Suggestion: Add Ward Newsletter to LDS Tools

I have no research but I get the feeling that the Ward Newsletter tool at LDS.org is the least-utilized tool there. Since the most-utilized tools from LDS.org are incorporated into the LDS Tools app, why not add the Ward Newsletter to the data that goes into the LDS Tools app too?

I understand that the downloaded data could be grossly outdated if the user doesn't refresh their LDS Tools data often. So... maybe there could be a hyperlink on the bottom row of the LDS Tools screen which would go directly to the "live" Ward Newsletter section of LDS.org.

It just seems to me that a lot of people rarely go to LDS.org to access things like the directory because it's already on their mobile device inside LDS Tools. So the tendency to ignore the Ward Newsletter tool at LDS.org is amplified by this behavior.

Suggestions? How else can we "gently persuade" people to use the Ward Newsletter tool?

mrrad wrote:I have no research but I get the feeling that the Ward Newsletter tool at LDS.org is the least-utilized tool there. Since the most-utilized tools from LDS.org are incorporated into the LDS Tools app, why not add the Ward Newsletter to the data that goes into the LDS Tools app too?

I agree. I think we'd get people in our ward to actually use the newsletter site if it was easily available from LDS Tools.

mrrad wrote:I understand that the downloaded data could be grossly outdated if the user doesn't refresh their LDS Tools data often. So... maybe there could be a hyperlink on the bottom row of the LDS Tools screen which would go directly to the "live" Ward Newsletter section of LDS.org.

That might work, especially if it could automatically provide the LDS Account credentials so you didn't have to log in again. Certainly that would be less development. But it would not provide the ability to notify the user when there is new content.

Perhaps there could be a more frequent 'lite' sync that would just update newsletter info and only update full membership information less frequently.

Or maybe something in between. Do a frequent poll to check for new content but use the browser to actually display newletter articles.

I also realize that the Calendar data that is downloaded to the LDS Tools app (in the current version) can be grossly outdated if the user doesn't refresh the data often enough. So the possibility of having less-than-current Ward Newsletter data on LDS Tools wouldn't seem like a "deal breaker" right now.

This seems like a natural addition to the tools. The paper savings alone would make it worth it. the ward is not ordering manuals because of electronic content availability, why not stop the printing of all of the news letters as well.

Along the lines of a ward newsletter, a push notification ability to send a message, or quick-news update would be very nice as well.