App's for Duty to God progress tracking?

I'm the new Duty to God teacher for the Deacon's quorum and wondered if there were any Duty to God apps I could use for tracking the boy's progress?

I'm looking either for an official or un-official Church app, any ideas?

There are no apps progress is kept track in the Young Mens personal DTG handbook.

Right I know it is tracked there but I wanted to track each boy's progress in a nice app or document (I know there are a couple excel templates out there) for better organization.

Officially, Young Men are encouraged to connect to the church's Duty to God website at https://dutytogod.lds.org and enter their personal plans online. The complete booklet is there, including all of the learning activities and links to scriptures and other resources.

On the website, YM can:

• Enter, view, and update their plans online.
• Prepare outlines they can use to teach about the doctrines they study.
• Get ideas to help them make their Duty to God plans.
• See videos related to Duty to God.
• Record their thoughts and impressions as they carry out their plans.
• Link to scriptures and other resources to help them complete learning activities.

Unfortunately, there are no options for parents and YM leaders to sign off requirements or track the progress of individuals on this site. That functionality does exist on the Personal Progress site for Young Women, so IMO, I believe it's just a matter of time before that capability will also be available on the YM side as well.

I have found that the plans and journal entries made by a YM on the DtG website don't sync to the respective places in the Gospel Library-Android app (maybe it works in the iOS app?). If that worked correctly (especially if it synced both ways), that would be very valuable for the YM to be able to refer to their online journal entries and plans in quorum meetings. As it is, the online DtG tool, while nice-looking, isn't very portable or useful.

Mikerowaved I sure hope they come up with something. I guess I will keep using my excel document to keep track. Thanks everyone for the help!

I dont know how updated it is, but here is an excel spreadsheet that keeps track of the progress
http://www.et.byu.edu/~njones/share/d2g/

There is a great program called Scoutbook that not only keeps track of scouting advancements but Duty to God and Faith in God as well. Its designed so that leaders, parents, and YM can view or update requirements with leaders approving them upon completion.

Brethren,

As a Branch President in Wisconsin, I am finding it very difficult to track the progress of our Young Men in the Duty to God program. The YW Personal Progress site is impressive - with parent and leadership resources available, it's easy to track the progress of our Young Women. The YM Duty to God site is far less impressive - basically a copy of the YW site without the "Additional Resources" section that make the YW PP site so remarkable and useful. Surely the YW Personal Progress tracking application "Leader Summary" and "Parent Summary" could easily be copied and used for tracking Duty to God as well? It's quite similar, so copying and repurposing it should be pretty straightforward.

It's my understanding that the YM DTG program is intended to serve as an equivalent to the YW PP program and as a replacement for scouting in other parts of the world, so we should at least be putting equivalent effort into DTG (Matt 6:19-21), if not more effort (since integrating the two programs is, in my experience, is difficult and confusing). After all, half of the church uses DTG instead of Scouting, and that will only increase as the church expands throughout the world. With recent BSA developments, we should probably be putting more emphasis on DTG and/or provide better tools to enable local leaders, like myself, to implement it. Thus far, I'm personally finding the program to be somewhat disorganized and difficult to understand and implement. The tools aren't there, the clear direction and instruction are lacking, and our local loyalties are divided between Scouting and DTG (James 1:8).

If I had sufficient time to work on this as a tech project, I'd gladly do it - but with 11 children (soon to be 12) I'm not able to do so at this time. But just implementing the change above (copying the "Leader Summary" and "Parent Summary" from PP and implementing it for DTG) would be VERY helpful in our efforts to track DTG. So brethren, I am sincerely asking for your help, if you are able to provide it (3 Nephi 12:42 & Matt 5:42).

Thank you and may God bless you as you move the DTG program forward in your own units.

rhusted wrote:With recent BSA developments, we should probably be putting more emphasis on DTG and/or provide better tools to enable local leaders, like myself, to implement it.

I don't think you should be putting any more emphasis on DTG or Scouting than you do the other. And while I don't speak for the Brethren everything I have read, studied and heard from them over the years is that we need to work on both programs together. Recent BSA developments have had do impact on which program we are to do. The Brethren have made it clear that Scouting is the activity program for YM if its available and approved in their area.

rhusted wrote:Thus far, I'm personally finding the program to be somewhat disorganized and difficult to understand and implement.

Take a look at ScoutBook it is a great place to keep track of both BSA and Duty to God progress in one place.

rhusted wrote:The tools aren't there, the clear direction and instruction are lacking,

Clear direction and instruction on what you should be doing in your YMs program and how the DTG and Scouting programs work together can be found in the Church Handbooks of instruction, Official church web site, and BSA program materials.

rhusted wrote:and our local loyalties are divided between Scouting and DTG (James 1:8).

Then i suggest that many in your local area have need to repent as the Brethren have made it really clear on which way we should go. Our loyalties need to be with the Brethren.

I think my statements were more harsh than I'd intended and I'm very sorry about that. I'm expressing some frustration in not having tools available to simplify the administration of the Duty to God program. I've heard a lot of members express concerns regarding scouting and Duty to God - these are not just my comments. So we can either discuss them in a spirit of brotherhood, or we can take an opportunity to flame each other on an open forum. I believe that the former will be a more productive use of our time.

Let me say that I'm grateful that the Church has implemented Duty to God and provided a website and materials. However, as a local leader, I'm finding it challenging to implement because I don't have the tools available for tracking progress (like those available on the Young Women Personal Progress website). It seems like a simple thing for someone to duplicate the parent and leader summary pages for Duty to God. It would make a huge difference for leaders to be able to administer the program.

A few points:
1. Handbook 2 briefly mentions Duty to God in Section 8.12. The two paragraphs encourage young men to participate in the program. Far more attention is given to scouting in Handbooks 1 and 2 (8.13.4 - 9 paragraphs, 8.13.7 - funding - 6 paragraphs, 11.2.1, 13.2.8, 15.1.2, etc.)
2. If Duty to God is the program used throughout the world, then it should be more standard and emphasized than a program that's used in a few select countries (US, Canada, and Commonwealth Countries - England, etc.). Scouting is becoming more and more of a niche program and it isn't fair to our brothers in other countries to feed Scouting at the expense of Duty to God.
3. Our YW program does not have a Scouting equivalent. Are our girls less important than our boys?
4. Scouting requires a lot of resources to run - and while this is easy at the ward level, it's a challenge at the branch level. Duty to God, however, requires the same priesthood resources that have already been called in the YM organization.

I think we can discuss this as brethren and avoid being judgemental. The program is a good one, it just needs some additional tooling to make it a great one.

This topic has been discussed multiple times over the last several years. Two relevant threads are here and here.

As indicated in this post enhanced leader tracking for DTG was obviously being discussed by the relevant church departments back in 2012. Since nothing has been announced or implemented it seems that either the general authorities with responsibility for DTG decided against making that change or there have not been sufficient resources to implement it due to higher priorities. We don't know which.

The only sure way to suggest a change and be sure it gets to the decision makers is by using a Feedback link on an lds.org page. In this case since we know it has already been considered it would be very important to articulate exactly how this would make the program more effective to have a chance at changing an existing decision or changing development priorities.

rhusted wrote:Brethren,

Without being flip, there's no one here that answers to that name. We're all techies with a few developers. There are no high-level decision makers here. If you feel strongly about this, I suggest you discuss this with the stake president with an eye to escalate it to the area authority. Decisions about how the programs work are made by the Priesthood, not by the folks working at our level.

russellhltn wrote:

rhusted wrote:Brethren,

Without being flip

Perhaps not flip, but some kind of fusion of "maladoit" and "pedantic" comes to mind.

I'm pretty sure there's a difference between "The Brethren" and "brethren". The Brethren refer to other men, (especially priesthood holders) as brethren quite frequently. So, if you are addressing a group of priesthood holders, brethren is totally appropriate. Since he uses the word later on in a place which is not the beginning of a sentence, we can see clearly that the "improper" noun, "brethren" was intended. I can further see nothing in the post that presupposes that rhusted was presuming he could get ahold of high level decision makers by posting to a forum. To affect a change in the software, he probably would do well to elevate his concerns in the way you described, but as a software engineer myself, I have a hard time imagining that such a course would actually be more effective than trying to provide feedback on this forum. Stake presidents are busy people. They are also not "high level decision makers" in any sense that would affect the church's software development. In my experience low-level decision makers and tangentially related professionals are often quite effective to communicate with.

I would imagine that providing such channel of communication is an important function of this forum. If not, then it is mismanaged indeed.

Anyhow, we have enough unique cultural vocabulary and verbal nitpicking already without inventing new pointless rules that make communication and understanding even harder.

seanmcox wrote:To affect a change in the software, he [rhusted] probably would do well to elevate his concerns in the way you described, but as a software engineer myself, I have a hard time imagining that such a course would actually be more effective than trying to provide feedback on this forum. . . .

I would imagine that providing such channel of communication is an important function of this forum. If not, then it is mismanaged indeed.

Sorry to disappoint. There is no mismanagement. There are two ways to provide feedback to the software developers. This Forum is not one of them, and neither one will cause a change to the software.

The best and quickest way is to provide information through the Feedback link. A second way is for a stake president to share the need with his priesthood leaders.

Keep in mind that neither method causes the software developers to do anything. They follow the instructions and priorities of their leaders at Church headquarters. Those priesthood leaders do see and consider feedback. And they do see and consider inputs from priesthood leaders in the field.

Then they, as priesthood leaders, decide what changes will be made and what priorities and resources will be used to make those changes.

The purpose of this Forum is to discuss and help users with the tools the Church has made available to us. The priesthood leaders who direct the work of the programmers rarely visit or see this Forum. They do not take direction from the bottom up. They take direction from the top down.

seanmcox wrote:I would imagine that providing such channel of communication is an important function of this forum. If not, then it is mismanaged indeed.

The way the church works is quite different from the way the world we're used to works. In "the world", the consumer is king and businesses are generally eager to get feedback to improve the product for competitive purposes.

In the church, the customer is the Priesthood department or sponsoring auxiliary - not the end users.

The forum is primarily user-to-user support, tips and tricks on how to use the software. For some sections, it can be useful for verifying a problem and getting bug reports to the developers. But the developers have no authority to do development on their own, so added features have to be approved by the appropriate authority. There is no conduit from the forum to the decision makers.

I don't have an explanation as to why the YM functions work so much differently from the YW's. Perhaps it's a development priority, or there might be something to it that hasn't been explained to us.

Back to the question from Rhusted, is there any plan to replicate the functionality of the YW Personal Progress online web site that provides summaries for both leaders and parents?

There are references to it in multiple places on the My Duty to God but actual links are just not there. Am I missing something, or did this not make the budget cut?

Thanks,
Brad

(Original quote from Rhusted)
"The YM Duty to God site is far less impressive - basically a copy of the YW site without the "Additional Resources" section that make the YW PP site so remarkable and useful. Surely the YW Personal Progress tracking application "Leader Summary" and "Parent Summary" could easily be copied and used for tracking Duty to God as well? "

Where are you seeing references?

This has been wished for and requested for a while, but I haven't seen anything official from the Church about there being plans to upgrade the Duty to God site.

burad wrote:Back to the question from Rhusted, is there any plan to replicate the functionality of the YW Personal Progress online web site that provides summaries for both leaders and parents?

I'd imagine that's up to the Young Men General Presidency. They'd be the one to sponsor such development. We rarely hear about things ahead of time, so I can't answer if there are any plans or not.

FWIW this would be great. For the time being we have to duplicate effort and track this in ScoutBook, taking extra effort from the YM's secretaries in the stake. Understandably, our data in ScoutBook will never be as current, and possibly as accurate, as that already in LDS.org.
(Then there's the scenario of people changing units...)

For those looking to track Duty to God in Scoutbook.com, the app only tracks completion of the Deacon, Teacher and Priest portions of the DTG, not the individual goals themselves. We are using a google doc spreadsheet to track the goals as a tool to help the leaders encourage and facilitate the YM to achieve their goals.

Dan B

In Handbook 2 one of the responsibilities that the Young Mens Secretary may be given is:
"He may be assigned to record the progress of individual young men as they participate in the Duty to God program."
I have been given that responsibility and I am struggling to find a way to carry it out.
Since this is an LDSTech forum, is there a "tech" method to help with this?
Please, if anyone has a better method than what has been suggested, (google docs, Scoutbook.com), please post.
Thank you,

There is an app called etrailto eagle that we use for scouting. It is not free but does have a Duty to God module. https://www.etrailtoeagle.com/

etrailtoeagle.org offers free tracking for the LDS D2G. It is the current manual.

fordsathome7 wrote:etrailtoeagle.org offers free tracking for the LDS D2G. It is the current manual.

I think you meant https://www.etrailtoeagle.com.

I have been out of the Young Mens for about 5 years but just got back in. I used to be able to see what my boys were working on in DTG on the LDS.org section of Duty to god. I cant do it now. I dont see it anywhere. We use Etrailtoeagle so i can track it there, but anyone know what happened to the online stuff from lds.org? Or am i crazy that i remember it?

chrisfreeman69 wrote:Ibut anyone know what happened to the online stuff from lds.org? Or am i crazy that i remember it?

On line tracking has long been requested. I don't remember that it ever existed.

Maybe it was something your ward set up?

Another forum user has posted information about a new app this user has developed here:

https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=29640

This app is not Church sponsored or endorsed, as far as I am aware. Please direct any future discussion specific to this app to the above thread/topic.