Calendar help for private events

[kisaac]

Thanks for the feedback. I softened this section a bit:

I'm afraid it's somewhat of a moving target! We all do it differently. Some stakes have not even activated online scheduling yet, so any mention of online calendar scheduling in the help or the guides for those stakes would be incorrect. But I think your are doing a great job trying to accommodate us.

[tomjoht]

And for people who use other calendaring systems in a corporate environment (such as Outlook), you always schedule the event with the room.

You're right. I'm certainly not advocating two calendars or anything similar. Just something that fits more seamlessly into the existing church culture about how we schedule events and reserve rooms.

If we altered the Edit Event screen with a column that said, "Would you like to reserve a room for your event?" or something to that effect (with a little on-screen explanation), what then would you call the scheduling rules that the building scheduler sets up? "Scheduling rules"? Maybe simply bringing the word "reserve" into the scheduling workflow would clarify the process.

Also, good point about calendar editors being a subset of regular members.

[russellhltn]

If we altered the Edit Event screen with a column that said, "Would you like to reserve a room for your event?" or something to that effect (with a little on-screen explanation), what then would you call the scheduling rules that the building scheduler sets up? "Scheduling rules"? Maybe simply bringing the word "reserve" into the scheduling workflow would clarify the process.

We've previously talked about renaming the "building scheduler" to "building coordinator" as well as changing "reservations" to "restrictions".

If you do that, then using "reservations" in the event screen might be OK. But I'd be worried about people thinking that the "new reservation" is the same as the "old reservation". So I'd suggest a different terminology, at least for awhile. Some ideas might be "book" or "block off".

[aebrown]

If we altered the Edit Event screen with a column that said, "Would you like to reserve a room for your event?" or something to that effect (with a little on-screen explanation), what then would you call the scheduling rules that the building scheduler sets up? "Scheduling rules"? Maybe simply bringing the word "reserve" into the scheduling workflow would clarify the process.

I do like the idea that RussellHltn started of putting a little more explanation and emphasis on the "Location" field so that people understand its purpose and importance.

In previous discussions, I think there was a pretty strong consensus for changing the term "Reservations" to be "Restrictions"; they are pretty much just restrictions on what locations/rooms people can book. That choice made to change the original term "assignment" to be "reservation" was (IMHO) an awful choice that has led to tremendous confusion. Once that term is changed to something else, the word "Reservation" would become available to use for what people naturally think of, which is the action that happens when you associate a location/room with an event; we currently tend to call that "booking" here, but I'd rather call it "reserving."

[tomjoht]

I like the recommendations you propose and the term "restrictions." I'll add an item to the JIRA backlog for the calendar lead to review.

[aebrown]

I like the recommendations you propose and the term "restrictions." I'll add an item to the JIRA backlog for the calendar lead to review.

In this post that you made about 9 months ago, you said that you had already added a JIRA item for considering adopting the term "restriction."

[tomjoht]

In this post that you made about 9 months ago, you said that you had already added a JIRA item for considering adopting the term "restriction."

I tracked down that JIRA item. My JIRA item suggestion was a duplicate of another JIRA item addressing the same issue, so these two items were consolidated to one. The other JIRA item proposed the idea of changing the term "reservations" to "facility holds." This item was then marked as a P1 (blocker) and assigned to the next version of the calendar (3.0).

I added an extensive comment arguing that we change "reservations" to "restrictions," and that we use "reserve a room" on the Edit Event screen.

Whether this change gets implemented or not depends on team discussions, direction from leaders, available resources, and other factors. I also do not know if we have a firm target release date for 3.0, because resources are tied up with other higher priority projects. Still, 3.0 will happen eventually.

Here's my comment on the JIRA item. Let me know if you think it's on target:

This topic keeps resurfacing in the forums each time someone experiences confusion about the term reservations. For example, see these threads:

• https://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?9971-Reservation-terminology&p=76073
• https://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?13522-Reservations-worth-it/
• https://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?13735-Calendar-help-for-private-events

The consensus in the forums seems to be the following:
1. Change the term "reservations" to "restrictions."
2. On the Edit Event screen, use "reserve a room" to refer to the act of scheduling a room.

I agree with these recommendations. Here's why. Church members undeniably use the phrase "reserve a room" when referring to scheduling a room. The term "reserve" is embedded within Church vocabulary. We can't just switch it out, because whatever other term we use, people will still ask, "So how do I reserve a room for my meeting?"

Our error was in using the term reservations in the building scheduler's workflow rather than the member's workflow. We need to let members use the term "reserve a room" when they schedule an event. This will help increase awareness that they actually can schedule a room. This term should appear on the Edit Event screen.

For building schedulers, we just need to change their term from "reservations" to "restrictions." This terminology change will help encourage building schedulers to stop creating reservations when they should really just be scheduling a room. Right now building schedulers keep reserving rooms for single events, such as a BBQ on a Saturday for an Elder's Quorum. This is because the EQ has been trained to "reserve the pavilion" for their activity, so they ask the building scheduler to "reserve" a room.

In turn, the building scheduler "reserves" a room, but really the building scheduler should have never reserved a room at all. The building scheduler should have directed the calendar editor to schedule the room. We need to put the term "reserve" back into the event scheduling workflow so that the EQ president knows he can reserve a room without involving the building scheduler.

What building schedulers are actually doing is "restricting" who can reserve what resource at what time. They are putting limitations on the free-for-all reservation functionality. That is why the term "restrictions" fits so well.

[aebrown]

Here's my comment on the JIRA item. Let me know if you think it's on target:

That looks like a good summary that covers the essential points. I particularly liked your insightful comment that the current usage of the term "reservation" grew out of too much focus on the building scheduler's workflow while ignoring the workflow and terminology of regular members and calendar editors.

I guess my only concern about the sequence of the changes is the one RussellHltn raised: if we change the term "reservation" to be "restriction" in the building scheduler context, and immediately start using the term "reserve" in a different context (booking a room/location as part of an event), might that be confusing to some people? I don't know, but it's worth considering. I imagine that the term "reservation" as currently used in the calendar is not familiar to many people outside building schedulers, some admins, and a handful of editors, so the potential for confusion if we make the changes simultaneously could be minimal.

[mevans]

We've previously talked about renaming the "building scheduler" to "building coordinator"

Any hope on getting this item in JIRA, too? It also leads to a lot of confusion. I think there was also a suggestion of having a ward "Calendar Coordinator" who is the ward contact for scheduling. We could put that as a standard calling in CDOL and by default make that calling a calendar administrator

[eblood66]

I made an attempt to update the calendar help around the topics discussed in this thread. See "Scheduling Funerals, Weddings, Family Reunions, and Other Private Events" on the Scheduling Events page.

I may revisit that, but I hope this addresses some of the immediate concerns about having building schedulers schedule events.

I finally had a chance to check out the updates and I think they are an improvement and should help avoid the confusion I was concerned about.

While reviewing those changes I also re-read the Reservations Versus Scheduled Events section and I've got a couple other suggestions/concerns but since they don't have to do with private events specifically I'll start another thread for them.