Calendar issues - Stake people,and Out of unit members need to see ward calendars,

[SingerGuy]

That is correct -- at present, no one (including stake leaders) can see a ward calendar other than their own.

However, the calendar's capabilities continue to improve. Regarding this particular issue, a Church employee posted this:

In the future, the new calendar will enable stake leaders to see calendars in wards other than their own

There's no definition of what "in the future" means, but given the context of that post, I assume that will be sometime this year.

Since the LUWS had this feature, not including it in the new version seems like such a major oversight to me. Why would the church take such a major step backward?

[aebrown]

Since the LUWS had this feature, not including it in the new version seems like such a major oversight to me. Why would the church take such a major step backward?

The development process of the new calendar is incremental. I wouldn't call this an oversight, but rather a feature that wasn't judged to be essential in the initial release. By the end of 2011, it sounds like all the important LUWS features will be implemented in the new calendar, plus much, much more.

If you love all the features of the LUWS calendar, you are welcome to use it through 2011. So I don't think it's accurate to call this a step backwards, since using the new calendar is entirely optional at this point. If LUWS is put out of service before this feature is implemented, then I would agree with your characterization, but until then, we need to make our decisions based on the good that comes with the new calendar vs. those things that might be missing or create other problems.