Setting sustaining date in the future

One of the assistant clerks in my ward noticed something that is either an awesome new feature on Leader and Clerk Resource 3.0 beta, or a bug. I prefer to hope that it's a new feature: It seems to be possible to give someone a "date sustained" in the future. We haven't had a chance to test it fully yet, but these are my assumptions on how it could/should work:
1) When a person accepts a calling, if the clerk is present, he can record the calling right away with the sustained date set to the next Sunday.
2) The person with the calling will then receive any online access associated with his calling, and can start getting oriented right away, before he is sustained.
3) Only the bishopric and clerks can see people who are to be sustained in the future, so it can be kept confidential until they are actually sustained.

Has anyone had a chance to try this out, or is there a developer who can shed some light onto this and make sure I'm understanding that process correctly?

I'm not in the beta test, so I can't see what you see, but I'd be leery of putting in a future date. I'd much rather see something like "pending". Sometimes something comes up and a person intended to be sustained isn't sustained as planned on that day. If that happened and someone forgot to update the sustaining date, then it would go public before it's supposed to. Probably the most frequent situation where I've seen that happen is that they want the person to be at church when the sustaining is done and might wait until the next week if the person isn't there.

Yes, it'd be nice if you could put a future date, then it queued them all in a "Sustainings List" grouped by date to be sustained.

On Sunday, you could go to the Sustainings List report and print it out to use during sacrament meeting.

Later on in the day, a clerk could go back to the list online and, for each person on the list, 1) mark them as sustained (and set apart, if applicable), 2) change the sustained date, or 3) cancel their calling.

This is all hypothetical. Right now all I see is that it is currently possible to set a sustained date in the future.

sbradshaw wrote:I prefer to hope that it's a new feature:

Is there anything about it in "Help"?

russellhltn wrote:Is there anything about it in "Help"?

I don't see anything. There's not a specific Help file for the beta – only the release notes reference it.

sbradshaw wrote:2) The person with the calling will then receive any online access associated with his calling, and can start getting oriented right away, before he is sustained.

That kind of calling with a future date has always been available in CDOL. I know that until it goes active there will not be any rights given. In CDOL most people can't see the pending callings (including the bishopric).
When that date rolls around CDOL will automatically move the calling to active.

sbradshaw wrote:3) Only the bishopric and clerks can see people who are to be sustained in the future, so it can be kept confidential until they are actually sustained.

I doubt that this is the case. I'm guessing that anyone that can see callings will be able to see it.

We have discussed adding in workflow for callings after the bishopric has approved them to help track issuing the call and release and getting them sustained, but at this point I'm guessing that it won't happen until most of the non finance functionality of MLS has been moved to LCR.

mevans wrote:I'm not in the beta test, so I can't see what you see, but I'd be leery of putting in a future date.

I can't test it or see it either, but as a "past clerk" who tracked such things, I'm with you! Don't put a date sustained date in until they are sustained, it's not a "pending sustaining" option yet (see jonesrk comment below.) If you start putting in future dates the question of "did we actually sustain them on that date?" then becomes necessary and yes, I think your changes would become public too early on LDS.org. In CDOL, as in the case of a bishop or other major call, I can see the need to "pend" such calls, but for most standard ward callings...I see problems if somebody uses this as a "pending sustaining" box.

jonesrk wrote:We have discussed adding in workflow for callings...to help track issuing the call and release and getting them sustained

Why? We could just go back to our magnetic board with all the callings listed along the top, and members names on little magnetic pieces that we can reposition over and over and over, kinda like a giant ward Sudoku puzzle!

Just to make sure everyone understands clearly:

Putting a calling in with a future date is a Bad Idea™. If you choose to enter a calling this way, it will lie in wait in CDOL waiting to bite you in the behind. The member will not get "early access" to LCR or anything like that.

I just tested to verify this. There is now a "Hymnbook Mender" calling in my ward that I will suddenly have on June 20. I no longer have the ability to modify or view that calling until June 20. Hopefully I remember to fix it. Maybe I'll walk down to rkjones' desk and have him fix it....

I have logged an issue to fix this in LCR. Right now it is a bug. There has been some discussion of a pending calling feature, but no firm decision on whether to or when such a feature would be ever be implemented.

Darn, I shouldn't have mentioned it, then.

scgallafent wrote:Maybe I'll walk down to rkjones' desk and have him fix it....

I just saved you a walk. You no longer have a pending position.

jonesrk wrote:I just saved you a walk.

It is so good to be among such wonderful friends.

sbradshaw wrote:Darn, I shouldn't have mentioned it, then.

Actually, it's a good thing you mentioned this. Now we know not to do it and it's been declared a bug that might get fixed.

mevans wrote:

sbradshaw wrote:Darn, I shouldn't have mentioned it, then.

Actually, it's a good thing you mentioned this. Now we know not to do it and it's been declared a bug that might get fixed.

Yup. It appears it doesn't work as you hoped and there's little to no benefit - and a potential pitfall.

kisaac wrote:

jonesrk wrote:We have discussed adding in workflow for callings...to help track issuing the call and release and getting them sustained

Why? We could just go back to our magnetic board with all the callings listed along the top, and members names on little magnetic pieces that we can reposition over and over and over, kinda like a giant ward Sudoku puzzle!

Just to get the thread sorta back on track, and aside from kisaac's kidding: This feature would be wonderful. (Maybe it looks really good to me right now as this ward clerk is now supporting a brand new bishopric that at the very minimum need to fill the holes they left when they accepted their new callings... and my spreadsheet is looking very inadequate.)

mfmohlma wrote:

kisaac wrote:

jonesrk wrote:We have discussed adding in workflow for callings...to help track issuing the call and release and getting them sustained

Why? We could just go back to our magnetic board with all the callings listed along the top, and members names on little magnetic pieces that we can reposition over and over and over, kinda like a giant ward Sudoku puzzle!

This feature would be wonderful.

A feature to track this whole process, from examination of all possible candidates through the calling and sustaining process, planning and tracking each step, and assigning who will do which steps and when they are to be done? Wow!
I would love to see a "digital magnetic board" where the ward could be re-organized in a planning mode, and re-set any number of times as leaders "study it out in their mind" while not forgetting who is calling who, and not forgetting to release anyone, and when this all is set to happen. Fantastic!

kisaac wrote:A feature to track this whole process, from examination of all possible candidates through the calling and sustaining process, planning and tracking each step, and assigning who will do which steps and when they are to be done? Wow!
I would love to see a "digital magnetic board" where the ward could be re-organized in a planning mode, and re-set any number of times as leaders "study it out in their mind" while not forgetting who is calling who, and not forgetting to release anyone, and when this all is set to happen. Fantastic!

We call him the Executive Secretary, and yes, he is fantastic. [grin]

kisaac wrote:

mfmohlma wrote:

jonesrk wrote:We have discussed adding in workflow for callings...to help track issuing the call and release and getting them sustained

This feature would be wonderful.

A feature to track this whole process, from examination of all possible candidates through the calling and sustaining process, planning and tracking each step, and assigning who will do which steps and when they are to be done? Wow!
I would love to see a "digital magnetic board" where the ward could be re-organized in a planning mode, and re-set any number of times as leaders "study it out in their mind" while not forgetting who is calling who, and not forgetting to release anyone, and when this all is set to happen. Fantastic!

There are two phases of callings before they are 'active'. The first phase is the planning mode where you consider who should be in what calling and all the domino effects that has. The second phase is tracking the required steps to make it happen once the bishopric has decided who to call (issue the call, issue the release, make sure they get sustained).

We have talked about both, but it seems that the second phase is the easier one to implement first. That said, I doubt either will happen unit all the membership functionally is moved from MLS to LCR.

jonesrk wrote: There are two phases of callings before they are 'active'. The first phase is the planning mode where you consider who should be in what calling and all the domino effects that has. The second phase is tracking the required steps to make it happen once the bishopric has decided who to call (issue the call, issue the release, make sure they get sustained).

We have talked about both, but it seems that the second phase is the easier one to implement first. That said, I doubt either will happen unit all the membership functionally is moved from MLS to LCR.

Not to split any hairs or fork any threads, but I see "phase two split into two parts" if we are really trying to help out the bishopric:

• Phase one is indeed the planning mode, short term AND long range
• Phase two is the tracking mode, but there are two parts:
  • One, which includes the interviewing and physically "calling or release" them by a bishopric member to the intended calling. (this might include waiting, as when a president is called, but then must ponder for counselors, etc.)
  • Two, the actual public sustaining / releasing, setting apart and recording calling in LCR

You can see my spreadsheet I used to track these three parts in the thread Callings Visualization Tool for Bishoprics

jonesrk wrote:We have discussed adding in workflow for callings after the bishopric has approved them to help track issuing the call and release and getting them sustained, but at this point I'm guessing that it won't happen until most of the non finance functionality of MLS has been moved to LCR.

Ohhh..... man..... workflow here would be SOOOOOOOOO great. Ward/Stake would be different, but so nice. It would be helpful to match the callings matrix in the handbook with who calls (for instance a Primary President could put in a suggestion for a name), the Bishopric could automatically pull the list of suggestions to consider. Then either accept/reject, upon acceptance, trigger an assigned 'caller' from the matrix, once the call is made, the sustain list can be pulled... All the while, the person who is asking can see where they are in the process. If the Primary president asks for a new nursery leader, she could see it progress through acceptance / calling / sustaining, etc... Same with a Bishop who asks for a new Clerk, or exec sec, could see where the presidency or an assigned HC might be, etc...

Ever since I saw the workflow available for the Disciplinary Council flow, this is what I've been waiting for. I'd bet if you pulled every stake/ward clerk/execsec they'd say this is the most time consuming item in their lives. more particularly with the stake as so many hands touch a calling.

Sounds like workflows and custom reports are the next "home teaching and callings online!" cry.

sbradshaw wrote:Sounds like workflows and custom reports are the next "home teaching and callings online!" cry.

And they're not even out of beta yet.

sbradshaw wrote:Sounds like workflows and custom reports are the next "home teaching and callings online!" cry.

It only took 5 years.

Getting back to the original topic: I never saw confirmation that this bug was fixed. I just tried calling myself that great Hymnbook Mender position and found that I can't enter dates in the future.

mevans wrote:Getting back to the original topic: I never saw confirmation that this bug was fixed. I just tried calling myself that great Hymnbook Mender position and found that I can't enter dates in the future.

I flagged a developer, but never got any word back. One way or another, I think they got the message and took care of it. I'm sure it saved them a number of support calls about it.