had just reserved the entire stake center.

But even if he had realized that he would be reserving a resource, what should he have done? If he had unchecked the "Use entire location" checkbox, he then would have been faced with a list of resources. But there is no "Parking lot" resource, so there is no good choice for this event. And if you don't select any resource, you can't save the event. The correct course of action where no reservation is required is to choose "Other location" and then in the Location Details field enter something like "Stake Center parking lot." But that is not at all obvious, when you are faced with a dropdown that says "Other location", "Stake Center", "Building B", "Building C". You know it's at the stake center, so it seems like lying to say it at "Other location" just because you don't want to make a reservation.

aebrown wrote:It's not rare. I'd say it's happened about 10 times.
...But the other point of confusion is that some people don't realize that they are actually making a reservation. In their minds, they're simply saying where the event is happening.

kisaac wrote: Adding a help button next to each option that pulls up a "help" balloon to explain wouldn't hurt!

We've had two events where different users thought they were submitting an event to a building scheduler to reserve resources for private events, so they clicked "send an email" as they were saving, thinking it would send the email to the building scheduler. In fact, they were actually adding the event to public ward calendars and ended up sending emails to all subscribed (most of the ward.)

Part of this is training and trial and error experience with a radically new concept for reserving the buildings, and this will get better. Part of the problem could really be helped by a re-design of the dialog and options on the resource scheduling fields, and help buttons right on the form next to each field to explain it.

For these kinds of events I use a resource titled "None: For Information Only." That way it can still be assigned to a building, but not tie up an actual resource. This also works when we have combined, multi-ward events (ie cub scouts) where one ward has added the event to their calendar and reserved the resource, but the second ward still needs the event to show up on THEIR calendar at the correct location.

Preston

For these kinds of events I use a resource titled "None: For Information Only." That way it can still be assigned to a building, but not tie up an actual resource. This also works when we have combined, multi-ward events (ie cub scouts) where one ward has added the event to their calendar and reserved the resource, but the second ward still needs the event to show up on THEIR calendar at the correct location.

It would be nice to have the capability to add an event to more than one calendar, even to more than one ward's calendar. Perhaps this could be allowed for building schedulers?

Preston

preston.baxter wrote:For these kinds of events I use a resource titled "None: For Information Only." That way it can still be assigned to a building, but not tie up an actual resource.

That suggestion could help in many cases. Of course, it's still a resource, as far as the system is concerned. So if you have two events that are at the same time that don't use a resource that you try to schedule this way, you'll get a conflict on the "For Information Only" resource.