The next time you log into Calendar it'll be just like hopping in a DeLorean and firing up the flux capacitor because now you can go back in time! Well maybe not just like that, but close. You can now create as well as edit the details, rooms, and resources for events in the past.
🤷♂️ What about approvals? Conflicts?
When it comes to creating a simple event with no rooms or resources you won't notice any difference in your workflow whether it's in the past or future—select any date, create an event. However, it's a bit different when booking rooms and resources. The main purpose of manipulating events in the past is to keep your calendar historically accurate so, for example, if your event last week used the Gym but you forgot to book it you can now hop into that event and add the Gym with no need for approval.
It gets more interesting with recurring events. If you book rooms or resources for an event that has instances in both the past and the future we'll auto-approve the requests for events in the past while still sending approval requests and checking for conflicts in the future!
We've updated the wording for these auto-approved requests in an event's Activity tab so you'll still be able to track down who booked things and how they were approved.
📚 Back it up
This update note could end right there, but where's the fun in that? Here's a little backstory:
The Planning Center product we now know as Calendar was previously named Resources. In those days, Resources only cared about managing upcoming booking requests and had no concern for events in the past. Even after we changed our name, that limitation came along with us as it was heavily ingrained in everything about our events on the technical side.
Fast forward to today where people are using Calendar for tracking all kinds of information and events across ministries, teams, and campuses. People are using the events in Calendar as a reference point for what they've done in the past to help plan for their future. Not to mention with a name like Calendar folks are going to expect you to do the same things as other calendaring products so we've received a ton of requests for this functionality.
So we put in the work of re-wiring events to make way for this change which doesn't only help you right now but paves the way for some really exciting and useful stuff in the future so stay tuned! 📺
Team Calendar,
Kayla, Greg, Taylor, Nick, Jesse, Jenna, and Evan