Suggestions for using the new LDS.org Calendar for Auxilaries

I recently began work on our 2011 Young Women’s calendar using the new system. After some tinkering, I decided we needed 4 calendars: one public YW calendar, one for the lesson schedule, one for presidency items, and one for birthdays. Each of these has different editors and viewer settings so that personal information stays private, but leaders have access to the tools they need.

You can use these ideas to apply to many different auxiliaries:

Young Women Calendar Example

The “Public” Young Women calendar

This calendar is the location where we store events intended for the entire unit to see — especially parents. This is where events like Temple Trips, Camp, Mutual, etc., belong.

Viewership is public. Editors are the YW presidency and secretary.

The Young Women presidency calendar

This calendar contains items that the YW presidency needs to operate but that the entire ward does not have an interest in. It includes presidency meeting dates and the rotating schedule for mutual. I also include other dates — like the date a Beehive attends YW for the first time — on this calendar. I also included the rotation of which presidency member teaches combined YW on the first Sunday of each month.

This calendar was particularly interesting to create. I used our mutual planning scrabble board to create a rotating schedule of who conducts and who is in charge of activities for each week of the year. For example, in our unit, the first Sunday is joint YM/YW. The second, fourth, and fifth (where applicable) weeks are class activities. The third week is combined YW. Every other month the conducting rotation changes between YM classes and YW classes. Each class gets a turn to conduct every 6 months. For your information there are a total of 18 possible weekly combinations.

I was able to create a perpetual calendar for this complicated schedule in this way:

January
- WEEK ONE Priests conduct mutual opening exercises ; Priests in charge of mutual; calendar item repeats every SIX months.
- WEEK TWO, FOUR, FIVE Priests conduct mutual opening exercises; calendar items repeats every six months.
- WEEK THREE Priests conduct mutual opening exercises; Mia Maids in charge of combined YW; calendar item repeats every six months.

I continued setting weekly schedules as described above through June. With the 6 month rotation, this schedule will be perpetual for us.

I’ve also set a schedule for the combined RS/YW opening exercises. This one was easy:

- JANUARY set one calendar item that read "Combined RS/YW opening exercises - RS conducts" and set it to repeat every two months on the second Sunday.
- FEBRUARY set one calendar item that read "Combined RS/YW opening exercises - YW conducts" and set it to repeat every two months on the second Sunday.

These items will also be perpetual

Viewership is limited to the YW presidency and secretary, YM presidency and secretary, YW class presidencies and secretaries, and the Bishopric.

Young Women Birthdays

This calendar contains a list of birthdays of the young women in all 3 classes. I also included upcoming Beehives’ birth dates on this calendar.

Viewership is limited to the YW presidency and secretary, YW class presidencies and secretaries, and bishopric.

Young Women Lesson Schedule

This calendar has the weekly schedule of lesson assignments and song assignments. I hope that leaders will use it when planning their mutual activities to reinforce the Sunday lessons, especially as relates to Personal Progress experiences from the Resource Guide.

Viewership is limited to the YW presidency and secretary, YW class presidencies and secretaries, and bishopric.

Conclusion

The most frustrating part of the experience is the “create a calendar and then wait for it to be approved” part. Once the calendar was set up though, the process was pretty simple. It took a few tries to figure out the calendar rotations, but now that the items are scheduled it will be simple for leaders who come after to alter to their needs.

I did notice a weird bug when moving an item from one calendar to another that causes the calendar to draw items twice. Don’t freak out if you run into it, just refresh the browser window.

One thing that’s key is making sure that clerks set people to their correct callings in MLS so they have access to their calendars for viewing and editing.

The new calendar system at LDS.org is great! When all its tools are utilized, the flexibility of the calendaring system is sure to help leaders coordinate their efforts more effectively.