Hi everyone!While not strictly a database question, I'm sure lots of you will have ideas. We have an issue with calendars. We have office holiday calendars, performance calendars, production/technical calendars, event calendars, artistic calendars, in/out of office calendars... it's like Forrest Gump naming how many kinds of shrimp there are. We have that many calendars. And some people will print them out in Excel and work from those, some insist on trying to smush everything into outlook, some use their own personal creations... which means updates don't necessarily go out to everyone that needs them, changes don't get communicated, etc, etc. Does anyone know of a (free or lower cost) "Calendar Central" that can kind of pull all of these together? Maybe with toggles to show "these three calendars" over a 90 day span, or something like that? While outlook is fine for personal daily calendars, once we start adding in all of the other ones, it gets too unwieldy.
And while I'm thinking of it, is there any kind of wiki for adjacent software/apps that people find helpful? should we start one?
thanks!Kathleen
Kathleen Smith said: it's like Forrest Gump naming how many kinds of shrimp there are. We have that many calendars.
Us, too; and, I imagine, most orgs. We have a "one true calendar" conversation every few years, and each time we find that no such product exists. The latest complexity is that whatever it is will have to viewable/updateable from our phones. [sigh]
Nothing much to add but very interested to hear what folks are using. (Mostly we also outlook-smush.) I feel like I'm often having discussions and looking for tools, software, and processes to consolidate all the non-Tessi data. And given differences and habits across departments, you end up hopping all over (google docs, sharepoint, slack, etc etc)
Kathleen Smith said:wiki for adjacent software/apps that people find helpful? should we start one?
Love this idea.
We just need the equivalent of a One Ring but for calendars. How hard can it be? :-)
We've been using Propared at Studio Theatre and it seems to be serving us well! Our GM includes a snapshot of the calendar every week in the weekly updates email. I'm able to import performances from Tessitura as well into it, and then adjust as needed in Propared.
This is intriguing. Would you mind if I possibly contact you in the next few weeks with questions?
Kathleen Smith said:How hard can it be? :-)
:-D
Hi Kathleen,
I don't think we have one mega calendar with everything in it, but we do use ArtsVision to manage all of our events and locations at the Center. It is our one calendar of truth for things going on at the center. As our campus planning/ops manager likes to say, if it is not in ArtsVision, it doesn't exist. Otherwise we use Outlook for meetings and conference rooms, as well as personal planning, etc.
Sean
We switched to Propared for a year or two but then switched back again to Outlook because Propared wasn't doing what we wanted. We now have an outlook account set up for each bookable space in our building, so each has it's own calendar and you can invite the space to meetings if you are having a meeting in that space. Or invite a theatre if you are doing tech or a performance in that space. They are set up so they automatically accept meeting invites unless they are already booked. I didn't set it up so don't have the specifics of how that was accomplished, but can put you in touch if that's of interest.
Chris Jensen said:The latest complexity is that whatever it is will have to viewable/updateable from our phones. [sigh]
I think it's a truism that anyone with the authority to change major events in a calendar shouldn't be trusted to actually enter the changes.
"And it is updateable from your phone! Just email the changes to help@....."
Gawain Lavers said:I think it's a truism that anyone with the authority to change major events in a calendar shouldn't be trusted to actually enter the changes.
Agreed, though limiting who can make changes will cause someone to create a new calendar somewhere... and a year or two later it will be discovered that dozens of people are using it... and the one source of truth will have moved yet again... [head explodes]