Home Teaching

I am trying to find out where it is in the system where you can designate what quorum is assigned to for Home Teaching purposes. How do you change the responsible quorum?

jdslds13 wrote:I am trying to find out where it is in the system where you can designate what quorum is assigned to for Home Teaching purposes. How do you change the responsible quorum?

In a way, you can't. You can assign a family to a companionship and that works well, but once they become unassigned, they revert back to the default assignment as far as the "unassigned" list goes.

Who sets the default assignment? Their has to be a way we can control whether a family falls under the High Priest Group verse the Elders Quorum?

jdslds13 wrote:Who sets the default assignment?

It's hard-coded. If the Head of House is an Elder, they are assigned to the Elder's quorum. All others fall under High Priests.

I believe it's being reviewed as it causes some issues. Particularly for YSA wards that have no HP Group. But there's no word on when or what the answer will be.

jdslds13 wrote:Who sets the default assignment? Their has to be a way we can control whether a family falls under the High Priest Group verse the Elders Quorum?

It is set according to the current Handbook and other letters and instructions from the First Presidency and Twelve. As russellhltn mentioned, there have been reports that this is being reviewed.

My personal opinion is that, while there are defaults, once the bishop makes the determination that a family should be the responsibility of a quorum or group other than the default, it would be nice if LCR allowed a way to do that. Right now you can assign a family to home teachers supervised by either quorum or group, but when the family drops off that home teaching assignment, they revert to the unassigned list of the default quorum or group, not to the unassigned list of the quorum or group who previously assigned their home teachers.

As a practical matter for now, it just means that the clerk becomes much more involved in the mechanics of the home teaching assignment process with the move to LCR.

lajackson wrote:As a practical matter for now, it just means that the clerk becomes much more involved in the mechanics of the home teaching assignment process with the move to LCR.

Note that MLS didn't have any feature to allow a household with no home teachers to be in a specific unassigned household list, either. In that regard, LCR is exactly like MLS and there is no change.

The practical difference is that with MLS, both EQ and HPG leaders could see the full unassigned households list. So even though that list made no distinction between households whose home teaching was to be the responsibility of EQ vs. HPG, at least everyone involved could see the whole list.

In any case, when home teaching assignments are made promptly as they should, the unassigned list should be quite small. As was still the case in MLS, the bishop (perhaps after consulting with the PEC or ward council) selects either the HPGL or EQP to take responsibility for making the HT assignment. That selection is not recorded in LCR, but once the household is assigned home teachers in LCR, the selected quorum will see the household in all their reports.

So yes, it would be helpful to designate a household with no home teachers to a specific "unassigned" list by quorum in LCR, but that is not a feature we've ever had before, so it's hardly a requirement for effective home teaching administration.

Moved an older brother whose is an Elder to the High Priest Group using LCR. The movement is shown as being done. Class listing reports show the brother in the High Priest. However, the problem now is that the brother doesn't show up in the High Priest for receiving home teachers. He still shows in the Elders quorum and not being assigned.

tmillhouse wrote:However, the problem now is that the brother doesn't show up in the High Priest for receiving home teachers. He still shows in the Elders quorum and not being assigned.

Class assignments has no bearing on the default assignment to receive home teachers. You can still assign him by using another route, but if he ever becomes unassigned, he will show up on the Elder's unassigned list.

tmillhouse wrote: ... the brother doesn't show up in the High Priest for receiving home teachers.

The brother can be added to be home taught by a HP companionship by manually typing in his name. He will not appear on the list of unassigned for the HP because he is on the EQ unassigned list. That is why he must be manually entered rather than selected from the list of unassigned.

I believe the entry box actually allows you to select (using the drop-down box available) the option to list households from either or both quorums as you select a household, and also gives you the ability to restrict the list presented to those unassigned or those already assigned home teachers. I'm a Ward Clerk and I'm able to see these options as I add a new assignment to a home teaching route. I'm presuming leaders within the quorums also have these options in the drop down box presented. (Can someone confirm this?) Of course you can type in the name directly as you describe.

lewisnewton wrote:I believe the entry box actually allows you to select (using the drop-down box available) the option to list households from either or both quorums as you select a household, ... I'm a Ward Clerk and I'm able to see these options

The quorum leaders are limited to their own quorum. But clerks/bishopric can see all of them.

lewisnewton wrote:I'm a Ward Clerk and I'm able to see these options as I add a new assignment to a home teaching route.

That's just it. The clerk, assistant clerk - membership, and the bishop/branch president can view either or both quorum unassigned lists, but the EQ presidency and the HP group leadership cannot. They can only see their unassigned list of responsibility.

To check this out I called the Secretary of our High Priest Group and had him try it. He has access to a list of both quorum's of household names when adding an assignment to a route. It works like it works for me as Ward Clerk. To access this go to a route, then click "Edit", and then "Add new assignment". At that point a search box comes up you can use to find a household to add to the route. However, to the right of the search box is a blue button with a down arrow. If you click on this a dialog box will come up that will let you select "Elders","High Priests", or "All". I verified that this works for the the HP Group Secretary like it does for me. He can see the list of those "Unassigned" or "Assigned" in either or both quorums by selecting a button.

lewisnewton wrote:He has access to a list of both quorum's of household names when adding an assignment to a route.

And I think that's the key difference. If you simply pull up the list of unassigned and try to assign them, that's when you discover that you can't see everyone. But if you're in the mode of assigning someone to a companionship, then you can see everyone.

Either that or there's been a change.

Why are there two unassigned lists: one for Elders and one for High Priests, when that wasn't necessary in MLS? With the current design, the High Priests Group Leader cannot see those on the Elders unassigned list without help from a Bishop, Clerk, or someone in the Elders Quorum presidency. I know that he can type in any name to assign them, but he can't know that they need to be assigned without help from someone else.

Also, with only households where an Elder is the head of household going to the unassigned list for Elders and all other households going to the unassigned list for High Priests, is that implying that by default, Elders only have responsibility for Elder led households and High Priests have responsibility for all other households? I don't believe that this would be feasible in most cases. If, on the other hand, that is not the case, then why not provide a mechanism for those who will be given responsibility for a household to know that they have not yet been assigned?

My main reason for asking these questions is really a hope that whoever has influence on the design of the system will please reconsider the design.

wooten wrote:My main reason for asking these questions is really a hope that whoever has influence on the design of the system will please reconsider the design.

Shortly after the HT/VT support on LCR was released, we were told that this design would be reviewed (presumably because of all the confusion it has caused--this has probably been the number one question on the forums since it was released). However, we haven't been told whether that review is complete, whether any changes are planned or when any changes might be released. It's been several months so I don't think we'll get any such announcement. That doesn't mean that changes won't be made but we probably won't know about them until they are released or are at least in beta test.

I agree fully with the 2nd comment above. In fact, the fact that High Priest, Elder, and RS leaders cannot see each other's Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching assignments really hampers these leader's ability to work together in discussing appropriate assignments and in working together to best meet member needs. To help in this, as Ward Clerk, after discussing this in Ward Council, I've taken to "printing" a PDF file of the HT and VT assignment lists for the 3 groups on a regular basis and emailing them to these leaders so at least they can see the assignments at that point in time. This helps, but is not fully satisfactory since it is not real time and is not visible right in the tool as they are working with the system. Our Quorum and VT leaders have all expressed the hope that visibility in this regard will be opened up in an upcoming new release of the software.

I am a HPG Sec'y. An over-18 sister, who was on the HP HT list, got married to a member who is an Elder. Previous to this, she was assigned to a HP companionship. Now, she should be taught by the EQ. But when I am on the Companionships tab and go to the HP companionship that previously taught her, if I click EDIT on that companionship, all the families for that companionship are in RED. It -appears- that if I click the DELETE button, all those families will be deleted from that companionship, but I only want to delete that one sister. How do I accomplish that?
And why is there no tutorial on how to do that?

WayneMoseley wrote:I am a HPG Sec'y. An over-18 sister, who was on the HP HT list, got married to a member who is an Elder. Previous to this, she was assigned to a HP companionship. Now, she should be taught by the EQ. But when I am on the Companionships tab and go to the HP companionship that previously taught her, if I click EDIT on that companionship, all the families for that companionship are in RED. It -appears- that if I click the DELETE button, all those families will be deleted from that companionship, but I only want to delete that one sister. How do I accomplish that?
And why is there no tutorial on how to do that?

If you hover the mouse over the DELETE button, you'll see that it says "Delete companionship". That is not what you want to do.

Instead, under "Households Taught" you'll see a red circle with a "-" icon. Click on that icon to delete a household from the companionship.

mevans wrote:If you hover the mouse over the DELETE button, you'll see . . .

Oops. There goes the companionship.

This is, however, a very helpful hint for those who are using a mouse and not a touch screen, which I suppose will still be the majority. [grin]

lajackson wrote:

mevans wrote:If you hover the mouse over the DELETE button, you'll see . . .

Oops. There goes the companionship.

This is, however, a very helpful hint for those who are using a mouse and not a touch screen, which I suppose will still be the majority. [grin]

I hadn't really thought about the usability issues of a touch screen and tool tips. I wonder if some of the newer equipment will get around that. Apple's been adding pressure sensitivity and I believe the latest Microsoft Surface also does. If the software behind these hardware innovations works on web pages to move the mouse, but you have to physically push harder to click on the button, then that might help.