Personal Calendars?

Members can create their own personal calendars in the new calendar site, and I am trying to figure out how this would be useful. Would it be any better than any other digital calendar such as a google calendar or iCal? Has anyone created their personal calendar?

zaneclark wrote:Members can create their own personal calendars in the new calendar site, and I am trying to figure out how this would be useful. Would it be any better than any other digital calendar such as a google calendar or iCal? Has anyone created their personal calendar?

Are you sure? I've never seen any such feature.

There is an option called "Create Calendar", but that does not create a personal calendar. That only submits a request for a new calendar, which then has to be approved by a calendar approver. I imagine that feature exists so that a leader could request a new calendar. For example, there might be a "Young Men" calendar, but a Young Men president wants to add a "Deacons" "Teachers" and "Priests" calendar, so he uses the Create Calendar feature to submit a request for those three calendars. But once such calendars are approved, they are just like any ward or stake calendar; they are not personal calendars.

Personally, I don't see how this feature is useful enough to justify the time that was spent creating it and the confusion it causes. It's relatively rare to create a new calendar, so it would have been just fine to allow only approvers to create calendars. Anyone who needs a new calendar can just communicate separately with an approver to make that request.

But if there is a personal calendar feature different from what I have described, please supply some details as to how one is created.

aebrown wrote:

zaneclark wrote:Members can create their own personal calendars in the new calendar site, and I am trying to figure out how this would be useful. Would it be any better than any other digital calendar such as a google calendar or iCal? Has anyone created their personal calendar?

Are you sure? I've never seen any such feature.

There is an option called "Create Calendar", but that does not create a personal calendar. That only submits a request for a new calendar, which then has to be approved by a calendar approver. I imagine that feature exists so that a leader could request a new calendar. For example, there might be a "Young Men" calendar, but a Young Men president wants to add a "Deacons" "Teachers" and "Priests" calendar, so he uses the Create Calendar feature to submit a request for those three calendars. But once such calendars are approved, they are just like any ward or stake calendar; they are not personal calendars.

I think zaneclark is referring to the private calendar feature. With a private calendar one can be the sole editor and viewer and thus making it their own personal calendar.

aebrown wrote:But if there is a personal calendar feature different from what I have described, please supply some details as to how one is created.

Select the "Make This Calendar Private" checkbox in the Viewers option and do not add any other editors or viewers.

jdlessley wrote:I think zaneclark is referring to the private calendar feature.

I'm very familiar with private calendars, but his initial statement "Members can create their own personal calendars" certainly doesn't sound like it could be referring to private calendars, since members can't create them. Only calendar approvers can create private calendars, and that's a very limited set of people. I guess we'll have to hear from Zane what he was referring to.

aebrown wrote:I'm very familiar with private calendars, but his initial statement "Members can create their own personal calendars" certainly doesn't sound like it could be referring to private calendars, since members can't create them. Only calendar approvers can create private calendars, and that's a very limited set of people. I guess we'll have to hear from Zane what he was referring to.

Can i plead senility? I had read about the private calendars, (obviously not carefully,) and somehow translated this to "personal." With all of your explanations, and after a CAREFUL reading in the help pages, I am backing out of this....

aebrown wrote:I'm very familiar with private calendars, but his initial statement "Members can create their own personal calendars" certainly doesn't sound like it could be referring to private calendars, since members can't create them. Only calendar approvers can create private calendars, and that's a very limited set of people. I guess we'll have to hear from Zane what he was referring to.

Members can create private calendars. My wife is not an approver and can create a private calendar.

jdlessley wrote:Members can create private calendars. My wife is not an approver and can create a private calendar.

But it still have to be approved before it is available to her (I just tested this with my wife's account). It creates the calendar but it is sitting in a pending state. I looked in my account and it was there waiting for me (ward clerk) to approve.

JonesRK wrote:But it still have to be approved before it is available to her (I just tested this with my wife's account). It creates the calendar but it is sitting in a pending state. I looked in my account and it was there waiting for me (ward clerk) to approve.

That is correct. aebrown's assertion is that only approvers can create private calendars.

aebrown wrote:Only calendar approvers can create private calendars, and that's a very limited set of people.

How private are "private" calendars?

jdlessley wrote:That is correct. aebrown's assertion is that only approvers can create private calendars.

Well, I guess I wasn't careful with my language, but members can't create working private calendars. Approval is still required.

In any case, now that Zane has clarified that he was confused about private vs. personal calendars, this thread really is now addressing only a rather arcane point. Although it may be technically possible for members to submit requests for personal private calendars, I really doubt that very many units will be allowing a widespread practice of members creating personal private calendars. We certainly won't be doing that in our stake.

RussellHltn wrote:How private are "private" calendars?

Only the creator, those listed as viewers, and those listed as editors can see the events. Approvers can only see that the calendar exists. No resources are associated with a private calendar either.

aebrown wrote:Although it may be technically possible for members to submit requests for personal private calendars, I really doubt that very many units will be allowing a widespread practice of members creating personal private calendars. We certainly won't be doing that in our stake.

The way I envision the use of private calendars is for organization leaders or a select list of people within an organization to share events without the entire stake or ward viewing them. A bishop and executive secretary could share event information this way; a presidency could share their presidency meeting events this way; and so on.

I agree that the private feature was not intended to be just a personal calendar. It would unnecessarily burden the Church servers with a feature that is best served by such sources as Google calendar or any other similar site.

jdlessley wrote:The way I envision the use of private calendars is for organization leaders or a select list of people within an organization to share events without the entire stake or ward viewing them. A bishop and executive secretary could share event information this way; a presidency could share their presidency meeting events this way; and so on.

I agree that the private feature was not intended to be just a personal calendar. It would unnecessary burden the Church servers with a feature that is best served by such sources as Goolge calendar or any other similar site.

Exactly. The use of our own private calendar is best performed in Outlook, Google Calendar etc. There we can layer on top our church calendars by using our personal iCalc URL link.