New Member
As a stake executive secretary, I'm faced with the daunting prospect of introducing the new calendaring model and system to stake leaders (and ultimately to the general membership). I think that there has been a tremendous effort put into this, but I think that the layering of multiple calendar adds unnecessary complexity for the average user.
I would like to propose an alternative model and ask you what your thoughts are.
The main issue is visibility of scheduled events. Members could be given a default level of visibility based on their calling. Scheduled events are assigned 1 or many categories such as youth, sport, music etc. Each calling is associated with a particular combination of categories, possibly adding boolean operators (OR, AND, NOT) for more fine-grained definitions.
This way, a member with a particular calling can just log on to the calendar and see events that are relevant to him/her without having to play around with a dozen calendars. Events can also be recorded once while matching numerous categories so that they appear on the calendars of all interested parties.
Additionally, if more control is needed, there could be "optional" categories available to certain callings, while some categories would be restricted. For example, a ward youth leader should be able to see stake youth events and CES events, but should not have any need to view stake high council meetings, so this category should be restricted. However, this additional flexibility doesn't need to be introduced until members are used to the more basic, ready-out-of-the-box system I describe here.
What are your thoughts? I know this means completely rewriting a good part of the DB schema and backend of the calendar, but I'm just a bit worried that we've headed in a direction that will eventually require major overhauls anyway.
I would like to propose an alternative model and ask you what your thoughts are.
The main issue is visibility of scheduled events. Members could be given a default level of visibility based on their calling. Scheduled events are assigned 1 or many categories such as youth, sport, music etc. Each calling is associated with a particular combination of categories, possibly adding boolean operators (OR, AND, NOT) for more fine-grained definitions.
This way, a member with a particular calling can just log on to the calendar and see events that are relevant to him/her without having to play around with a dozen calendars. Events can also be recorded once while matching numerous categories so that they appear on the calendars of all interested parties.
Additionally, if more control is needed, there could be "optional" categories available to certain callings, while some categories would be restricted. For example, a ward youth leader should be able to see stake youth events and CES events, but should not have any need to view stake high council meetings, so this category should be restricted. However, this additional flexibility doesn't need to be introduced until members are used to the more basic, ready-out-of-the-box system I describe here.
What are your thoughts? I know this means completely rewriting a good part of the DB schema and backend of the calendar, but I'm just a bit worried that we've headed in a direction that will eventually require major overhauls anyway.
