Calendar Improvement Idea

In my ward, the bishopric created a new calling to replace the Ward Activities Committee Chairman calling (since church leadership got rid of that calling recently), called Ward Activities Specialist. I tried to add that calling as an editor of the Ward Activities calendar, but was unable to do so, because it's a custom calling.

I asked during the Webinar today if that was possible at all, and they said it's not, and I'd have to add the person by name, instead of by calling.

This would be a nice feature to add, so that I wouldn't have to remove the person and add someone new when she's released.

There was a previous discussion about how people are adapting now that we have been instructed not to have an activities committee.

https://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.p ... -committee

I have to admit that it makes me growl a little bit to hear that you still have a Ward Activities Chairman but you're just calling her something else. It seems to me that you kinda missed the point that things are supposed to be different now... not just called something different. I'm just sayin'.

Granted, I've talked to a lot of folks who aren't quite sure how they're supposed to handle activities now.

mrrad wrote:I have to admit that it makes me growl a little bit to hear that you still have a Ward Activities Chairman but you're just calling her something else.

Well, that's not my call. Besides which, we don't have a Ward Activities Chairman. To have that, we'd have to have a Ward Activities Committee for her to chair, which we don't. We have someone called who does the activities that aren't sponsored by a quorum/auxiliary. Big difference. And there's no need for you to growl about how our bishopric acts on the inspiration given to them to direct the ward.

Besides that, I gave an example of a situation where we'd need to make a custom calling a calendar editor; that's all. There are plenty of other reasons why this might be necessary. An Elder's Quorum presidency, for example, might call someone in their quorum to organize quorum events. That wouldn't go against your interpretation of the direction we've been given from the First Presidency, but would still require exactly what I described to properly edit the calendar.

DrJ1234 wrote:Besides that, I gave an example of a situation where we'd need to make a custom calling a calendar editor; that's all. There are plenty of other reasons why this might be necessary. An Elder's Quorum presidency, for example, might call someone in their quorum to organize quorum events. That wouldn't go against your interpretation of the direction we've been given from the First Presidency, but would still require exactly what I described to properly edit the calendar.

And example of that is we have a secretary for the stake single member committee. It's not a standard calling. As such, I can't add her in to edit the stake singles calendar.

It would be nice to be able to add editors by custom calling. Adding by name to overcome this limitation has its own issues. I suspect this is far enough down the list of requested changes that it would be some time out if it were to be approved and then implemented. As such we have to work with what we have. For now adding an editor by name is better than nothing.

Oddly (or, maybe by design), if the calendar is a Stake Calendar, you can add individuals by their Stake calling. But not by Ward Callings. We have the situation where we have one baptismal font in the Stake Center. So, we created a Stake Baptismal Calendar, and planned to add all of the Ward Mission Leaders as editors for that calendar, so that they could all schedule the font as their ward full time missionaries had the need. And would not have to wait for one single person to approve the usage. However, there seems to be no way to select a Ward calling (Ward Mission Leader). All must be entered by name individually.

mwgbell wrote:We have the situation where we have one baptismal font in the Stake Center. So, we created a Stake Baptismal Calendar, and planned to add all of the Ward Mission Leaders as editors for that calendar, so that they could all schedule the font as their ward full time missionaries had the need.

There is another way to do that: set up the baptismal font as a separate location and add all the wards to it. Then each Ward could schedule the baptism on their own Ward calendar (where their members are more likely to see it) but still booking the room to prevent conflicts.

Each stake unit can schedule the baptism on their own calendars at the stake center if the stake center is set up for use by all stake units. If not, then RussellHltn's suggestion is good.

RussellHltn wrote:There is another way to do that: set up the baptismal font as a separate location and add all the wards to it. Then each Ward could schedule the baptism on their own Ward calendar (where their members are more likely to see it) but still booking the room to prevent conflicts.

That takes care of the baptismal font, but one challenge with this approach is that it doesn't handle the other rooms. A baptismal service will always require at least one more room in the stake center (RS Room or a room next to the font). Since an event can only reserve one location, this would require two separate events to be scheduled for each baptism to reserve the font at this custom location, and the other room(s) at the stake center. That's quite a bit of hassle.

In my opinion, the cure is worse than the original problem. There are good reasons to have all the wards/branches in the stake added to the stake center location anyway (and that is a requirement for the scenario I described in my first paragraph in any case). The ward mission leaders can all be added to this proposed stake baptismal calendar by name in a matter of minutes. Then baptismal events can be scheduled in a straightforward manner directly by any WML. There's a tiny amount of maintenance required when a WML changes. That's the only work that we're trying to save with all this other work -- it's just not worth it.

Thanks for all of your insights. As Alan suggested, I added all wards to the Stake Center; and added the WMLs individually to the Baptismal calendar, and we should now be all set.

As an aside, my original question was to know if it was a "design feature" that you cannot add individuals to a Stake Calendar by Ward calling? (I have had dig through the ward directories for each of the 9 wards looking for the WML names. Not an insurmountable burden of course, but somewhat less convenient than just saying "All Ward Mission Leaders"...) I suppose that there are relatively few other instances where you might need to do this, so maybe it isn't a major burden.

That takes care of the baptismal font, but one challenge with this approach is that it doesn't handle the other rooms. A baptismal service will always require at least one more room in the stake center (RS Room or a room next to the font). Since an event can only reserve one location, this would require two separate events to be scheduled for each baptism

It has been stated that only a single resource can be scheduled for an event. This simply is not true. Any event can schedule as many resources as are needed. Thus is a baptism requires the Baptismal font and the Chapel you can schedule both from the one event. It is unfortunate that the screen is not clear on this, but if you hold down the control key (on Windows) or the Command Key (on Mac) while clicking on the resources you can pick as many resources as needed.

terrydm wrote:It has been stated that only a single resource can be scheduled for an event. This simply is not true.

you are correct for a normal building calendar, as most will be set up, but the discussion referenced modifying the usual set-up, and making the baptismal font it's own resource, the only resource available on its own calendar, thus, there would not be any other rooms to select....

terrydm wrote:It has been stated that only a single resource can be scheduled for an event. This simply is not true.

To be clear, I never stated that only a single resource can be scheduled for an event. I said that only a single location can be scheduled for an event. That is indeed true. I was responding to a proposal to put the baptismal font in a separate custom location. That proposal creates the problem that you would need one event to schedule the resources (which may be more than one room) in the stake center, and another event to schedule that custom location.

mwgbell wrote:\I added all wards to the Stake Center; and added the WMLs individually to the Baptismal calendar, and we should now be all set.

Personally, I'd think it would be better to have those events on a ward calendar where the ward members are more likely to see it. By connecting to the resource, that takes care of blocking the resource from other uses.

aebrown wrote:A baptismal service will always require at least one more room in the stake center (RS Room or a room next to the font).

I was thinking of our building layout where the font is off the multi-purpose room. As a result, I've listed that "room" as "Multi-purpose/Baptismal font" as it's physically impractical to use one without interfering with the use of the other. So in our case, baptism don't have to take more then one room.

But putting it as a separate location would cause problems with other events that want to use the multi-purpose room and something else.

But I did take this approch with our High Council room. The only time I can think of where an event uses it and other resources is when we have a singles or youth conference. A rare enough event to not be a problem.

RussellHltn wrote:Personally, I'd think it would be better to have those events on a ward calendar where the ward members are more likely to see it. By connecting to the resource, that takes care of blocking the resource from other uses.

The Stake Primary Presidency "manages" the 8-year old baptisms which are done on a Stake basis. We put them on that same calendar, since we couldn't put them on the individual ward calendars. I think we can recommend that everyone subscribe to the baptismal calendar, and see all the 8-year old and convert baptisms in the stake. And, nothing would prevent a ward from scheduling a baptism on their own ward calendar, using the "RS Room / Font" (I removed both of those from the Stake Center; and replaced them with a custom "RS Room / Font" location to ensure that we didn't have the case with one group reserving the font whilst another group reserved the RS room!