Managing Locations and Rooms

Please refer to this article for the latest changes to Calendar.

Locations are managed at the stake level by stake calendar administrators. Calendars for Church-owned buildings are automatically created. A building calendar is automatically created when a newly finished building starts to be occupied. Never create a location calendar for a Church-owned building or you will end up with duplicate calendars. Many stakes have made this mistake, and instructions can be found below to solve this problem. Also, never use a stake or ward calendar as a building calendar.

Stakes may have other locations in addition to buildings, such as a pavilion, a ball field, or a recreational property that can be scheduled. You can create a custom location that can be scheduled by wards within your stake as well as by wards from other stakes.

The calendar system uses information from the Physical Facilities system to understand which buildings are assigned to stakes and which wards attend the buildings. When Physical Facilities makes updates to their system, it may take up to two days to be reflected in the calendar system.

Location and Rooms Page

For stake calendar administrators, select the Locations and Rooms option from the calendar gear menu to manage locations. The locations that can be scheduled by your stake and wards are listed on the Locations and Rooms page.

The first section of this page lists the locations managed by your stake.

• Assigned by Physical Facilities. These are the buildings assigned by Physical Facilities for your stake to manage. If a building calendar is not enabled for scheduling, you will see a message displayed by it. These buildings are initially named by Physical Facilities but should be renamed by you to reflect how your local members refer to the building. Wards from other stakes may be attending your building. That is common and supported in the calendar system. All wards that use your building have scheduling rights automatically, and, by policy, those rights cannot be revoked. If this list is wrong, you should contact your Physical Facilities group.
• Custom Locations. If you have any custom locations created, they are also listed in the section under your stake. With this list you can see clearly if you have custom locations that are incorrectly being used for buildings and should be migrated to the Physical Facilities building calendar.

The next section of this page lists the locations managed by other stakes. At least one unit in your stake has scheduling rights to these locations.

• Assigned by Physical Facilities. These are the buildings attended by at least one ward. If the list is wrong, your Physical Facilities group needs to update their building assignments.
• Assigned by Another Stake. These are the buildings that another stake has authorized at least one of your wards to schedule but that the ward does not attend (they may have attended in the past). If this list is wrong, the other stake needs to be contacted to update their scheduling rights for that building.
• Custom Locations. These are the custom locations that the other stake has authorized at least one of your wards to schedule. If any of these custom locations are Church-owned buildings, the other stake needs to migrate events to the proper Physical Facilities building calendar. As wards move in or out of the building, no automatic scheduling rights updates are made to custom calendars.

Location Details Page

When you click on a location name, you are taken to the Location Details page. In order for a building to be scheduled, it needs to be set up from this page and have scheduling turned on. Important steps include:

• Location Name. Rename the building to a name your local members know it by. Never name a building “Stake Center.” Include your stake name or initials in the name. If buildings are shared between stakes (or shared by mistake) and both stakes have buildings named “Stake Center,” members will not be able to tell them apart and will show up to the wrong building.
• Availability. Check the box for “This Location Can Be Scheduled.”
• Rooms and Equipment. Identify the rooms or equipment (like a television monitor) that you want to be scheduled in the building. Use names for the rooms that the local members know them by or that match signs outside the rooms. Avoid adding rooms that are used only during the normal Sunday meeting block and don’t need to be scheduled. For a cultural hall room with dividers, consider if you need to schedule those separately or always all together as “Cultural Hall.” Custom room names can be renamed at any time, but to change the name of a default room would require moving all the events to a custom room.
• Units Who Can Schedule but Do Not Meet Here for Church. If you do not want all the wards in your stake to schedule this building, turn off the appropriate ward’s slider. You may have a case where there is a ward outside your stake, not attending the building, that needs scheduling rights to the building. You can manually add that ward.
• Units Who Can Schedule and Meet Here for Church. You cannot change this section. These are the wards attending the building assigned by Physical Facilities. If the list is wrong, contact your Physical Facilities group to update their records.

When you have made your updates, click the Save button.

Fixing Custom Building Locations

Many stakes have incorrectly created duplicate building calendars by creating a custom location for a Church-owned building. Once they notice their mistake, they often disable the Physical Facilities building calendar and continue to use the custom building calendar. This can cause confusion over time and often results in calls to Church headquarters when wards move between buildings, when new wards are created, and when stakes are realigned. For custom locations, the automatic scheduling rights for units will not work as wards move in and out of the building. Stake leaders change callings, and new leaders are stuck wondering why these custom building calendars were created.

These are the steps for a stake calendar administrator to migrate a custom building calendar to its proper Physical Facilities building calendar:

1. Identify the proper Physical Facilities calendar for the building. The address for the building is displayed in Location Details. Select that building, and select the same rooms as the duplicate custom building calendar. Assign yourself temporarily as a building scheduler. Turn scheduling on for this building.
2. Rename the duplicate custom building calendar to something like “DO NOT SCHEDULE,” but keep the scheduling checkbox checked. Make yourself a building scheduler for this location as well.
3. Go to your main calendar, and only show the events for the “DO NOT SCHEDULE” location. For each future event associated with the custom location, edit the event, note the rooms that are scheduled for that event, change the location to the proper building, reselect the rooms for the event, and save.
4. Once all the future events have been moved to the proper building calendar, you can delete the “DO NOT SCHEDULE” custom location.
5. Check the details of the remaining building calendar to make sure the proper wards have scheduling rights.

New Stakes

For a newly created stake, the Locations and Rooms page should be reviewed to make sure Physical Facilities has properly assigned the correct buildings to the new stake and assigned the right wards to those buildings. The calendar is updated automatically based on Physical Facilities updates.

New Wards

When a ward is created, Physical Facilities should assign the ward to the correct building. The ward then automatically has rights to schedule that building if the stake is not using a custom calendar for the building. Check the location details to make sure the new ward is listed.

Wards Moving to a Different Building

To assign your ward to a different building, your Physical Facilities group needs to update their records in a system called FMAT. The ward then automatically receives rights to schedule the new building. Ward calendar editors should migrate their future events to the new building.

Wards Moving to a Different Stake

Once the Boundaries and Leaders group at Church headquarters updates the Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders (CDOL), the ward will be assigned to its new stake. The ward receives automatic access to its new stake’s calendars. Those calendars automatically appear in the left pane. The stake calendar administrators for both stakes should check the details of the location the ward attends to make sure the ward appears correctly.

New Buildings

For a new building, Physical Facilities must perform two steps: assign the building to the correct stake and assign the correct wards to the new building in their system called FMAT. The occupancy date in their records must also have been passed. If the steps are performed correctly, you will see the building listed on the Locations and Rooms page in the correct list; in the Location Details you will see the correct wards assigned to the building. You will need to set up the new building’s rooms, building scheduler, and so on. See above.

A Building Switching to a Different Stake

When the decision is made to assign a different stake as the agent stake for a building, Physical Facilities updates their records accordingly in their system called FMAT. The receiving stake will then have edit rights for the building on the Locations and Rooms page. A new building scheduler that resides in the receiving stake needs to be assigned in Location Details. You should review which units can schedule the building.

If a custom location was mistakenly used for this building by the other stake, the custom building calendar cannot be moved to the receiving stake. The receiving stake should set up the proper Physical Facilities building calendar, and all future events will need to be edited to move to the proper building.