Entering Home/Visiting Teaching

With the new LCR H/V teaching will there be any changes in who can enter visits into the system?

Currently it must be reported up and and entered by someone other than the H/V teacher. I see this historically being for two main reasons, (1) entry was limited to MLS on the clerk computer and there would be a lot of contention if every H/V teacher had to enter their own visits on that one computer. (2) the actual reporting back... how are the individuals/families doing?

LCR solves #1, so technically every H/V teacher could log onto lds.org and enter their own visits. The main reason I see that they might not be given that ability is because of #2. Of course, even if they did open it for everyone, there would still need to be oversight to get them to actually do it!

Does anyone involved in the development of H/V teaching in LCR have any insight into whether or not allowing H/V teachers to enter their own visits is something that will (or will not) be added in the future?

Thanks

webmonk wrote: LCR solves #1, so technically every H/V teacher could log onto lds.org and enter their own visits. The main reason I see that they might not be given that ability is because of #2. Of course, even if they did open it for everyone, there would still need to be oversight to get them to actually do it!

Does anyone involved in the development of H/V teaching in LCR have any insight into whether or not allowing H/V teachers to enter their own visits is something that will (or will not) be added in the future?

I'm not a church employee and I don't have any inside information. I was involved as a community volunteer in an early effort to provide online HT/VT support several years ago. You can read some slightly informed speculation of mine in this post.

We have not had any church employee indicate that self-reporting is coming. But then again we've never had definite statement that it will never come. I would guess that either it's not happening or plans are unsure enough that any church developer involved probably doesn't want to say anything about it. We will probably just have to see what happens as things go along.

webmonk wrote:With the new LCR H/V teaching will there be any changes in who can enter visits into the system?

Not at the present. If you could not enter Home or Visiting Teaching information using the MLS computer in the clerk's office, you will not be able to enter HT/VT information using LCR 3.0.

As for the future, as eblood66 said, we do not know. Although there are many who would like to have that capability, I personally do not see it coming any time soon.

lajackson wrote:As for the future, as eblood66 said, we do not know.

I'm not sure as even the developers know. Their current instruction was just to move MLS functionality to the web without any feature creep.

I don't know for sure what will happen, but there is something to be said for the principle of return and report

With Leader and Clerk Resources 3.0 that's currently being released – in a ward, only ward council members, their counselors and secretaries, and members with home or visiting teaching callings (like a district leader, for example) will have access to Leader and Clerk Resources. So there is no self-reporting, but district leaders, for example, can enter reports for their district and so forth.

There are currently no plans to implement self-reporting.

russellhltn wrote:Their current instruction was just to move MLS functionality to the web without any feature creep.

Couldn't help myself, there are many who might consider this a 'creepy feature'

scgallafent wrote:There are currently no plans to implement self-reporting.

That's disappointing.

I don't find it disappointing at all. As someone who works with security around private information for individuals, I see the wisdom of not allowing a 'free text' feature of self reporting. If we're just talking about a status like [yes/no] visited for the month - I'd have no problem (but that is NOT what people want, or if given it, they'd then ask for a place to enter comments (there are tons of threads about it already). Once you start allowing people to put in comments you are recording private information about people and start to become required to submit to laws that come into play in the United States, not to mention every other country in the world. Can you imaging trying to figure out how to comply with all of those requirements?

johnshaw wrote:Once you start allowing people to put in comments you are recording private information about people and start to become required to submit to laws that come into play in the United States, not to mention every other country in the world.

That is a good point; however, what could be done instead of writing in comments about a family or something you could simply have a checkbox requesting a PPI or something. That way if you check that box the Quorum Presidency would know there is something that you needed to speak with them about and it wouldn't disclose personal information. Plus it would encourage having normal PPIs which unfortunately rarely have happened in any of the wards I have been in. It still think that to not include personal reporting in the lds.org system would be a terrible waste of technology. So easy to implement and it would make it so much easier to get home teaching reporting in...

Deggertsen wrote:That is a good point; however, what could be done instead of writing in comments about a family or something you could simply have a checkbox requesting a PPI or something. That way if you check that box the Quorum Presidency would know there is something that you needed to speak with them about and it wouldn't disclose personal information.

In years past I've had discussions with those in the know who have indicated even that's not likely to happen. I'm not sure as I can disclose why, but I'll just say the decision is reasoned and not arbitrary. Disappointing maybe, but that tends to be life.

Personally, I think more PPIs would be a good thing.