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Reoccuring events now require an end date

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:21 pm
by grantw
We have several events (high council meeting, presidency meetings, making reservations at the stake center, etc) that had been set to reoccur with no end date. With the new release, the no end date is no longer available, and the default end date is two years from today's date.

At the stake level we like being able to create reoccurring events with no end date. Will this be re-enabled in the future?

Also, when I try to save the event with the new "default" end date, I receive an error stating the highlighted box needs to be fixed, meaning I have to find a new date that is less than 2 years out and fits the parameters of the repeating event. This is very annoying....

Finally, once I work around the date issues and go to save, the tool seems to hang and the updates don't get saved. I've worked around schedule conflicts, so it should be clear to save, but I just see the gray screen with the spinning bar. I've left it along for 10+ minutes before giving up. Is this a problem with the new release, or are the church servers not responding to my changes?

This seems to be an issue with repeating events and reservations that go a ways out in the future. Other single events I can save and edit without issues.

Thanks for you help.

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:24 pm
by russellhltn
grantw wrote:Will this be re-enabled in the future?

Not likely. The database structure was changed. It was decided to limit it to two years to avoid too much strain on the database. But as you've discovered, even then, there's problems if the event covers too many days.

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:12 pm
by kyleq
I had similar issues with creating new event or updating existing events. The servers were simply not responding. I'm checking in to what happened but I'm able to create and update events now without an issue. Are you still seeing issues with saving updates?

Also the two year limit is a permanent feature. However we could add a note to that section of the event details window stating that there is a two year limit so that it would be evident prior to saving.

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:14 pm
by aebrown
kyleq wrote:Also the two year limit is a permanent feature.

So those Easter dates I had put in the calendar out to 2016 are gone now. Oh, well....

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:39 pm
by grantw
I sorely miss the no end date feature. In our stake center we have 3 wards plus the stake using the building. It was a great feature to block out Sunday meetings, Monday nights, and monthly reoccurring once and forget about the blocks. Now we can only put out a block for two years and hope that no one comes in to schedule the resource between the time the block expires and the building scheduler puts the block back in for the next two years.

Still having trouble saving the repeating events -- may be the servers are still having problems responding.

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 12:29 am
by ThomsonMA
This one messed up several of my calendars as well. Particularly, I have a "Holidays" calendar that defines the standard holidays like New Years Day, Mother's Day, etc. I had defined them as being "Every January 1", or "Every 2nd Sunday in May". Rather than just truncate the repetition or assuming it as two years out, those calendar entries were simply deleted. So even this year there is no Halloween next Monday. My kids will be really disappointed... ;-)

I also noted that other repeating events have problems. For example if I have a event that repeats each Thursday in October 2011, I would have defined the first one on 10/6, and specified that it repeats every week on Thursday, with an end date of 10/27. In the V1 calendar that worked fine and gave me entries on 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, and 10/27. With the new calendar, the last repetition on 10/27 is omitted. I think someone must have coded a "less than" rather than a "less than or equal" in determining when to end the repetition.

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 3:13 am
by aebrown
ThomsonMA wrote:I also noted that other repeating events have problems. For example if I have a event that repeats each Thursday in October 2011, I would have defined the first one on 10/6, and specified that it repeats every week on Thursday, with an end date of 10/27. In the V1 calendar that worked fine and gave me entries on 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, and 10/27. With the new calendar, the last repetition on 10/27 is omitted. I think someone must have coded a "less than" rather than a "less than or equal" in determining when to end the repetition.
Hmm. I'm not seeing that problem. I created a repeating event exactly as you stated: repeating weekly each Thursday starting on 10/6 with an end date of 10/27. The 10/27 instance does indeed appear. I tried all day events, and timed events. In every case, the instance on the last date does appear. And since I note that you are in the same time zone as I am, I don't see how it can be related to time zone issues.

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:37 am
by ballam
I'm also really missing the no end date feature. In 2 years from now I'll now need to check each event to make sure it's not going to unexpectedly expire. Seems like that's going to be pretty problematic once events start hitting the 2 year mark.

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:38 am
by aebrown
ballam wrote:I'm also really missing the no end date feature. In 2 years from now I'll now need to check each event to make sure it's not going to unexpectedly expire. Seems like that's going to be pretty problematic once events start hitting the 2 year mark.
I'd recommend that you check repeating events annually, and extend them another year if they do need to continue perpetually. That way you'll never hit the 2 year mark.

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 11:27 pm
by ThomsonMA
I guess I should have been more clear that I was referring to events that were moved forward from the V1 calendar. If it was created in the V1 calendar, the last instance didn't show up after the V2 update. I'd click on the first instance to open the edit dialog, and it looked correct. But until I reset the ending date to the day after the real ending date, I wouldn't get that last on one the calendar. Using my previous example, I'd have to set the ending date to 10/28 rather than 10/27 to get an instance of the event on 10/27.

I did try to create an event on V2 and it seems to function correctly as aebrown noted.