Ward Scheduler idea

[nathangg]

Hello,

I personally love the new calendar, but we are having concerns amongst the wards in our building (3 wards, 1 building). One ward is having a hard time converting/convincing their members of the new way of scheduling and they prefer the old way (everyone calls one person).

I've spent time thinking about this and I came up with a solution, but I wanted to see if I was missing something.

So instead of setting up multiple calendar editors in this ward, I'm going to suggest they set up 1 person to have permissions to ALL the ward calendars and this person becomes (via assignment or calling) the "Ward Scheduler".

Anyone in the ward that wants to schedule something contacts the "Ward Scheduler" and the ward scheduler puts the event on the correct ward calendar with the correct resources. If there is a conflict, the ward scheduler contacts the other event creator and works it out. If they can't work it out, they contact the building scheduler.

This idea would allow the 3 wards in our building to use the new calendar, but it would also allow this one ward to use the calendar in a way they wanted... events would be created, resources would be booked, people could subscribe to calendars, notifications would be sent, synchronization would occur... it's just that in this one ward everyone would call one person, and in the other wards we'd continue have other people be calendar editors.

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This seemed like a good way to get the new features of the calendar, but allow the ward to use the old methodology. I know that there isn't a standard calling for "Ward Scheduler", so a clerk would need to give this person edit privileges on all the calendars... so that would have to manually maintained... but the maintenance would be minimal once the permissions were set up.

Does this idea sound okay? Am I missing something?

Thanks~!

[aebrown]

That sounds like it would work. The key points required to successfully use the new calendar are:

• Each ward does need at least one calendar. It doesn't work to have a "building calendar" because the calendars are visible and synchronize only at the ward or stake level.
• The actual locations need to be booked by using events. That's the only way to reliably avoid conflicts.

Your proposal meets both these criteria, so I think it's a good starting place. Once people see the benefits, they may start asking for some additional calendar editor capabilities, and you'll have a nice evolutionary path forward from this simple starting point.

One option to consider for the "Ward Scheduler": if you give that person the standard calling of "Website Administrator" then they will be a default administrator for the calendar and can maintain and edit all the ward calendars. Or an existing default administrator could manually add them as a calendar administrator (which lets them do everything a default administrator can do except for add/remove other administrators). Either way, you can give that assignment to a man or woman, and they'll be able to do everything they need to do without coming back to beg help from an administrator for a variety of functions not available to editors.

[nathangg]

• Each ward does need at least one calendar. It doesn't work to have a "building calendar" because the calendars are visible and synchronize only at the ward or stake l

Yes, good point. I'll make that clear when I explain this to the ward. (In fact, if they are okay with it, I'm going to suggest create a calendar for each auxiliary so that people can subscribe to the calendars that apply to them)

• The actual locations need to be booked by using events. That's the only way to reliably avoid conflicts.

Yes, another important part of this. I'll make sure they know to use events with actual resources and not just pick "Other Location" and type something in.

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Thank you!

[russellhltn]

In fact, if they are okay with it, I'm going to suggest create a calendar for each auxiliary so that people can subscribe to the calendars that apply to them

A good point. If everything is on one calendar, then members are not likely to sync it to their own calendar. So a proper selection of calendars is a good idea. One per auxiliary is probably a starting point, but you may find that some don't do anything while others many need more then one. For example, you may need a "RS Leadership" one for the RS Leaders to schedule their presidency meetings - which would be separate from the "RS General" for the RS members.