Ward App

I am pleased to announce the creation of our own (Inwood 1st Ward) mobile app that will make it easier to connect with important announcements, sacrament programs, social media threads, and lessons for 2nd and 3rd hours. This app has been optimized for iPhone, but is viewable on all devices (Including Android) After initial user testing, we will make updates to optimize it for other mobile platforms.

The best way to view the app is open this email on your iPhone, click the link below. You will be prompted to save the app to your home screen and thats it!
Every week the app will be updated automatically with new content for the upcoming sunday, (no need to download another link)

Sections in the app

Quote
This is the opening page. A large photograph and spiritual message is customized to match that Sunday’s sacrament meeting topic. Photography is sourced by many wonderfully talented Mormon photographers in the New York area. The bottom of the screen has links to our wards social media outlets. Please make sure to follow each of them to access the most unto date announcements, and uplifting content.

Sacrament Meeting Program
The entire Sacrament meeting program is provided each week. Taping on a hymn opens to the song, allowing for a seamless experience from program to song.

Calendar
Copied from the ward lds.org calendar, upcoming ward & stake events are provided for the month ahead.
If you want to make sure you’re announcements make it to this page, please add your event to the ward calendar on lds.org

Lessons
Sunday school, Relief Society, and Elders Quorum lessons link to your upcoming lessons. A simple solution for study prior, and during classes.


This is an exciting time for the ward! Drawing upon many talented members of our ward and stake to provide members with a powerful & beautiful everyday tool to assist us in our activity. In the future we will discuss some of the exciting ways we can use social media to interact with our community and each other.


Open this link on your smart phone
http://invis.io/SZWTER8F

Looks great! I'll have to see if we have a developer in our ward that could do something like this.... I am assuming this passes the privacy, online church material, etc.

Nice! But I see a couple of things of concern.

First is the use of LDS Account. I was under the impression that 3rd party apps weren't permitted to use the LDS Account.

The other concerns is use of the church logo. See Handbook 2: 21.1.10

We are in the process of working with a developer to automate lots of this so it isn't reliant on the designer as much. Currently this is being run via invisionapp.com, a digital prototyping tool that takes jpgs and creates interactive prototypes hosts them on a site that is then saved to the home screen of mobile devices. This allows for an experience that feels like a native app, but is no more than an aggregator of church content. Linking the members to lds.org for content (such as hymns, and lesson plans) We will be working on integrating google docs for the purpose of sign up sheets that are passed around in the auxiliaries, as well as reporting home and visiting teaching. The purpose of everything we do in this "app" is to remove time spent administrating, and allow for members to focus on individuals and caring for each of our needs.

As for church branding, we will follow the proper use of the brand in the future, however I see this no different than using the church logo on a sacrament meeting program.

Russell.Parrish wrote:As for church branding, we will follow the proper use of the brand in the future, however I see this no different than using the church logo on a sacrament meeting program.

If you read the reference russelhltn gave from Handbook 2 you'll see that the church logo should not be used in sacrament meeting programs either, only the church name.

21.1.10
Church Name and Logotype

The Church’s name and logotype are key Church identifiers. They are registered as trademarks or are otherwise legally protected worldwide. They should be used only according to the following guidelines.

Local units may use the written name of the Church (not the logotype) when all of the following conditions are met:

1. The activity or function with which the name is associated is officially sponsored by the unit (for example, a sacrament meeting program).
2. The name of the local unit is used as a prelude to the name of the Church (for example, Canyon View Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
3. The typeface does not imitate or resemble the official Church logotype.

Think that spells it out clearly. Thank you eblood66 for pointing this out!

Our next update later this month will will include links to Google Docs for each auxiliary. Allowing for digital sign up sheets for events, as well as reporting of home / visiting teaching. (Will need to figure out how to set up a google excel sheet to only allow for people to post to a doc, and not view all the data on it. Preserving privacy of the other members.

As I looked at this, I thought that the official "LDS Tools" app should have a better link to the Newsletter and the Calendar tools at LDS.org. As it stands, the LDS Tools app has no direct link to the Newsletter or Lessons. Also, the Calendar data is only updated when I manually tell the app to update the Calendar. So I applaud the way your Ward App handles that kind of thing. Meanwhile, I'm still seeing potential problems.

First, my observation is that the church is always very cautious about privacy (and the way the laws vary in different countries), so I'm a bit uncomfortable with giving out names of people in the ward in an "unsecured" app. It may seem harmless to tell the whole world who's speaking in church on Sunday (and their topic) but I'd feel better about it if people had to sign in (like with the official Newsletter app at LDS.org) to see this stuff.

I also noticed that you have links to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook pages which seem to go against the Handbook 2 policy on Internet usage at 21.1.22. Specifically, "Stake and ward Web sites may be created only by using the official Church Internet resources. Stakes and wards are not authorized to create other Web sites or blogs or otherwise have a Church-sponsored presence on the Internet. "

I realize that people like using Facebook (which might be able to keep me logged in forever) more than they like using the LDS.org tools (which might make me sign in multiple times per hour, even when I didn't "leave" the page!). And it's a bit annoying when I open the LDS Tools app on my iPad and I have to put in a four-digit pass code every time (even when my current calling doesn't give me access to "sensitive information"). But I'm intrigued by the fact that the church takes this kind of security as seriously as it does. So what you're doing with the Ward App seems to not be taking the security as seriously and that is a concern.

There's nothing significant about this Ward App that couldn't be done using the tools at LDS.org (primarily with the Newsletter tool) except that doing it at LDS.org is less convenient and excludes those who don't have LDS Accounts. And I think the church would really, really like us to get into the habit of using their official tools.

Russell.Parrish wrote:Currently this is being run via invisionapp.com, a digital prototyping tool that takes jpgs and creates interactive prototypes hosts them on a site that is then saved to the home screen of mobile devices.

So how is it getting it's content? Through the user's LDS Account, or is it exposing your ward's calendar to everyone who downloads the app?

For linking to the hymns, you might want to look into LDS Music deep linking:
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Syntax_for_linking_into_the_LDS_Music_app_(ldsmusic://)
I love the digital sacrament meeting program and feel this is an area that should be explored more deeply in wards and stakes. There has been some basic discussion about this on the forum.

I like how you have slides with the lesson schedules.

I am hesitant with the fact that I, as a random person, can see your ward calendar and Sunday speakers. And I agree that the church logo should not be used.

Looks interesting. I agree with others on privacy concerns and whether this follows church guidelines.

Are you somehow pulling things like lesson schedules and calendar from the church tools, or are you making your own? If you're making your own, I'd strongly encourage you to use what the church is providing. Even if the church hasn't given us APIs to do it, you can scrape screens, etc. to get that data (but someone needs to be logged in). Creating your own outside of what the church has provided is just asking for problems.

The church must realize that if they fail to provide as basic a resource as this app, people will do it themselves.

What about android?

Anything for android tablets ???????