The class selection apears to be tied to the year

I'm going through each week using the default weekly view. I start on the current Sunday and navigate forward to each subsequent week. Once I move into 2013, the schedule forgets all the classes I checked and I get a blank screen. I have to re-check the classes whose schedules I want to see.

Let's suppose I had the following classes selected in 2012: Elders, Relief Society, Primary Sharing Time. When I advance to 2013, no classes are checked on the left. I need to check the classes I want to see. If I move back to 2012, I see my previous selections from 2012.

Oddly, the selection of these check boxes seems to be tied to the year. Yes, some people change classes each year; however, others do not. It's not the behavior I would expect, but it may make sense technically. I propose that the default would be to show all published classes for 2013 and let the user deselect the ones he does not want. It would be better than seeing a blank screen with the message "Select a course to view the lesson for this week". My gut feel is it would confuse some people to see nothing.

The change in class selections when you change the year is correct. However, once you select classes for the year those should stick and you shouldn't have to do it again. We don't want to pick up the chore of guessing which classes people are in since so many changes happen when the new year starts. I do like the suggestion to put text on the screen with the change of the new year reminding people to select new classes.

However, the purpose of a beta is to find out what users think and if we get enough people voting to have the selections remain static even with the change of the year we can consider changing the application.

mevans wrote:I propose that the default would be to show all published classes for 2013 and let the user deselect the ones he does not want. It would be better than seeing a blank screen with the message "Select a course to view the lesson for this week". My gut feel is it would confuse some people to see nothing.

In re-reading your post I see you said that the default should be to show all published classes. This is the way Lesson should be working. Can you verify for me that you are seeing all the active (the box has to be checked) classes on your main page? Thanks.

No, when I go to 2013, no boxes are checked for any published classes. I'd vote for checking all the boxes and letting people uncheck them, rather than the default being no checked boxes.

I think I was not being clear. The classes you see on the main page are the classes that have been created AND have been checked to be active on the Manage Class Schedules page (where you can create classes). If you have the Manage Class Schedules link you can check this to see if it's working properly.

That said, the main page classes are not checked until you check them regardless of year. They should stay checked until you uncheck them.

I had been addressing the issue mevans posted in another thread before coming to this thread. Some of what I suggested in the other thread addresses what I think the issue is here.

My experience is as LisaAn describes. Once I created classes for 2013 in the Manage Class Schedules page, and set them to be active, and checked them to be viewed on the Lesson Schedules home page, the class' viewing setting remained while navigating form one year to the next.

I offered three suggestions in the other thread to make sure a user did not think there were no classes scheduled for 2013. After reading this thread, each of those three options have programming issues associated with each.

The first option is similar to what mevans and LisaAn mentioned in the OP and post #2, respectively. That is a notice or message to the user the first time they navigated to 2103 to check the classes they wanted to view. That option, in my opinion, has some negatives. There is a chance a user could navigate to 2013 before any 2013 classes are created for their unit. Then the user may think there is a bug in the program because they do not see any classes. The other scenario is that not all classes a user will want to view in 2013 are created the first time they navigate to 2013. This creates a situation similar to the first.

The next option is much the same as mevans recommends in the OP. That option is to have all the 2013 classes checked to be viewed for all users. Then the user can deselect the ones they do not want. This is the most attractive option to me from a programming point of view. In the scenario where the class is not created until after the year begins, then the view flag is set to on (checkbox checked) for all users. This is a good way to notify users of a new class. If they do not want to have the class visible then they can deselect it. No users will miss a class this way. It may be irritating to some users to have a new class appear on their list of classes when it is created, but that is better than not knowing it exists. If other users are like me, they seldom check the list of available classes in the right column when visiting Lesson Schedules after the list of classes have been checked in the right column during the initial setup.

The third option I mentioned in the other thread is linking the view setting for "like" classes from 2012 to 2013. This does create some programming issues that may not be solvable. As LisaAn notes in post #2 the programmers do not want to guess what classes people are in. However, from the perspective of the user, this is the most desirable option. If I am in the Gospel Doctrine class and the High Priest class in 2012 and those are the only classes I have set to be viewed, then I would expect that as I navigate to 2013 those will be the classes I continue to view. I can think of several scenarios where this constancy from one year to the next does not happen. Then what do the programmers do?

For simplicity I prefer option two from both the perspective of programming and as a user.

When you first go into the new year it says "Select a course to view the lesson for this week" and a list of classes are viewed to the right where you select the course you want. I don't see where you need much more than that.

Gary_Miller wrote:When you first go into the new year it says "Select a course to view the lesson for this week" and a list of classes are viewed to the right where you select the course you want.

That must be a recent update. Would someone please post a screenshot for those of us who have not seen the message?

It was there yesterday when this tread started.

All you have to do is clear all the courses and you will see the message. This can be done on any date in any year.

OK, now I see it. But now I have other issues with the changes that have been rolled in that I will have to address in another thread.

Yes, it's always been there, but I missed it. My first thought was that something is broken. Then I realized what I need to do. I'm concerned that others will not notice it and think it doesn't work or there are no lessons scheduled. That's why I suggested checking everything by default, rather than noting.

I've logged this for consideration in a future release of Lesson (reference 413). Thanks.