Troop Calendar visible by non-member parents

[mevans]

tilaloz: you might try multiple avenues of escalating this concern. Besides posting here, you might try the following:

• Submit feedback at https://www.lds.org/tools/feedback.
• Have your priesthood leaders provide this feedback. I've heard that headquarters is asking priesthood leaders for feedback on the online tools now, so it might be good timing.

I wouldn't expect that there is a quick fix to this problem, but it seems like a legitimate request. If they get enough requests, that increases the chances that it will get done (unless the church leadership decides this is not something they want to provide).

[gxwheel]

Does creating an MLS record for the non-member scouts/families of scots/scout leaders then provide access to the calender for those individuals?

We have the same situation in our ward in Düsseldorf.

[russellhltn]

Does creating an MLS record for the non-member scouts/families of scots/scout leaders then provide access to the calender for those individuals?

I don't know, but the conditions for creating one is too limiting to be a good fix for most situations.

[tomjoht]

This request doesn't seem too different from requests by missionary leaders to have public-facing ward homepages that non-members can access. The restriction by LDS Account of the LDS.org applications has challenges. How do you personalize the experience of information for members, keeping the information private and accessible to a specific group while also allowing for non-members to access similar information when needed?

Although we don't have any specific plans for non-member access to the calendar right now, I'll add this to the backlog of requests. One workaround is print off a PDF of the troop calendar and email it to your non-member group. A lot of people seem to prefer printed calendars anyway. The LDS.org calendar does have excellent PDF/printing capabilities.

[mevans]

This request doesn't seem too different from requests by missionary leaders to have public-facing ward homepages that non-members can access.

I view this as quite different from the public-facing ward homepages. In Classic, the public-facing pages could be accessed via Mormon.org (and based on many pages I've seen, it doesn't seem like many wards and stakes were aware this was public). They might serve as a bit of an introduction or public face for local congregations. Some people mentioned that local convention/tourist/etc. groups would even link to these pages so out-of-town visitors would know where to find religious services. Or maybe cities and such who list things like restaurants, businesses, churches, etc. in their city could link to the page.

What I see people asking for in the calendar has to do with helping non-members who have established some kind of relationship with a congregation to be more integrated. I could see many situations where this need exists. Here are a few I thought of quickly:

• non-members involved with cub scouts and boy scouts
• investigators (including those who have been investigating for years)
• non-member youth who like to participate in some of our youth activities
• non-members who like to participate in church sports leagues and want to get game/practice schedules

I agree that this isn't a simple problem to solve. Developing a solution for this might also result in online tools that have too much administrative overhead, as someone will have to associate non-member LDS Accounts with a unit and specify what permissions the individual can have, etc. To reduce the administrative burden, you'd probably want to give people access to selected tools for a certain number of days (30, 60, 90, etc.) and then access needs to be renewed and an administrator would need to re-approve it.