Tech Forum

I am the building scheduler for a building that has 6 wards in it. At times, we will have 5 wards meeting on a given weeknight. This requires scheduling most rooms in the building. I am concerned about being able to set up enough resources to allow everyone to schedule their events and also just concerned with that many people scheduling on their own. If anyone has a similar situation or has any thoughts about how to make this work, it would be greatly appreciated.

As a starting point, how do you do it now?

As for the rooms, I'd set up the resources to have each room that would have a meeting in it that would go on the unit's calendar. IOW, ignore any "meetings" that simply use "rooms of opportunity".

I'd like to know how you do that without being able to see the calendars for the other wards?

You can see everyone who has scheduled the facility by switching to week view and checking the check box for that location.

That only helps you see what is scheduled. It does not help you as a building scheduler to help other ward's members who call you asking for help in using the their calendars. In the real world, even if everyone with questions is directed to view the webinar slides, they will still ask the building scheduler questions on how to apply that information to their situation, to be walked through their own calendars/choices as they set things up. And realistically that shouldn't be having to go meet them somewhere or drive to their homes. As Building Scheduler you should be able to view ALL calendars for your building, from/for any ward in the building. IT IS AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.

While being able to see the calendar helps, to support people, it's usually better to be able to see their screen. (BTDT). I've not used it myself, but others recommend Team Viewer.

In the case of the calender, the developer do lurk here. But there's no guarantee that they'll enable the view you've requested. Such changes probably have to be reviewed by the higher ups.

bgtaylor4 wrote:That only helps you see what is scheduled. It does not help you as a building scheduler to help other ward's members who call you asking for help in using the their calendars. In the real world, even if everyone with questions is directed to view the webinar slides, they will still ask the building scheduler questions on how to apply that information to their situation, to be walked through their own calendars/choices as they set things up. And realistically that shouldn't be having to go meet them somewhere or drive to their homes. As Building Scheduler you should be able to view ALL calendars for your building, from/for any ward in the building. IT IS AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.

Why does the building scheduler need to help other ward members about their calendars? And why is there no one else in each ward who can do this? Making the assumption that the building scheduler is the only one, and will be the only one, familiar with how the calendar works seems to be overly limiting when not necessary.

The paradigm shift from a single source for scheduling to distributed scheduling means there should be a number of people in each ward familiar enough to be able to teach calendar procedures. Members can also teach themselves by reading the calendar help. Having a ward calendar coordinator as described in this post meets the need for a ward member responsible as a single point of contact. The entire concept of the new calendar is to move away from a single source for calendar scheduling and resource management. Why defeat the new calendar model by artificially imposing the old methodology?