App for sacrament meeting program.

[*]I'm not sure if this the right forum for suggestions, but maybe someone could forward this. I'm the meetinghouse librarian for our building, we have four wards meeting in our building. The greatest expense in library budget is paper, each Ward prints a Sacrament program and sometimes a weekly Relief Society program, why not develope an app for smart phones and tablets that would make these programs accessible, cut down on paper use.
Thanks, Mel Cox,Utah Jordan Willows Stake, Jordan Willows 3rd Ward, emel54@hotmail.com, 801-787-1624

The Announcements & Policies forum is not the correct forum. I moved it to the appropriate forum.

The forum is user-to-user support. We can discuss this but we do ot have any connections to make recommendations. Instead you can use the feedback link found on the LDS.org home page. This feedback link is also found on many other LDS.org pages but not all of them.

It would seem that the developers would have much more important things to do than develop an app for the Sac Meeting Program.

Further more I don't think it would cut down on paper that much anyway.

My question is, how do you distribute the electronic version of these printouts? Are we talking about something that is automatically sent to LDS Tools or an app that is only dedicated to the Sacrament Meeting program/bulletin?

Here's what I would suggest (which can happen right now with tools currently available). The individuals who prepare the Sacrament and Relief Society programs for print-out could, as a final step, just make a PDF version in addition to a hard copy. Upload that PDF version to the Ward Newsletter tool at LDS.org. Pesto! Anyone from the ward can have access immediately on their computer, tablet, smart phone, etc.. Otherwise, make an email list for those who've expressed an interest and send a mass email with this PDF as an attachment.

It would take some effort to make people aware of this process and get them in the habit of accessing the electronic version of the print-out... but it might be easier than convincing people to put another app on their electronic device for this purpose.

mrrad wrote:It would take some effort to make people aware of this process and get them in the habit of accessing the electronic version of the print-out... but it might be easier than convincing people to put another app on their electronic device for this purpose.

That's certainly a great short-term suggestion. And you could also create a QR code for the link to the Newsletter article and display that QR code somewhere that people entering the sacrament meeting could see and quickly scan.

If you have a single Newsletter article that you simply update each week, then that QR code wouldn't have to change, and people could also simply bookmark that article on their mobile device's browser, which would provide another simple way to get to the weekly bulletin.

All these suggestions would just clog up the network more than is already happening.

But we're saving paper (and the planet!)

Gary_Miller wrote:All these suggestions would just clog up the network more than is already happening.

That might lead to different decision made in different units. Our network is not at all overtaxed, and so a few more hits on the Newsletter on LDS.org won't hurt. But I could see how in some buildings the impact of more people accessing LDS.org via the wireless network might cause a problem.

A simple PDF like that could be hosted on a local computer avoiding having to use the Internet to access it.

Honestly, not many would look at it if it was available online, an app, or hosted on a local computer...at least not in our ward. Many don't have smart phones, or aren't as technically savvy as others. For tablet users, we also don't give out our password for our Wi-Fi network because it would slow it down considerably.

However, they could include something like that in the 'LDS Tools' app. It already has the calendar available. Since you can post your newsletters to LDS.org, they could add Sunday Programs, and add that to the app. I just don't know how many people would really view it to make a big difference in cutting down on paper.

mrrad wrote:But we're saving paper (and the planet!)

That's not going to save the planet, unfortunately. :p

Just a different perspective... I think all members should have the WiFi password. If they are going to make the decision to come to church, they should be able to make the decision to use the network judiciously. Pulling up a 250k pdf of the ward bulletin isn't going to impact the network much at all - even if the file isn't local.

heyring wrote:Just a different perspective... I think all members should have the WiFi password. If they are going to make the decision to come to church, they should be able to make the decision to use the network judiciously. Pulling up a 250k pdf of the ward bulletin isn't going to impact the network much at all - even if the file isn't local.

If we had the bandwidth to support all of that traffic, I might agree with you. Pulling up a 250k pdf file isn't the only thing they do, lets be honest. There is expectation, and then there is reality. They check Facebook, browse the internet a little, get on LDS.org, which is fine by me, but all that traffic bogs it down and makes it difficult for leaders to access it when needed. We have one Wi-Fi network for all three units that meet in our building, one of which is a YSA ward.

Agreed.. We are lucky enough that our building bandwidth can stand up to the amount of users that are allowed to connect by the number of IP's the 881w Firewall will dish out. Our only slowdowns on Sundays are when we try to access LDS.org (because the rest of the planet is doing the same).
We will be testing out having the Bulletin on LDS.org via Newsletter app and having an inconspicuous QR code members (the techy ones of course) can scan when they walk in.

heyring wrote:Just a different perspective... I think all members should have the WiFi password.

Not every building has good broadband.

Sometimes I forget that our Stake is in the minority that uses the schedule where Sacrament Meeting is the last meeting of "the block" on Sunday. So, if the "final draft" of the Sacrament Meeting program is ready one hour before Sacrament Meeting then that means people can download it during that break between Priesthood Meeting and Sunday School. But, in the majority of wards where Sacrament Meeting is first, if the program is ready one hour before "the block" starts then people could just download it before they leave their homes. So, in the majority of wards, getting the PDF before leaving home wouldn't have any affect on the Wi-Fi service in the church.

It seems to me that the ward's Newsletter on lds.org is the logical place for sacrament meeting programs, bulletins, etc. Why complicate access with a local computer when lds.org is already setup? Why develop yet another app when lds.org's Newsletter is already available? Impact on the internet is not an issue because viewing a PDF file takes only a fraction of the resources of that needed to view a video. Besides, the best time to view the program is on Saturday while preparing for Sunday. An additional benefit is having past programs available for a period of time.

The purpose of having an online app to build the programs wouldn't be so that you could distribute the programs electronically. It would be to facilitate in building programs. Every ward in the entire world needs a sacrament meeting program. Each person called to do the programs has to re-invent the wheel. There is no integration when you do it this way. The bishop should be able to assign brother x to give a talk, and have that automatically appear in the program app. There is a lot of integration that needs to happen, that currently doesn't.

When you consider the sheer number of people trying to solve the program of building a sacrament meeting template, it just seems it would make sense to make an online solution that can integrate with other systems.

aaronfrost wrote:Every ward in the entire world needs a sacrament meeting program.

I realize that many wards have a sacrament meeting program, but I have lived in many wards that did not. They seemed to manage nicely.

aaronfrost wrote:The purpose of having an online app to build the programs wouldn't be so that you could distribute the programs electronically. It would be to facilitate in building programs.

Actually, I think this thread was started because someone was concerned only about electronic distribution to save on printing. In the past, others have discussed creating templates for Sunday Bulletins (a.k.a. Sacrament Meeting Programs) in, for example, this discussion here.

Hi,

I actually wrote an access database which I used when I was the Bishop of my ward way back 2003. After 6 years of using it, all other wards in our stake have ask for a copy in which to this stage they still using it. The management is a bit hard as I have to install run-time app in each of their machine so I recently migrated it online using APEX.

Here's the link to the login screen. In there, you'll find an icon with link to the screenshots of this application. I love using it for our stake meetings. Very handy and can easily be updated using my phone.

http://black.maxapex.com/apex/f?p=226:101

To the Password question. I was under the assumption that there was the same password throughout the Church. I have traveled some and the same password works in each chapel I have been to. That includes about 15-20 chapels in 6 states. Is it possible for the stake or building to change the password? The one thing that is handy with the one that I have encountered is that it is very easy to remember.

We use our building for a two Ward, Family History workshop every Wednesday evening, and each person brings their own Laptop and we do research, etc. Hence, that would only be possible if there happened to be one of the "Chosen Few" who knew the password at the workshop. We do not keep the password a secret, and have never had a problem with over used bandwidth. Considering some of the examples given of what people are accessing on Sundays at the Church, maybe some counseling would be in order.

Why doesn't the Church print a program for General Conference?

Why don't they have an accessible on line program people in the congregation or at other locations can look at?

Why do you need one for Sacrament meeting? I never understood the need for a Sacrament meeting program. The hymns are listed on a board in the front of the chapel, and the program is announced by whomever is conducting.

TinMan wrote:I never understood the need for a Sacrament meeting program. The hymns are listed on a board in the front of the chapel, and the program is announced by whomever is conducting.

As I mentioned earlier, I have lived in many wards that did not hand out a printed program. They managed just fine.

Since announcements are not made from the pulpit, and they did not have a traditional program to print them in, these wards all had to be extra careful that there were other paths for members to learn of activities and receive other needed information that would otherwise have shown up in a printed bulletin.

I am in the Stake Sunday School presidency and a computer programmer (.Net and Java) for a living. In trying to promote the Church website online curriculum for Sunday School, we have noticed a wide disparity between various units in the amount of online involvement.

I can keep it short and sweet with this comment: the elderly in wards may carry cell phones, but they rarely use them for more than a phone. You will get many complaints by going digital with things like this. It works great for the young and the United States. We are not allowing our youth to use the scriptures online or cell apps because it will hinder them as missionaries to third world countries.

The church budget helps to get PC's for support of church units. Outside of that, you will face big opposition by making digital access a requirement for church resources. That is not to say that digital resources are not extremely helpful in many cases. The Family History libraries have PC's that the Stakes purchase and support.

We need to be careful in making our future standards digital. No one is complaining about making digital solutions where persons can opt in. No issue there.

email_programmer_jim wrote:the elderly in wards may carry cell phones, but they rarely use them for more than a phone.

We have older people who don't and won't have computers. One of which teaches many of the priesthood lessons. The gospel doctrine teacher has a computer but only for limited use. In fact, I doubt she remembers her lds.org password even though I have helped her recover is at least once. Some members can't afford computers, much less smart phones and tablets. We put the lesson schedule for the current and next 3 weeks plus announcements and leader phone numbers in the bulletin for everyone, but especially for those people.

I'm not sure I see the point of an 'on line' program since all that information is either:
1. Already available on line including things such as lesson schedules announcements, activities and leader phone numbers, or
2. Becomes obvious or announced during the sacrament meeting including things like who is presiding and conducting, visiting stake leaders, hymns, speakers and prayers.

I don't know that we would use such an 'on line' program even if it were available.

lajackson wrote:Since announcements are not made from the pulpit, and they did not have a traditional program to print them in, these wards all had to be extra careful that there were other paths for members to learn of activities and receive other needed information that would otherwise have shown up in a printed bulletin.

Announcements can be made from the pulpit before the opening hymn. (See handbook 2 section 18.) But printed announcements on a half page can also be prepared in advance.

The ward that shares the building with us does a full page (folded in half) program with a cover picture, printed announcements on one side of the inside fold, program on the second side of the inside fold and ward leaders on the back. We use half the paper they do with our half page announcement sheet (sometimes printed on both sides.) And many of both wards paper goods just get left behind in the hymn book holders or on the floor.

The young adult ward my daughter is in does a full page program similar to above with a secondary insert for announcements. Plus they have everything emailed to everyone as well. There is such a thing as "information overload."

The LDS Music app for iOS (and soon for Android) now supports deep linking, meaning you can have a hyperlink (from a website or, in this case, a program) that pushes you directly to a song in the app...

For anyone who may be interested, I made a prototype for a digital sacrament meeting program, that could be adapted for stake conference or whatever too (it's HTML):
http://bradshawfamily.net/~samuel/zzz/meeting/

If you have an iOS device, you can add/pin it to your home screen from Safari and it's basically an app. When the web page is updated, and you open it again from your home screen, it shows the updated version (if you're connected to the internet). So basically it could be updated each week by whoever's in charge of the program. I don't know much about programming actual apps, but this was pretty simple!

I'm interested to see if it works on Android too.

Tin man commented:
"Announcements can be made from the pulpit before the opening hymn. (See handbook 2 section 18.) But printed announcements on a half page can also be prepared in advance. "

As our Stake President has stated the policy that announcements were not to be given in Sacrament Meeting except for special ones, or additional ones that weren't on the printed bulletin, I went to the citation noted above. Actually it says that announcement "should" be printed, not "can also be prepared". And the words used in the instructions are "essential announcements" "may" be given by the Bishopric.

So I guess that our Stake President was right on the money.

Also, the comment about not allowing youth the use the "mobile device" to access the Scriptures in class was a great thought, one I had never thought of. I am forwarding the thought to my Bishop and Stake President . Thank you "Jim" for the insight.

waynecooke wrote:So I guess that our Stake President was right on the money.

Also, the comment about not allowing youth the use the "mobile device" to access the Scriptures in class was a great thought, one I had never thought of.

Oooh, read his handbook, did he? It happens.

I am familiar with a ward that posts the program online and then leaves a few printed program near the door for those who do not have electronic access. They want the youth to be able to access the program as well, so they spend a small amount of time in youth classes teaching correct principles.

I have found that trying to disallow youth from using mobile devices is a lost cause. We have found success in teaching them what they should be doing with their devices. There will always be the disobedient (a trait not reserved for youth) but, by and large, they respond to the challenge to do what is right and step up to living the correct principles they are being taught.

email_programmer_jim wrote:We are not allowing our youth to use the scriptures online or cell apps because it will hinder them as missionaries to third world countries.

Should we warn those leaving for their missions that they can't use Personal Electronic Devices (PEDs) in the MTC? Our stake is conducting missionary preparation classes each month, and this would be a good training item for the youth.

drepouille wrote:

email_programmer_jim wrote:We are not allowing our youth to use the scriptures online or cell apps because it will hinder them as missionaries to third world countries.

Should we warn those leaving for their missions that they can't use Personal Electronic Devices (PEDs) in the MTC? Our stake is conducting missionary preparation classes each month, and this would be a good training item for the youth.

You might teach them that they will leave their own personal electronic devices at home, and that the Church will provide them with the electronic devices the Church wishes for them to have while they serve missions.

But it is to their benefit to understand and have experience with the online resources the Church offers, so they do not write home to their parents, as my son recently did, and say, "Dad, how does this work?" when they are asked to teach investigators using these resources.

Gary_Miller wrote:All these suggestions would just clog up the network more than is already happening.

Nothing helpful? I suppose the church wouldn't want people looking up scriptures, either, since that would clog the network. What's the network for if not to give members access to church information? If it's not worth putting on an app, then it's probably not worth printing, since data is cheaper than paper.

There is a free app development website that works awesome for creating a ward bulletin app. Feel free to take a look at what we put together for Higley Manor ward: [link removed - it contains personal information]

This works great for linking in websites from the church such as for hymns, lessons, or even mission pages. Simple to include pictures, googlemaps for directions, or connecting to documents in Dropbox for things like cleaning schedules, building guidelines or activity summaries. It also facilitates emails/phone/text for arranging interviews, sending letters to missionaries, contacting ward leadership or requesting expense reimbursements, We set it up to have five tabs including 1) Sacrament Program 2) Announcements 3) Actions 4) Missionaries 5) Ward Leadership.

It was so easy to share with the ward as we sent instructions via email the day before that allowed folks to set it up on their devices in about 30 seconds. We helped a few that were less tech-savvy put it on their device as they came into church. But once on their phone or tablet they were good to go going forward. As for updating the app it is the same or less time for the ward bulletin person to complete.

If this is of interest to you go ahead and reach out as there is a very simply mechanism to copy the app and recreate it for another ward.

JefferyRMcMahon wrote:There is a free app development website that works awesome for creating a ward bulletin app. Feel free to take a look at what we put together for Higley Manor ward: [link removed - it contains personal information]

The link was removed as your app has real names and phone numbers. This forum is open to the world - including non-members and those who do not log in.

I'm a little concerned about the extent of the data that's there. To be that complete, it seems like it would have to be scraped from the church database somehow.

https://wardbulletin.app/ is the latest tool I've seen for online programs.

I personally think the sacrament meeting app is handy tool to have

M wife and I were just called to do the Ward SUnday Bulletins for Sac meeting, is there a template for this?

robertmander wrote: Sun Aug 25, 2024 3:51 pm M wife and I were just called to do the Ward SUnday Bulletins for Sac meeting, is there a template for this?

First question would be if there was a previous member who did the weekly bulletins? If so, that's definitely the place to start.

If this is new for your ward (or at least hasn't been done for quite a while), I'd suggest trying out one of the suggestions in the thread, such as sbradshaw's comment two posts before yours.

Another option if you are looking for a template (that is not an online version) is to check with other wards/branches in your stake/district. They may have one they could share that you could adjust for your needs.