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Helping the Agent Stake use the e-calendar

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 7:50 am
by NPAlemany
Our stake has two units that meet in the stake center of an adjoining stake. Our neighboring stake has been very slow to embrace technology, they are still using paper to schedule their building and are still assigning units specific days of the week for their activities. Weekend events require our units to make a written request for a Saturday event and this takes several days to get a response, which is an improvement because it used to take a week or more to find out if the requested Saturday was available.

Our stake on the other hand has embraced the new technology, our stake center is busy with numerous units and the stake all happily using the building on a single given Saturday and no one gets in the other's way. Our two units that meet in the neighboring stake center yearn for the ability to do what the rest of our stake is doing.

As Stake Calendaring Specialist, I am aware that this "New" system for scheduling events in the building is a mind blowing concept. In discussions with what is my counterpart in the neighboring stake, I can see I need to take baby steps to help them enter the brave new world of the e-calendar. They have suggested that perhaps these two wards from our stake could have "viewing" rights to but not "viewing and editing" rights to the building they are in. I'm not even sure if that is possible. The neighboring stake is worried about losing control of their building and not being able to schedule things freely at the last minute.

Any suggestions you could offer that might help with this transition for our neighboring stake would be welcome. Have any of you needed to baby step a neighboring stake in using the e-calendar? Thanks!

Re: Helping the Agent Stake use the e-calendar

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 9:11 am
by aebrown
nancypalemany wrote:They have suggested that perhaps these two wards from our stake could have "viewing" rights to but not "viewing and editing" rights to the building they are in. I'm not even sure if that is possible.
It is indeed possible for a stake Calendar administrator in the agent stake to configure that building in their LDS.org calendar so that it does not check the box "This location can be scheduled by Wards and Stakes". If they do that, then only the building scheduler will be able to add events for that building, but as long as they also assign your stake's two ward (and the stake) units to that location, then you'll be able to see the events taking place there.
nancypalemany wrote:The neighboring stake is worried about losing control of their building and not being able to schedule things freely at the last minute.
That requires a change in mindset to give up some control. When you've had absolute control it's easy to think that all sorts of horrible things will happen if you teach the calendar editors correct principles and let them govern themselves, but every stake that I've heard of which has actually made the transition is happy with the new system. In any case, you're wise to encourage them to take baby steps to help them realize the benefits. Taking the steps I outlined above might help them start to change their mindset.

Re: Helping the Agent Stake use the e-calendar

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 11:17 am
by russellhltn
nancypalemany wrote:Our stake has two units that meet in the stake center of an adjoining stake. Our neighboring stake has been very slow to embrace technology,
I'd suggest brining your stake president in on this to work with the adjoining stake president.

nancypalemany wrote:and are still assigning units specific days of the week for their activities.
Note that they can still do that via restrictions.

Re: Helping the Agent Stake use the e-calendar

Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:33 pm
by jonesrk
One idea would be to have them setup the building and give your wards the restrictions for their nights. Then if they block everything else out with restrictions for no one they can continue to use the paper system for weekends and other times, but they would be able to use the calendar system for their own nights.