Tech Forum

Question: the only calendars to which I can subscribe within LDS Tools are the "ward" and "stake" calendars. Online, if I log into lds.org, I can also see "location" calendars. Any plans to have visibility to those calendars in LDS Tools anytime? We've missed a couple events scheduled by the other ward in our building because they were on the "location" calendar online but not visible to us in LDS Tools.

Grateful for any help!

jimlaudie wrote:Question: the only calendars to which I can subscribe within LDS Tools are the "ward" and "stake" calendars. Online, if I log into lds.org, I can also see "location" calendars. Any plans to have visibility to those calendars in LDS Tools anytime?

It's true that the Calendar on LDS.org lets you see events taking place at a location. But that's not really a "location calendar" -- those events reside on a variety of calendars belonging to various wards and your stake.

You can certainly request any LDS Tools feature using the Feedback option on the Help menu of the LDS Tools app. But plans for future features are rarely revealed ahead of time, so I have no idea if any such feature is in the works. Personally, I would think that such a feature is unlikely, since it would potentially require downloading a huge amount of data, which doesn't seem to be consistent with the design of LDS Tools.

jimlaudie wrote:We've missed a couple events scheduled by the other ward in our building because they were on the "location" calendar online but not visible to us in LDS Tools.

It seems like this really shouldn't be a problem if you're using the calendaring system properly. If you don't have the building reserved, I don't see how it makes any difference what the other ward is doing in the building. If you have scheduled the building, then you have it reserved and you'll see those events. If you try to schedule it, but the other ward reserved it ahead of you, the system will report that conflict and you won't be able to reserve it.

The only way you'd have a problem with the other ward's events as you describe is if you wander over to the building when you know you don't have it reserved, hoping it will be empty and available for your use. That's always a risky approach.

jimlaudie wrote:Any plans to have visibility to those calendars in LDS Tools anytime? We've missed a couple events scheduled by the other ward in our building because they were on the "location" calendar online but not visible to us in LDS Tools.

When you say "missed", do you mean this was an joint event between two wards?

As far as I'm aware, the primary purpose for the location calendars is to help schedulers find "holes" to add new events. I don't believe it was intended for the general membership to use.

aebrown wrote:If you have scheduled the building, then you have it reserved and you'll see those events. If you try to schedule it, but the other ward reserved it ahead of you, the system will report that conflict and you won't be able to reserve it.

This is assuming that the other ward scheduled a specific location for the event, instead of just putting the event on the calendar.

sbradshaw wrote:

aebrown wrote:If you have scheduled the building, then you have it reserved and you'll see those events. If you try to schedule it, but the other ward reserved it ahead of you, the system will report that conflict and you won't be able to reserve it.

This is assuming that the other ward scheduled a specific location for the event, instead of just putting the event on the calendar.

In that case, the other ward doesn't have the building reserved, and it wouldn't show up on the Locations section of the Calendar on LDS.org. But I was responding to the original post, which specifically mentioned that the events for the other ward did indeed appear when the Location box for the building was checked.

Thanks to all of you for the feedback. Our situation is more along the lines of what russellhltn posted. Sitting in bishopric, we'd like to see at a glance where the openings are in the schedule in order to schedule something (a la what the bldg scheduler would do to find "holes"). Would be nice to have that in Tools. It would be more data downloaded to Tools and maybe it doesn't make the feature cut. But being able to see bldg availability without having to schedule a date/time only to find that it's not available...would be desirable. If the locations calendars aren't truly calendars, then whatever data is available when you check the bldg box in the online calendar...that's what we're after.

Unless I'm missing something, you can't schedule anything in LDS Tools, so you'd need to use the webpage for that anyway. And if you don't schedule it, there's no guarantee the building will remain open for your event.

It's a tad clunky, but I have used the web page on my phone. Using it on a tablet would be better.

I'm in favor of this as well; I'll submit a request in the feedback page. We often need to be able to see when a building is reserved/available and who reserved it while we're in the building or in a meeting. In fact this is a much more common need for many of us than seeing the events on the ward and stake calendars.

Thank you, Craig