class specific events

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cawilson
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class specific events

#1

Post by cawilson »

Do class or organization specific events exist?

For example, if I know that the 8-11 year old classes will need to teach the priesthood preparation lesson in early February, can I put that event in to push the remaining classes up, and then place the priesthood preparation lesson on top of that event? Will that event also move lessons for Gospel Doctrine or Relief Society?
jdlessley
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#2

Post by jdlessley »

cawilson wrote:Do class or organization specific events exist?
I have run across a couple. Your example is another.
cawilson wrote:For example, if I know that the 8-11 year old classes will need to teach the priesthood preparation lesson in early February, can I put that event in to push the remaining classes up, and then place the priesthood preparation lesson on top of that event?
No, it will not work as you have described. An event created after a class is created will replace the lesson on the event date. Alternatively, if the recommended procedure to have an event postpone lessons is followed additional steps will be required to remove the event from those classes that should not be affected. An event cannot be replaced by a lesson without either deleting the event or deselecting the class from the list of affected classes in the event edit page (this is the same as deleting the event for this class). Deleting an event for a class created using the recommended procedure to postpone lessons will only move lessons postponed back.
cawilson wrote:Will that event also move lessons for Gospel Doctrine or Relief Society?
Following the recommended procedure will move lessons for all classes created after the event. I cannot fully test a method I think will work because it is so late in the year and a good number of classes have been customized and it would take an excessive amount of work to return them to their current state. But my explanation below may provide a solution for the 2013 year.

Your example creates a difficult situation that can be managed in one of two methods. Priesthood preparation is a lesson but does not come from the list of available manuals. It can therefore be added as a lesson or as an event.

The first method, adding it as a lesson, will require manual editing of the class. To postpone lessons will require editing every lesson following the inserted priesthood preparation lesson. This can can be tedious and time consuming if the inserted lesson is in February.

The second method is to use the recommended procedure to have an event postpone scheduled lessons. Adding the priesthood preparation lesson as an event using the recommended procedure to postpone lessons will require additional steps to remove the event from other classes that should not be affected.

Here are the steps to get an event to affect only specific classes and have lessons postponed and not replaced. Note that no classes can exist before beginning. Also note that only an administrator can create or edit events.
  1. Create all known events.
  2. Create all classes.
  3. Edit each event that will not affect all classes. In this example it would be Priesthood Preparation.
  4. Deselect/Uncheck those classes the event should not affect. In this example only the 8-11 year old class should be checked. Note that all classes will be checked when the event is created before any classes are created.
  5. Save the event.
Adding a class back in (rechecking the class in the event edit screen) after following the procedures above will cause the event to replace the lesson on the event date.

Hopefully there will be a release before 2013 that will provide the flexibility to create events or add lessons at any point throughout the year with the option of either replacing lessons or postponing lessons.
JD Lessley
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cawilson
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#3

Post by cawilson »

Thanks for the response. Sorry, flying blind here (not an admin right now) and so I hope my questions aren't too juvenile.

If you can deselect a class from within an event, that would certainly seem to solve this and some other problems (ward conference affecting the lesson schedule for eq or yw but not primary or ss), but does that mean the class must already exist before the event is created? If so, what happens when you delete and recreate the class in order to populated it correctly? Is it only partially deleted in that the event remembers whether it was selected when it is recreated? And what about classes created after the fact: do events that have some events checked and not others automatically include the new class or not?

For example: the event 'primary program practice' is checked for only the 12 classes in my ward which it affects. Then, in May, the Bishopric decides we need a Sunday School class for the 13 out of school ysa's who just came home or just finished high school. Assuming the event overlaps the class (I don't think it does in reality this year), do I need to create the new class and have an admin deselect it from the primary event before I can schedule the lesson for that day?

If so, I just want to be able to plan ahead.
jdlessley
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#4

Post by jdlessley »

You asked some good questions. There are a lot of issues that are yet to be programmed for future release(s) to address the relationship between classes and events. Some of those issues have been discussed in other threads. Until the solutions to these issues get rolled in to some future Lesson Schedules release we will have to deal with the limitations that exist. One limitation that we have to deal with is the introduction of events or even new classes after everything has been set up at the beginning of the year. The only solution in many cases is to manually edit lessons for classes.
cawilson wrote:If you can deselect a class from within an event, that would certainly seem to solve this and some other problems (ward conference affecting the lesson schedule for eq or yw but not primary or ss), but does that mean the class must already exist before the event is created?
The procedure described in the tip forManaging Events is a special one time procedure that is accomplished at the beginning of the year before any classes or any events exist. It is a programming work-around for events to postpone lessons for classes rather than replace them. After this initial procedure is completed and there is any editing of classes or events, the capability for automatic lesson postponement is lost. If a new class is added later you must edit all appropriate events to have those events replace lessons. Note that at this point events can only replace lessons. Manual editing of a class lesson schedule is required to add in the replaced lesson.

There is one exception to recover the postponing feature for certain events. If any event(s) will affect all classes, including a class being added, the event(s) can be edited with "All" checked under "Check which of the following classes below will be replaced by this event" (Do not uncheck any classes that are already checked.) and the new class added. The event(s) will now appear in the class schedule with lessons postponed.
cawilson wrote:...what happens when you delete and recreate the class in order to populated it correctly?
I am guessing "populate it correctly" means that you would like the event to postpone the lesson schedule so that no lesson is replaced. This will not happen here. Unless you start from the beginning by deleting all classes the automatic postponing feature will not be available. As explained above, the postponing feature is a one time capability with the noted exception.

cawilson wrote:...do events that have some events checked and not others automatically include the new class or not?
No. When adding a class after the initial setup will require editing appropriate events to add the new class in the list of selected classes in which the event will replace the lesson on the event date. Note I said the event will replace the lesson and not postpone the lesson. You must manually edit the lesson schedule to include the replaced lesson and push out the remaining lessons one lesson at a time.
cawilson wrote:For example: the event 'primary program practice' is checked for only the 12 classes in my ward which it affects. Then, in May, the Bishopric decides we need a Sunday School class for the 13 out of school ysa's who just came home or just finished high school. Assuming the event overlaps the class (I don't think it does in reality this year), do I need to create the new class and have an admin deselect it from the primary event before I can schedule the lesson for that day?
In this scenario the class will be added and then any events that will affect the class must be edited to have the class included in the list of classes for which the events will replace the lessons on the event dates. To maintain a lesson schedule without any lessons being lost because of the event replacements will require manual editing to add the lessons back in and move the remaining lessons out.
JD Lessley
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Mikerowaved
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#5

Post by Mikerowaved »

jdlessley wrote:There is one exception to recover the postponing feature for certain events. If any event(s) will affect all classes, including a class being added, the event(s) can be edited with "All" checked under "Check which of the following classes below will be replaced by this event" (Do not uncheck any classes that are already checked.) and the new class added. The event(s) will now appear in the class schedule with lessons postponed.
I just added the Brigham City Temple Dedication event for Sept 23, for which we will not be holding any other block meetings that day. I tried to follow your procedure, but it still just replaced every scheduled lesson for that day, rather than postponing. So at this point, are my options to retouch every lesson schedule by hand?
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jdlessley
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#6

Post by jdlessley »

Mikerowaved wrote:I just added the Brigham City Temple Dedication event for Sept 23, for which we will not be holding any other block meetings that day. I tried to follow your procedure, but it still just replaced every scheduled lesson for that day, rather than postponing. So at this point, are my options to retouch every lesson schedule by hand?
The exception I gave was to recover the postponing feature for an event that already existed for newly added classes. This does not work when adding a new event. When an event is added after classes have been created the postpone feature is not available. The events must be added/created before the classes for the postpone feature to work. An event created after the classes have been created requires manual editing of class scheduled lessons one date at a time to recover a replaced lesson or postpone lessons.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I was addressing scenarios like the one cawilson gave about a class being created later in the year for returning young single adults and having the events like general conference that affect all classes also affect the new class for the YSAs with the lessons being postponed after the general conference date. (I only used the general conference event as a known event that affects all classes. I is not the event to which cawilson was referring.)
JD Lessley
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preston.baxter
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#7

Post by preston.baxter »

Mikerowaved wrote:So at this point, are my options to retouch every lesson schedule by hand?

That's exactly what I had to do when we had a "Special Stake Conference" that pre-empted regular meetings. Would have been nice to have an option to either replace currently-scheduled lessons, or to move them all "down" by 1 week.
Thanks,
Preston Baxter
Highland Ward
Sandy Utah Granite South Stake
cawilson
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#8

Post by cawilson »

I second that it would be nice. Until we get coders and project managers to work on it though, content to just know how it works.

So, to recap and make sure I understood, it sounds like new events are not auto-default to affect all classes, and must be specifically set that way by the admin. And when I create a new class, lessons can only be postponed if the admin set the event to affect all and if it was created prior to me creating the class. Any event created after the class has been created can overwrite but not postpone a lesson in my class, and then only if the admin selects that class as one that the event should affect.

Is that correct?
jdlessley
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#9

Post by jdlessley »

cawilson wrote:So, to recap and make sure I understood, it sounds like new events are not auto-default to affect all classes, and must be specifically set that way by the admin.
That is correct, but only as long as the recommended procedure is followed. When an event is added (created) there is a section titled "Check which of the following classes below will be replaced by this event". The first two options are "All" and "None". Following these two options are listed each of the existing classes with check boxes. The administrator adding the event then can select the appropriate classes for which that event will affect. "All" is provided as a convenience to selecting each class individually. It does not affect the selection of any class that is added after the event was added.

cawilson wrote:And when I create a new class, lessons can only be postponed if the admin set the event to affect all and if it was created prior to me creating the class.
Not exactly. Lessons will only be automatically postponed if the events are added (created) before any classes are added (created). For the situation where an event was created before any classes and the event has not been edited to change what classes it affects after any class is added then an administrator must edit the event to check the "All" option before the new class added. The bolded portion is important. If an event has been edited to remove just one class from the list of affected classes then checking "All" will not recover the automatic postponing feature.

Any event added after any class is added will not have the automatic postponing feature at any time.

I have not been able to test whether this recovery of the automatic postponing feature will work if someone other than the administrator adds the new class. It is possible that the administrator must be the one to add the new class immediately after editing the event as described. The reason I think this is the case is that both actions, editing the event and adding the class, must be completed using the same log-on session. If some one has success with someone other than the administrator adding the class after editing the event it would be helpful for them to post that in this thread.
cawilson wrote:Any event created after the class has been created can overwrite but not postpone a lesson in my class, and then only if the admin selects that class as one that the event should affect.
This is correct.
JD Lessley
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cawilson
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#10

Post by cawilson »

I hope you don’t mind me saying, but that sounds like a lot of work, for a single admin to have to put in every event and every class that is affected by any one of those events in a single log in. In my ward, we currently have 13 primary classes, 7 Sunday school classes, Gospel Principles, 3 Young Men’s Quorum classes, 3 Young Women’s classes, Elder’s Quorum, Relief Society, and High Priest’s Group classes. That is 30 Sunday classes going on right now, and this isn’t the biggest ward I have lived in. We don’t even have temple prep or teacher improvement running right now. Even if it doesn’t all have to be done in the same login, that is a lot of work for the admin, and we don’t even have anyone called to website in our ward.

Now, I know that we just have the option to not use the tool… but it is so cool! We could also do each class individually, but some of our auxiliaries aren’t as computer savvy, and updating 52 lessons instead of letting them auto-postpone would sound daunting to them. So, even though this would be a lot of work, maybe I can suggest a change for when you get the resources and workforce to be able to take it on:

My idea would be removing ward-wide events entirely and using a system where lessons are in a certain order (integer index corresponding to week number). Then, there are also class-specific events which 'fill in' their respective weeks before the lessons are populated, so that no lesson can display on that Sunday. Then, a stake or ward admin could populate and maintain a list of 'suggested' events for use by class creators/maintainers, which list would display with checkboxes so I could choose which events apply to each class when creating and updating that class. I could then add my own class-specific events as well, and then choose whether to select those too. When I am finished choosing which events I want to select, I can hit a 'refresh' or 'save' button to fill in the lessons into any days that don't have events and update the data in the database table that contains the actual dates and lesson details (as well as any other fields like notes or others that might be added for future functionality). Not exactly sure how to solve problems like lessons out of order (priesthood prep/Easter/Christmas) without an option to change the index, though. This would be even more work, but maybe each manual could be edited so that the special lessons correspond to certain events that you can choose when creating the class. For example, when I tell it that I want to do the 9 year old class, choosing the manual would create a check box called ‘Easter’, and I could check it and then fill in the date of Easter this year. Or maybe something simpler: after I create the Easter event and the class year populates, I would then go back and edit the Easter event to link to the Easter lesson.

Just trying to be helpful. Now that I understand how the tool works in its current form, I will get my classes finished, and let everyone know if I find any shortcuts.
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