Scenario: A workforce training organizations has several office staff members as well as a roster of trainers. The staff manage scheduling and other administrative duties. The trainers conduct various sessions and training events for client companies, either on-site or via virtual training sessions.
Scheduling factors
Office staff need different calendar access than trainers.
Office staff need to see availability for all trainers, see their scheduled sessions, and be able to add, change, or remove events as they handle scheduling.
Trainers need to see only their own scheduled training assignments. For example, Trainer Alina needs to see the training events assigned to her, and all the corresponding information.
Trainers also need the ability update their availability on the calendar, but they shouldn't be able to remove scheduled events created by the staff.
Trainers need all the information for any training session on their schedule, including travel information, forms or documents, handouts for the session, etc.
Calendar structure
Sub-calendars
Sub-calendars represent people, primarily, with one sub-calendar for each staff member and each trainer. There is also one set of sub-calendars to represent categories; in this case, different types of training. Finally, there's a US Holidays iCalendar feed.
Folders
The sub-calendars are organized in folders for Staff, Trainers, and Training.
Event fields
Built-in event fields:
Event comments are enabled by default and visible to all users.
Event signups are disabled by default as they're not used for most training events. The office staff can enable them on individual events as needed.
The Who field is moved below the Description and renamed to "Partner Organization."
The Attachments field is activated.
Custom fields:
A single-line text field is added below the Where field. If the training session is virtual, that's indicated in the Where field and the link is added to the text field below.
Office staff members have full Modify access to all the Trainer (individual) and Training (type) sub-calendars.
Each staff member also has full Modify access to their own sub-calendar and Read-only access to the other staff members' sub-calendars.
Trainers
Each trainer has Modify-my-events access to their own sub-calendar. So Trainer Alina can see only her own sub-calendar. She can add her own events to the sub-calendar, and modify or delete any events that she creates. She can view events added by the staff, and see all the event details, but she cannot modify or remove those events.
How it works
Here’s how this workforce trainer scheduling system works:
When there’s a requested training session, a staff scheduler adds it to a Training sub-calendar.
They add all the notes, instructions, session details and documentation to the scheduled event.
Then, they switch to Scheduler view to see the availability of trainers.
They assign the session to an available trainer’s calendar and indicate the assigned trainer in the custom field as well. The event will now show as striped for office staff, as it's assigned to multiple sub-calendars (both the Training type and the assigned Trainer).
The assigned trainer has immediate access to all the details and files for the session. If any details change and the staff updates the session info, the trainer’s calendar will show the updated information too.
More tips and ideas
You could give trainers the option to request unscheduled/open training sessions:
Create a custom field with a status of "Assigned" or "Open."
Give the trainers read-only access to the Training type sub-calendars.
Trainers can then sort all the training sessions by the custom field, view any open sessions, and leave a comment on any session they want requesting that assignment.
Custom fields can also be used to indicate any specialization, certification, or other requirement for specific training events.
Trainers can print any of the attached files, if they want to provide a physical handout or have a reference sheet.
See also a training calendar set up for a different scenario (a business providing its own training session in multiple locations).