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"You are changing a recurring event" incorrect message

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:35 pm
by jenny_smith
I created the world's most awesomest repeating calendar for our mutual activities. When our mutual unexpectedly changed from Tuesday to Thursday, I dragged and dropped 8 months worth of those events to their new dates on Thursday.

I guess I should have realized I was not, in fact, moving the recurrance, but that a new instance of the item was being created, while the recurrance was ignored for it's previous date and continued the next year. Anyway.

Now we have changed our conducting rotation, and I need to change the wording on those dates. Here's how it works:

1) I click the item to edit
2) It says "You are changing a recurring event" (when in fact I am actually changing the new, moved instance of the recurrance.
3) If I tell it to edit "the entire series", the moved instance's title is not affected, while the recurrence (now into next year) is.
4) If I tell it to edit "only this event", I'm still being told this is a recurrence with recurrence options, and I can edit the title, but only for the moved instance.

I suppose this is righteous punishment for my laziness, but this is not intuitive messaging, imo. Editing a moved instance should not give the user the option to edit the entire series, since the moved instance is not truly a recurrance.

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:42 pm
by jdlessley
An interesting catch. Have you reported this through the lds.org website "Submit Feedback" link? We can discuss it here but to get it to the development team is best accomplished when subitted through the website feedback.

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 3:35 pm
by aebrown
jenny_smith wrote:I created the world's most awesomest repeating calendar for our mutual activities. When our mutual unexpectedly changed from Tuesday to Thursday, I dragged and dropped 8 months worth of those events to their new dates on Thursday.
It sounds like you created one or more repeating events, which are designed to allow easy changing of all the events at once. I'm curious why you dragged and dropped 8 months worth of events to a new date, rather than simply changing the repeating rules on the entire series. That would have been a lot quicker, and avoided the problems you subsequently encountered.
jenny_smith wrote:I guess I should have realized I was not, in fact, moving the recurrance, but that a new instance of the item was being created, while the recurrance was ignored for it's previous date and continued the next year. Anyway.

Yes, every time you drag and drop a single instance of a recurring event, you are doing exactly the same thing as if you click on that item and choose to apply changes to "Only this event." That action turns the item into an exception to the repeating rule. For the most part, such an event is quite separate from the set of events that still follow the rule. However, it is still linked to the series so that you can easily remove the exception and change that instance back into an event that once again follows the rule.
jenny_smith wrote:Now we have changed our conducting rotation, and I need to change the wording on those dates.
I can certainly empathize with your pain -- you have turned every one of those events into an exception, so now each one has to be edited manually.
jenny_smith wrote:2) It says "You are changing a recurring event" (when in fact I am actually changing the new, moved instance of the recurrance.
This is sort of true -- you are indeed changing an exceptional instance of a recurring event. But aside from the option to remove the exception, it certainly doesn't feel like you are changing the recurring event. I agree that this is confusing.
jenny_smith wrote:3) If I tell it to edit "the entire series", the moved instance's title is not affected, while the recurrence (now into next year) is.
While this is what you chose to do by selecting "the entire series," this is indeed a confusing result. It would be better not to have this option at all when you click on an exceptional event.
jenny_smith wrote:4) If I tell it to edit "only this event", I'm still being told this is a recurrence with recurrence options, and I can edit the title, but only for the moved instance.
This is indeed the correct behavior, and quite helpful. You can edit this exceptional instance, but you also have the option to remove the exception, to return this event to the fold, so to speak. Both options are useful.
jenny_smith wrote:Editing a moved instance should not give the user the option to edit the entire series, since the moved instance is not truly a recurrance.

I completely agree. Not only would implementation of your suggestion remove a lot of confusion, but there would be an additional benefit. Clicking on an exceptional event right now looks exactly like a conforming repeating event. With your suggestion, it would immediately be obvious that you are dealing with an exception. And the wording could be tailored to this particular case; it could say something like "You are editing an exception to a recurring event...." Then you would have options to remove the exception, or to edit the exceptional event (but not the entire series).

Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 9:30 am
by jenny_smith
Thanks for the response. Hope this feedback and others like it makes it into the queue for improvements in the 2012 release. The calendar is very extensible. I'm regaining my testimony that the Church's web dev team is true :D

Regarding why I didn't edit all of the recurring events, when I say awesome, I mean *awesome*. ;-) There were some 18 recurrances over a 6 month span, which I intended to be a perpetual (to infinity and beyond) rotation to make it easier on leaders to come after us. Click and drag is MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than clicking through 3 screens on each of 18 recurrances. After the first move, it seemed that I was moving the recurrance from the messaging when in fact it was just creating an instance or exception. Too smart for my britches, I guess.

You can read about my calendar case use in an old forum post on my site here:
http://www.mormonshare.com/forum/sugges ... auxilaries

Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 10:19 am
by aebrown
jenny_smith wrote: Hope this feedback and others like it makes it into the queue for improvements in the 2012 release.

Please note that this forum is mostly just a collection of users sharing their experiences; there's no guarantee that anything you post here will come to the attention of the appropriate development teams. You need to use the Feedback link on lds.org to make sure that your feedback gets to the development teams.