Scheduling missionary meals by members? Is this possible?

I looked for this topic but did not see it addressed in the threads I found in my searches.

In the webinar presented earlier this month, one of the examples shown was a calendar at the ward level for missionary meals signups. What was not made clear was whether or not this calendar could be used by the members to sign up to feed the missionaries. Is this an option, or would such a calendar require that a designated editor add the daily sign ups by the members to that calendar?

I guess I am still not clear on whether there is a difference between being able to edit a particular calendar and being able to add an event to that calendar. Are they the same or is there a difference?

Thanks for any help you can give me on this.

ccuppernell wrote:In the webinar presented earlier this month, one of the examples shown was a calendar at the ward level for missionary meals signups. What was not made clear was whether or not this calendar could be used by the members to sign up to feed the missionaries. Is this an option, or would such a calendar require that a designated editor add the daily sign ups by the members to that calendar?

The only people who can put events on a calendar are those who are designated as editors for that calendar, or who are calendar administrators (and thus automatically editors for all public calendars). There is no feature on the new calendar for members to submit calendar event requests (see The missing "Submit Event" button).

So your choices for a missionary meals calendar are:

• Add as an editor to that calendar every possible person who might sign up to feed the missionaries
• Designate one or people as the calendar editors, and have people who want to sign up contact a calendar editor to ask them to add an event for them.

ccuppernell wrote:I guess I am still not clear on whether there is a difference between being able to edit a particular calendar and being able to add an event to that calendar. Are they the same or is there a difference?

Those are the same. Only calendar editors (including administrators for public calendars) can add events to a calendar.

aebrown wrote:So your choices for a missionary meals calendar are:

• Add as an editor to that calendar every possible person who might sign up to feed the missionaries
• Designate one or people as the calendar editors, and have people who want to sign up contact a calendar editor to ask them to add an event for them.

Thanks. It sounds like having the missionary meals set up as a calendar will not be as useful as we had hoped. It might be nice if a future enhancement could allow an additional option for a specific calendar that would allow all members to add to that calendar. This could be useful for a lot of situations in which members might sign up to take a certain time or date for something. This could include missionary meals, building cleaning assignments, participation in regular service projects, etc. For example, our ward's Relief Society assists with one of the routes for Meals on Wheels. While they do pass around a sign up sheet for many of these things, those who might not be in the Relief Society meeting (other callings, sick children, travel) might often miss the chance to sign up and participate in these things as much as they would like.

Again, thanks for the quick reply.

It looks like this post is pretty old, but I just wanted to make an update to it. The current church calendar allows any ward member to make a calendar. The calendar does have to be approved by someone with certain lds.org/mls privileges, but once approved, the creator is an Admin for that calendar. Then, they are able to add anyone in the ward to be viewers or viewers/editors for their calendar. The only draw back that I can see at this time, is the fact that they would have to add people by calling or name individually. If you notice on the ward directory app, there's a role called "Adult". If they added that role to the calendar system, you could easily allow all ward adults to be editors for a service or signup calendar rather than adding each adult individually.

mohhess wrote: If you notice on the ward directory app, there's a role called "Adult". If they added that role to the calendar system, you could easily allow all ward adults to be editors for a service or signup calendar rather than adding each adult individually.

Adding an editor to a calendar is by name or by calling. The role identified as Adult is not a role, or more properly a position, but rather a group. It is a group of members that are adults. It is only for convenience of viewing a list of adult members or sending a group e-mail message. The positions available in Calendar to add someone as an editor by calling only currently uses standard positions.

But I do see your point in making groups of people, such as all adults, available from the list of "positions" as a method in making a calendar editable by a particular group of members. I think that is a good idea to pursue. Whether or not something like that will be implemented is yet to be seen.

These kinds of calendars will be a lot more useful when calendars can be synced individually to external calendar programs – so you can show or hide different calendars more easily on your regular calendar program.