EQP and HP Group Leader Tools Access

I am the executive secretary for my ward and have access to all the additional tools for the ward (clerk resources, leader resources, etc.). It's great! Thank you!

With regards to access/permissions to these tools, I have yet to see a request for Elders Quorum Presidents or High Priests Group Leaders to gain access to these tools. Are there plans for permissions to be given for these callings in future releases or in the very near future? This access would be hugely beneficial for these leaders as their time and this information is just as valuable to them as the bishopric. Thank you for your attention to our question/request!

Eventually, all leaders will have access to the tools they need. But right now, the focus is on the tools needed for the bishopric and the stake and ward website functionalities. Access for priesthood and auxiliary leaders won't come for awhile.

As EQP I desperately need access to a tool that will allow me to organize home teaching and record home teaching visits. I don't have access the the clerks computer... I am ashamed to say that this limitation has had a profound impact on the effectiveness on my efforts to energize home hometeaching. Is LDSTech getting any closer to providing this functionality on lds.org?

Only the developers know for sure. But I don't see it on the list of community projects. I would concentrate on getting access to the computer.

dwsmith2 wrote:Eventually, all leaders will have access to the tools they need. But right now, the focus is on the tools needed for the bishopric and the stake and ward website functionalities. Access for priesthood and auxiliary leaders won't come for awhile.

Here is the confusion. The Bishop has access and so assumes that everyone else does as well. When I was a ward clerk I was continually asked to provide reports, etc... it was a normal part of the workflow to get reports for the Bishop, make sure he had the data, and whatever data he wanted the Ward Council to have. Now that the Bishop can pull this down himself, it changes the dynamics of how the organization works and eliminates the Bishop driving the workflow. New Bishops called after this was made available don't even remember the time it was all generated out of MLS. I do not believe the developers realized that the bits and pieces being rolled out would cause such an affect, but as a Stake Clerk now, I see this happenning all the time. Bishops assume everyone else has access because they do, and they wonder why everyone else has such a hard time getting access to the computer because he has been removed from that process.

Yes, this can be eliminated by a great process with a proactive clerk. Again, as a Ward Clerk, I proactively sent EVERY report a Ward Council member or auxiliary would need to function in their positions, I thought, why not get it to them so that I didn't have to share time on the computer. This NEVER worked for me, the leaders in my ward would request those reports anyway, and say, oh ya, you did send that to me.... yes, my reply, I sent it every month this year, and yet, you still are sitting here in the office printing out that report.

I realize it's strong language to use Never and Always, but in this ward, at least, it was true.

Here is a link to the Help file under MLS Migration, look at the goals.... they continue to apply only a limited number of people in a ward. From that document "The goal of the first MLS transition phase, which was released as part of lds.org in Oct 2010, is to provide leaders and clerks access to selected reports and information including:"

Notice the date, October 2010 is when this rolled out. It has been 5 quarters since then, and the advancement in the tool has been limited to: Submitting a Quarterly report online and editing phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses. This is the progress being made?

It's about being a service-driven organization. Understanding the affects on an organization when a solution is rolled out is vital, I believe we've missed in some key areas, that I hope to see rectified soon.

JohnShaw wrote:Notice the date, October 2010 is when this rolled out. It has been 5 quarters since then, and the advancement in the tool has been limited to: Submitting a Quarterly report online and editing phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses. This is the progress being made?

You seem to be taking quite a narrow view of "the tool" when you criticize the slow progress. I don't know exactly how the development work is organized, but I know that the limited development resources work on many portions of lds.org; for example, we see the same developers clearly being actively involved in the directory, calendar, and lesson schedules. Looking at lds.org as a whole, I see tremendous progress in the last 15 months. Their priorities may not match yours, but you are way off base if you think there is a Leader Resources team that doesn't work on any other projects and has only managed to implement the few things you mentioned in that time -- they have been busy with many other things.

If I were referring to all the development efforts in general, I would certainly agree with you, but as I have plainly focused on the Leader.lds.org portion which this thread is about, I believe the progress made over 5 quarters is extremely limited. No doubt there are other things being worked on. I believe there is a high priority the church is placing on time spent with family, all teaching focused on the family, reducing meeting time, reduce meetings in general, rolling out pvc, webcasts, all utilizing technology to save members time and money. Bishops are also being counseled not to do everything alone, more responsibility for operations of a ward are placed at the ward council level the release of the new handbook, new instructions for ward councils and the Leader.lds.org tool was not a coincidence in my opinion - and yet those leaders continue to wait in line at the clerks office on a regular basis. I don't think the priorities are aligned with the greater message behind the push. Personal Progress website is online, but the YW leaders can't get a list of phone numbers and email addresses for their young women, etc... it seems mis-aligned to me... maybe I am wrongly interpreting the intention behind using technology, but it feels right to me.

If I am totally wrong, prove it... Publish the roadmap, and priorities so we can all see (I don't need details and dates, just strategic initiatives, project priorities under those initiatives, etc... Until we share or have insight into this roadmap, my opinion that the development has been limited is just as valid as someone's opinion that the development is sufficient given all the other priorities. Assumptions are being made on both sides.

JohnShaw wrote:If I am totally wrong, prove it... Publish the roadmap, and priorities so we can all see (I don't need details and dates, just strategic initiatives, project priorities under those initiatives, etc... Until we share or have insight into this roadmap, my opinion that the development has been limited is just as valid as someone's opinion that the development is sufficient given all the other priorities. Assumptions are being made on both sides.

I'm not sure there exists a need to "prove" anything here. The development teams involved are working according to the resources and priorities we have been given. We definitely understand the desire you have for a completed set of functionality, virtually every one of us is a user of the system we are building.

I'm sure you realize the broad assumptions you are making about the availability and integration of the numerous systems that are used to provide the data that drives these applications. The web based UI you interact with in these applications may seem simple, but it is being driven by several, very different, back-end data systems. Before functionality can be provided through the application, there must be a back-end infrastructure to support it.

I don't understand the "it doesn't work the way I want, so prove to me you are working on something valuable" position.

jdcr256 wrote:I don't understand the "it doesn't work the way I want, so prove to me you are working on something valuable" position.

I did not mean to indicate that it was not working the way I want, I thought I plainly laid out my argument that it doesn't seem to follow the direction the brethren are driving in the local units, Bishops, Ward council, etc... Here's the quote "I don't think the priorities are aligned with the greater message behind the push" If one stops to consider the argument, and look at the 5 quarters worth of improvement in this specific tool, I believe the request to publish or share in some way a roadmap is a valid request (which btw was also not part of a response, though it is a good and valid request as well). If it is just plain much harder than we previously indicated, that's fine. If there is a requirement for CDOL to release new code, and for MLS to get to version x.x.x (which won't be until Nov 2011) before we can devote any more time to it, these are simple things for us to grasp, let us in on the plan.

Additionally, I do realize the broad assumptions I'm making, however, it is assumed that I don't understand the complexity behind the solutions, and I respectfully disagree. This board reaches a broad mix of experts in many fields, mine happens to be in infrastructure management and hosting services for data centers all over the globe, the complexity is not lost on some of us. Again, I would only comment that this can all easily be solved with information.

We have clients all over the world... we spend countless hours invested in roadmap discussions with our clients, it helps us improve our services, it helps them prepare for upcoming service enhancements and availability... I realize there are some counter-arguments here... it's not like church members can pick a different church's service offerings (wow would't that be an interesting thought), but that is a different part of the problem for another time.

I'll give you an example. We work with 2 different FM groups in our stake, we've gone through a lot of pain implementing a system recently for submitting work orders, etc... Many volunteer hours were spent on this, training, etc, if we had any idea that the FIR system was being built, and if we had a list of requirements that were being assembled, we may have made the decision to hold off the development of our system to wait for what the church is delivering or we could've easily modified ours so that when the new solution is rolled out, our system would transfer easily to the official one. Maybe what we came up with will transfer easily anyway, but with a little knowledge members of the church can be more strategic in what we do. We can be your partners in this, I would think that the church would want it that way.

I've said it in other posts, I don't think you'll find a greater advocate for all the church development efforts over the last 6-7 years, I've watched our online presence make rapid improvements, and been a strong advocate in our stake and other stakes for adopting the technologies to drive the use of these tools down to the least of these, please know I personally appreciate all your efforts.

Keep in mind that for the EQ/RS/HP Group leader to be supported, they'd want HT/VT tools. The problem is that data isn't at CHQ. It's only held in the local MLS system.

So the first thing that has to be done is create some place at CHQ for all this data to sync to and expand the current MLS send/receive process to include this. Since you probably need data to flow both ways, you'd need find a way to resolve the issues such as when both the on-line and MLS have been changed since the last sync. Only then can you go and start developing the on-line interface.

And that's just the complexity I know about.

That's exactly right, <crossing fingers> this is already in the works. We will also have to prepare them to be disappointed that they can't report private data about families in an online reporting tool. We already know that was not approved over privacy concerns, though you have to be a fairly early member of the boards to remember it... maybe a ...<broken record>

You should check out LDSplan.com. They have built a great resource for home and visiting teaching. It has helped our ward greatly. It's a free service and they also have apps for apple and android.