Tech Forum

As the 2.0 release of the calendar approaches, I wanted to give you a preview of the 2.0 help materials we'll have available. Many of you here are tech savvy clerks and technology specialists who help steer your wards and stakes towards awareness and adoption of the calendar. With the 2.0 release, we are providing 6 quick reference guides (one for each role, plus a setup guide) and 3 videos, in addition to online help. If you have any feedback or suggestions about the help materials, let me know. Thanks,

• Setup Guide
• Members Guide
• Editors Guide
• Building Schedulers Guide
• Ward Administrators Guide
• Stake Administrators Guide

Here are the videos:

• Introduction to the calendar
• Creating Calendars and Scheduling Events
• Managing Locations

Note: I moved this post to its own thread from its original thread.

Here are some comments on the quick reference guides:

Setup Guide:

• In the last paragraph, it says "...only the designated ward or stake can schedule an event at that location at that time." It is more accurate to say "... only the designated ward or stake can schedule an event using that resource at that time."

Members Guide:

• The second paragraph instructs members to go to Tools > Calendar. But no mention is made of lds.org. That may confuse some users.

Editors Guide:

• The phrase "up to date" should not be hyphenated, unless it is used as an adjective (appears in the body text and the image caption).
• The last paragraph says: " If you try to schedule an event at the same time and location as another event, you will not be able to save the event." It would be clearer to say "using the same resource" rather than "location."
• The last paragraph also says: "If conflicts occur, contact the building scheduler." Although that is good advice, another helpful option is simply to choose a different date, time, or resource.

Building Schedulers Guide:

• In many places in this guide it talks about reserving locations. But what you are really reserving in most cases is a resource (room or equipment) -- not the entire location.

Ward Administrators Guide:

• In the last paragraph of the middle column, need a space in "eventof"
• In that same paragraph, it mentions "ward or stake" -- but a ward administrator doesn't have rights to stake calendars.
• Similarly, in the second paragraph of the first column, there is another reference to "ward or stake" that should simply be "ward"

Stake Administrators Guide:

• At the very end, you should add a step 4: Click Save. If you don't save, you won't really have added a scheduler.

This is great feedback. Thanks Alan. I know these guides are going to be printed quite abundantly, so I appreciate your careful review.

One note in 2.0. We changed terms a little bit. Rather than calling things resources, the terms are now "locations and rooms." But this gets to be awkward and clunky in many sentences. It may just be easier to say "resources" in a lot of places.

johnsonth wrote:One note in 2.0. We changed terms a little bit. Rather than calling things resources, the terms are now "locations and rooms." But this gets to be awkward and clunky in many sentences. It may just be easier to say "resources" in a lot of places.

And I would also note that the phrase "locations and rooms" is confusing by its very nature. Rooms are within a location, so that is odd parallelism. It's kind of like saying "soccer teams and players." And "locations and rooms" omits equipment, which is another resource within a location. In the v2 beta, I saw the phrase "rooms and equipment" on the pages for event details and the location settings, but I don't recall seeing "locations and rooms" anywhere in the UI. I could see how "rooms and equipment" might be better than "resources," since it doesn't introduce a new term, but even that phrase can get clunky in situations where it is used repeatedly.

I agree "rooms and equipment" is better as it is easier to understand what is being reserved! However I think "Resources" is even better term.

I implemented these updates as best I could. My only objection is with the use of the term "resource." This term doesn't appear in the calendar interface now. Also, "resource" is somewhat vague, since people usually don't think of a room as a resource. Couldn't resource also be interpreted more broadly to encompass locations, rooms, and equipment? In HR groups, "resources" are often people as well. I'll try to gather more feedback about scheduling terminology.

Again, I really appreciate your responses on these guides. In my experience, most users tend to prefer short 1-2 page guides to the longer software manuals. The quick reference guide at least gets users into the application, and they're also convenient to print and pass out. I also want to provide download links to the videos, because I know videos they can be difficult to show in a meetinghouse that doesn't have Internet.

By the way, the videos have captions on them. The videos will eventually be translated, but not for a little while.

johnsonth wrote:My only objection is with the use of the term "resource." This term doesn't appear in the calendar interface now.

Ah, but it does. In Settings > Locations & Rooms, the following appears: However, that does seem to be the only place I can find the word "resources."

In some other places (such as when you are creating a reservation), the word "rooms" is used as a heading for a list of rooms and equipment. The omission of the word "equipment" in that context is a bit misleading.

Although I understand some concern about the term "resources," I think it is helpful to have one term that describes those entities within a location that can be scheduled, and I can't think of a better term than "resources." And I'm not concerned that "resources" may mean other things in other contexts -- after all it can mean iron ore in the ground in other contexts, but that doesn't create any confusion with a calendaring system.

And I don't think there needs to be any confusion between "location" and "resource" as long as we consistently use the term "location" to describe buildings and the like, and "resource" to describe rooms and equipment within a location.

Here's an additional correction to the quick reference guides:

Setup Guide:

• 2nd paragraph: "Building schedulers are manually designated by administrators" should read "Building schedulers are manually designated by stake administrators" since only stake administrators can do this.

I prefer the term "resources" in reference to rooms, equipment, and anything else available to be reserved as a subset of a location. In any help document the issue of definitions of terms used is easily resolved by explanations. For example, when referring to the things that can be reserved at a location, words such as "a location's resources, rooms and equipment, are reserved by ..." can clarify the term "resource". Context use is then established. Any further discussion about "resource" is then understood.

My experience in technical writing is to avoid confusion about terms by providing an explanation the first time it is used. A good practice the first time an abbreviation or acronym is used is to enclose in parentheses the explanation or full words. This same method can be used for a short explanation of a word or term.

Another help to consider for the calendar itself is a mouse hover-over context help message. This could be provided as an additional aid in understanding the term meaning for calendar form object titles . This allows using the simpler or shorter term yet providing the clarification a user may need.

• 2nd paragraph: "Building schedulers are manually designated by administrators" should read "Building schedulers are manually designated by stake administrators" since only stake administrators can do this.

Thanks for your feedback. I made this update.