Comments in Church's HT/VT Application

I have expressed many times how important it is for Home/Visiting Teachers to be able to make comments when reporting Home or Visiting teaching in an HT/VT application. In fact, the comments are nearly as important as the acquired HT/VT statistics. Somehow, behind the scenes, a decision has been made to exclude comments from the Church's official HT/VT system for phase 1.

I find this to be absolutely absurd. It is especially absurd because the decision appears to have been made without using the knowledge that has already been gained by the work that I have previously done in this area. I have spoken to hundreds of people and seen first-hand how critically important comments are to the Presidencies using RAR. Perhaps it is a simple lack of communication, but to be informed that "Comments will not be included" with absolutely no explanation is a real slap in the face. This type of behind-the-scenes decision-making is certainly not a characteristic of a "community" project.

All i can do is once again encourage whoever is making these decisions to rethink their position and do what it takes to ensure that comments are included in PHASE 1. I implore you to Talk to Presidencies who have used RAR. I encourage you to use RAR yourself and learn what features work and what features do not before going down a path that will render a product that would be nowhere near as valuable as it could have been.

Please do me the basic courtesy of looking at what has already been done instead of completely reinventing the wheel.

Thanks,

Brad O.

As a user of automated HT/VT reporting for the last 2 years, I totally agree with Brad. Without the ability to provide comments, the application would lose at least half of its value. One of the real values of the automated reporting is passing important information along on a timely basis. For example, when a HT learns that someone is sick or has surgery scheduled, we can immediately pass that information on to the Bishopric, the Relief Society Presidency, the Compassionate Service Leader, Auxiliary Leaders with stewardships for the family, etc. There is no waiting until PEC or Ward Council.

The reason they were excluded was not to 'slap anyone in the face'. There are legal reasons. I'm not at liberty to say at this time but the legal issues are both domestic as well as international.

No matter how important a feature may appear to be, we are still subject to the law and to lawsuits should someone claim that we violated the law. More research is being done by the Church's legal department. The results of that research will then be reviewed by the brethren. Until that time, it has been mandated that we not collect any open-ended "notes" on individuals.

Tom

tomw wrote:The reason they were excluded was not to 'slap anyone in the face'. There are legal reasons. I'm not at liberty to say at this time but the legal issues are both domestic as well as international.

No matter how important a feature may appear to be, we are still subject to the law and to lawsuits should someone claim that we violated the law. More research is being done by the Church's legal department. The results of that research will then be reviewed by the brethren. Until that time, it has been mandated that we not collect any open-ended "notes" on individuals.

Tom

An explanation of why certainly helps. When the only information provided to the community is "It has been decided that..." it comes off as being far less of a community effort.

As you can plainly see, to me this is an extremely disappointing development.

Brad O.

Brad O. wrote:An explanation of why certainly helps. When the only information provided to the community is "It has been decided that..." it comes off as being far less of a community effort.

Valid complaint. We will try to be better.

Brad O. wrote:As you can plainly see, to me this is an extremely disappointing development.

Disappointing to me as well.

Tom

tomw wrote:Until that time, it has been mandated that we not collect any open-ended "notes" on individuals.

Could a reasonable substitute in the meantime be a few checkboxes for the home/visiting teacher such as:

- Please contact me about this family
- Urgency of request (within a day, within a week, etc.)?

This doesn't sound like it would be "open-ended notes" to me.

oregonmatt wrote:Could a reasonable substitute in the meantime be a few checkboxes for the home/visiting teacher such as:

- Please contact me about this family
- Urgency of request (within a day, within a week, etc.)?

This doesn't sound like it would be "open-ended notes" to me.

That would certainly be better than nothing. With customizable Contact Types, you can sort-of already do that.

I am not seeing how the Church can be sued for comments when we have YouTube, FaceBook, and MySpace allowing people to make public comments about WHO KNOWS WHAT. No one is going to get sued unless the Church refuses to remove information upon request. This is how I handle RAR. In the rare instances that someone gets upset that their information is online, I promptly remove it.

I do not understand why this couldn't be included in a "usage acceptance clause" and agreed to by all users of the system. For international laws, this functionality could be disabled... but in the US, there should be no reason why we could not accomplish this. I'm no lawyer, but I know what I see on other websites is far more threatening than private comments for the Presidency.

My ward's Relief Society President was telling me the other day how allowing a sister to type in, "Had a great meeting with so-and-so and brought her a gift" brought a personal and fulfilling element to the online reporting process.

Once more, we have people in LUWS sending open ended Emails to all members. All of these examples seem far more threatening.

Brad O.

tomw wrote:The reason they were excluded was not to 'slap anyone in the face'. There are legal reasons. I'm not at liberty to say at this time but the legal issues are both domestic as well as international.

No matter how important a feature may appear to be, we are still subject to the law and to lawsuits should someone claim that we violated the law. More research is being done by the Church's legal department. The results of that research will then be reviewed by the brethren. Until that time, it has been mandated that we not collect any open-ended "notes" on individuals.

Tom

Legal issues are always a valid concern. However, right now there is a lot of ward and stake administrative & fellowshipping information being conveyed via email. Wouldn't this be subject to the same legal concerns?

With requests from Elder Ballard telling us to go viral ....now more than ever it seems imperative that the Church publish crystal clear guidelines that have been written for the Web 2.0 + era.

With this in hand it would enable us to build solutions which are compliant from the inception instead of prolonging development cycles, costs and wasting precious time of leaders trying to interpret was is legal, good or permitted.

daddy-o wrote:However, right now there is a lot of ward and stake administrative & fellowshipping information being conveyed via email. Wouldn't this be subject to the same legal concerns?

No. email can be looked at as having a sort of common-carrier status, unless it originates from company/corporate sources. Then email becomes official legal records of the company/corporation.

If the Church starts sponsoring "open-ended notes" on members, because the Church is hosting the service, there are legal records retention requirements that might come into play, as well as those notes being subpoena-able.

Regardless of how well it is working on a non-Church sponsored third-party site, there is a huge potential for misuse and abuse which the Church many become liable for should it incorporate that functionality into official Church software.

I am not a lawyer (and I don't play one on TV), neither have I been a part of or privy to any of the policy discussions the Church has made over this. Yet even I can see how this could become a real headache for the Church if it doesn't examine this issue from all angles to minimize its risk.

Another difference with this is that MySpace and Facebook use an opt-in model. The individual assumes the risk and liabilities of participating in that service when they sign up for it. The opt-in model does not apply to HT/VT. You can imagine how well it would work if it was opt-in only. "Yes, I have 5 families assigned on my HT route, but none of them have opted-in to RAR, so I still have to call in my report to my priesthood leader, until they choose to do so."

And it's not fair to assume that because someone was baptized into the Church, that was the moment they opted-in to RAR. The telecom industry when through a similar issue over caller-ID about 2 decades ago. Just because people opted-in for telephone service, didn't mean that they also opted-in to having their unlisted or unpublished phone number displayed to the receiving party every time they made a phone call.

oregonmatt wrote:Could a reasonable substitute in the meantime be a few checkboxes for the home/visiting teacher such as:

- Please contact me about this family
- Urgency of request (within a day, within a week, etc.)?

This doesn't sound like it would be "open-ended notes" to me.

No, because these checkboxes imply a problem or concern which some would feel was conveying confidential information.

Tom

Brad O. wrote:I am not seeing how the Church can be sued for comments when we have YouTube, FaceBook, and MySpace allowing people to make public comments about WHO KNOWS WHAT. No one is going to get sued unless the Church refuses to remove information upon request. This is how I handle RAR. In the rare instances that someone gets upset that their information is online, I promptly remove it.

As previously mentioned, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace are opt-in. How can a person opt-out when they don't know that they are opted in?

Brad O. wrote:I do not understand why this couldn't be included in a "usage acceptance clause" and agreed to by all users of the system. For international laws, this functionality could be disabled... but in the US, there should be no reason why we could not accomplish this. I'm no lawyer, but I know what I see on other websites is far more threatening than private comments for the Presidency.

The lawyers who do understand the issues feel it is an issue so we should leave it to them.

Tom

jbh001 wrote:No. email can be looked at as having a sort of common-carrier status, unless it originates from company/corporate sources. Then email becomes official legal records of the company/corporation.

If the Church starts sponsoring "open-ended notes" on members, because the Church is hosting the service, there are legal records retention requirements that might come into play, as well as those notes being subpoena-able.

Regardless of how well it is working on a non-Church sponsored third-party site, there is a huge potential for misuse and abuse which the Church many become liable for should it incorporate that functionality into official Church software.

I am not a lawyer (and I don't play one on TV), neither have I been a part of or privy to any of the policy discussions the Church has made over this. Yet even I can see how this could become a real headache for the Church if it doesn't examine this issue from all angles to minimize its risk.

Another difference with this is that MySpace and Facebook use an opt-in model. The individual assumes the risk and liabilities of participating in that service when they sign up for it. The opt-in model does not apply to HT/VT. You can imagine how well it would work if it was opt-in only. "Yes, I have 5 families assigned on my HT route, but none of them have opted-in to RAR, so I still have to call in my report to my priesthood leader, until they choose to do so."

And it's not fair to assume that because someone was baptized into the Church, that was the moment they opted-in to RAR. The telecom industry when through a similar issue over caller-ID about 2 decades ago. Just because people opted-in for telephone service, didn't mean that they also opted-in to having their unlisted or unpublished phone number displayed to the receiving party every time they made a phone call.

Well said. Thank you!

Tom

With RAR, the comments are never stored... they are Emailed straight through to the Presidency as if the person typing the comment had sent an Email. What is the difference between that and a person Emailing a confidential comment using their Email client?

I hope we can continue pushing for and come up with a solution to this, because I mean it when I say that a system lacking the comments loses at least 50% of its value.

Tom: Based on what you just said, it sounds as though Custom Contact Types is out of the question, too.

Brad O. (shaking head in frustration)

Brad O. wrote:With RAR, the comments are never stored... they are Emailed straight through to the Presidency as if the person typing the comment had sent an Email. What is the difference between that and a person Emailing a confidential comment using their Email client?

I'm also not a lawyer and not privy to any internal church discussions, but I would guess that in one case the church web site would be soliciting information on families and that the church could be considered responsible even if it doesn't store the information. In the other case a person is just using a generic communications medium and the church organization isn't involved any more than if a phone call or text message were involved. From a technical standpoint (to a developer) they seem pretty much the same and both are equally likely (or unlikely) to divulge sensitive information. But from a legal standpoint they could be very different.

Brad O. wrote: I hope we can continue pushing for and come up with a solution to this, because I mean it when I say that a system lacking the comments loses at least 50% of its value.

I'm hoping that at very least we can have a mailto link saying something like 'Send Message to President' on the page where the results are reported. Then the church's involvement is limited to providing an email address, which they already do in LUWS, and the church web site is not explicitly soliciting information about people.

Brad O. wrote: Tom: Based on what you just said, it sounds as though Custom Contact Types is out of the question, too.

Based on Chad Fulmer's latest edits on the functional specs in the wiki, they do seem to be out, at least for the first version. Right now the specs indicate that only certain predefined contact types will be available (Visit, Phone, Written and None).

Just a couple of thoughts here:

It would be nice to have legal and programming get together to see what can be worked out. Both are very procedural professions, just in different areas. It seems like some kind of meeting of the minds should be possible.

The second, is this is all about risk/reward. And part of establishing that is to get data on adoption rates. So it may be necessary to deploy a watered-down RAR to see how many wards adopt it. I know use of LUWS seems to be less then what I would have expected.

Brad O. wrote:With RAR, the comments are never stored... they are Emailed straight through to the Presidency as if the person typing the comment had sent an Email. What is the difference between that and a person Emailing a confidential comment using their Email client?

Or a more apt analogy would be to determine how this is different from sending an email via the LUWS system. In what ways does RAR parallel the LUWS email system, and in what ways is it different? Knowing the answers to those questions would help clarify the legal issues and liabilities connected with various ways to implement RAR functions.

jbh001 wrote:In what ways does RAR parallel the LUWS email system, and in what ways is it different?

Maybe a better question is in what ways is RAR different from the written HT/VT forms we currently get from MLS? Sure, you can write in the margins, and some have some nice empty areas, but I don't see labeled blanks for anything except recording visited/not visited. Certainly I don't see anything marked "comments".

The problems may have more to do with the added functionality then the "how"/cyber aspect.

RussellHltn wrote:Just a couple of thoughts here:

It would be nice to have legal and programming get together to see what can be worked out. Both are very procedural professions, just in different areas. It seems like some kind of meeting of the minds should be possible.

The second, is this is all about risk/reward. And part of establishing that is to get data on adoption rates. So it may be necessary to deploy a watered-down RAR to see how many wards adopt it. I know use of LUWS seems to be less then what I would have expected.

I think that RussellHtn is right and it would be better to have legal and the programmers work on it at this point. Have this forum talk about it at this point services no real purpose because legal has the last word and no one here can speak for them.

RussellHltn wrote:Just a couple of thoughts here:

It would be nice to have legal and programming get together to see what can be worked out. Both are very procedural professions, just in different areas. It seems like some kind of meeting of the minds should be possible.

The second, is this is all about risk/reward. And part of establishing that is to get data on adoption rates. So it may be necessary to deploy a watered-down RAR to see how many wards adopt it. I know use of LUWS seems to be less then what I would have expected.

Regarding your first point, that is exactly what I was thinking, but not articulating. I also feel that a legal problem was encountered, so a decision was quickly made to discard the functionality that causes the legal challenge. I think that an effort should be made to retain this functionality. There could be a disagreement as to how important these functions are for the system. I firmly believe that Teacher Comments and Customizable Contact Types are absolutely critical components. I reached this conclusion because I have spent countless hours working with hundreds of people and have learned first-hand how incredibly valuable these features are.

Regarding your second point, RAR was intended to provide those answers so that the Church wouldn't have to waste time with a watered-down version. Starting with a watered-down cancels out work that has already been done.

On a side-note, originally, RAR used mailto: and it ended up being useless because so many people do not have a local Email client, but instead use web services like hotmail.com/gmail.com.

Brad O.

Brad O. wrote:I also feel that a legal problem was encountered, so a decision was quickly made to discard the functionality that causes the legal challenge.

From my conversations with Tom, it doesn't appear that the legal issues encountered would be new ones per se. Rather it appears the Church is already facing the alluded to legal problems now and then, and the real concern is that the addition of this feature would exasperate the troubles. I doubt the decision was made as hastily as you think. However, I think I agree with you that a more extensive exploration of the proposed feature (and secondary options) could help find an acceptable legal solution.

mkmurray wrote:I think I agree with you that a more extensive exploration of the proposed feature (and secondary options) could help find an acceptable legal solution.

Especially if the e-mail feature is actually a pass-through option where the message is not stored.

lajackson wrote:Especially if the e-mail feature is actually a pass-through option where the message is not stored.

Oh, you'd be surprised. I once worked on a case to recover AOL IM messages. The user didn't save them. And yet I recovered usable fragments from the hard drive. Between virtual memory, pre-paging, how deletions are handled, how new disk blocks are assigned and slack space, there's whole bunch of stuff lying around.

It is unfortunate that some feel that if comments or customizable types are not allowed, a large percentage of the application is lost. I do disagree, however, as currently there are not a lot of other options. MLS does not provide an easy means to create and manage districts and also limits one person to use the computer at a time and only form the ward house. Having an online offering will be a much needed improvement.

Please understand that this was not a light decision. These topics have been discussed and will continue to be discussed but we must respect the decision of the Church on comments and customizable types, otherwise the project will not be approved.

As far as the comments field, it is a legal issue. As far as the customizable visit types, that is more a policy issue. Until the Church officially weighs in on what constitutes a visit, different that what is already set, we have to follow the existing policies.

Tom

RussellHltn wrote:Oh, you'd be surprised. . . . there's whole bunch of stuff lying around.

I am well aware of that and did not factor it into my response. Of course, the legal beagles probably did.

Electronic media rule #1: "Never post anything that you would not want to see on a billboard as you drive to work tomorrow." This rule follows right after the two previous rules, "the camera never blinks", and "the microphone is always hot". You can probably figure out from those two rules where I have spend a lot of my time as I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I have seen folks go to prison for stuff they were absolutely certain had been wiped from their hard drives.

As for RAR, I think technology is a wonderful thing, and that we should use it as much as they will allow us to use it. Since, as I understand it, comments flow through RAR to the recipient (notwithstanding the fact that they are captured just as is any other e-mail in the world), I would think that the legal liability would be different than if a repository was being kept.

In the meantime, while folks get a handle on the implications and operations of the program, there will be some very thoughtful movements and decisions that will always be designed to protect the Church. As Tom said, we need to honor those, along with the folks who are making them, and work within the constraints that are given.

On the other hand, I know from personal experience over nearly 40 years of church service that the surest way to improve the quality of home teaching is to hold eye-to-eye stewardship interviews each month between every priesthood leader and home teacher. If RAR helps that in any way at all, go for it.

lajackson wrote:the surest way to improve the quality of home teaching is to hold eye-to-eye stewardship interviews each month between every priesthood leader and home teacher.

Agreed.

But note that is oral communication away from cameras, microphones or any kind of storage medium. But RAR is a form of written communication. I think you can appreciate the difference.

Again, our written forms do nothing to encourage the gathering of anything more than visit history. I kinda get the feeling this battle has been fought before. We just weren't there to see it.

Now, getting back to the eye-to-eye, the biggest problem I've had with that is trying to schedule a time when that can happen. Is there something we can add to the nRAR (new RAR) that will help make routine interviews happen? Like tracking interview "visits" and sign-up sheets?

RussellHltn wrote:Agreed.

But note that is oral communication away from cameras, microphones or any kind of storage medium. But RAR is a form of written communication. I think you can appreciate the difference.

Again, our written forms do nothing to encourage the gathering of anything more than visit history. I kinda get the feeling this battle has been fought before. We just weren't there to see it.

Now, getting back to the eye-to-eye, the biggest problem I've had with that is trying to schedule a time when that can happen. Is there something we can add to the nRAR (new RAR) that will help make routine interviews happen? Like tracking interview "visits" and sign-up sheets?

No communication in RAR was ever intended to replace or minimize PPI's. In fact, every time a teacher reports, he or she has the ability to schedule a meeting with the Presidency if he or she has anything that needs to be discussed. The Comments are more for things like, "My phone number has changed to..." or "This person is moved...." or "I will be sure to get it done next month." Not only do these comments assist the Presidency members to help them know what is going on, but it helps the teacher that is reporting feel far more connected to the HT/VT effort.

The new Event Scheduler that I added in November and have been expanding on over the past few months is really cool for scheduling PPI's. Every time a teacher reports, he or she first sees a list of all the group's events and timeslots for each event. The teacher can then sign up by simply clicking on the checkbox next to the timeslot. The Event Scheduler also includes a fairly elaborate Email notification process as events are changed and group members sign-up for and opt-out of events.

Brad O.

Brad O. wrote:"My phone number has changed to..." or "This person is moved...."

That might fly. I think it would be worth asking legal.

tomw wrote:
As far as the comments field, it is a legal issue. As far as the customizable visit types, that is more a policy issue. Until the Church officially weighs in on what constitutes a visit, different that what is already set, we have to follow the existing policies.

Tom

Thoughout the Church, people have different ideas as to what constitutes a visit. I thought we discussed this before and it was determined that a certain amount of flexibility was given to allow the leaders to do the right thing? This is certainly how the HT/VT program works now... in fact, there is nothing to prevent leaders from counting results as they see fit. If anything, customizable contact types provide a way for leaders to count statistics more accurately based upon whatever policy the Church provides.

Customizable contact types are not provided to allow groups to fake their Home/Visiting teaching results or anything like that. They are provided because each group is different and may desire to monitor different things about their teaching statistics. For example, one Elders Quorum I worked with is in an area where apartment complexes make up a majority of the ward, so turnover is high. It is very important for them to have a "Family Moved" option, while this option would not be so important for others. As we discussed before, I think leaders should be given the tools that they need to do the job and guidelines on how to use those tools. I don't think we should be purposefully making inflexible tools because we're afraid people aren't going to use them properly.

This system absolutely needs comments and customizable contact types. I would encourage anyone who thinks otherwise to talk to any Presidency that is using RAR and find out for themselves. These features are important and worth fighting for.

Brad O.

Brad O. wrote:This system absolutely needs comments and customizable contact types. I would encourage anyone who thinks otherwise to talk to any Presidency that is using RAR and find out for themselves. These features are important and worth fighting for.

Ok, I can see your argument that this would be a terrific feature for the Community Developed project. I actually agree with you and am willing to defend this feature as well.

However, does this feature "absolutely" have to make it into version 1? Will the application be useless to a majority of Church units if this feature is missing for a little while? Sure, I'd love to see this added back into version 1, but I'm also okay with a decision from Church employees that they would like to focus on other features first in version 1.

I realize this would be a downgrade for current RAR users, but just the idea of this system is an upgrade for a huge majority of Church units. I would prefer to get something simple and useable out sooner rather than later. My goal would then be to improve upon it with lessons learned from RAR with subsequent versions shortly thereafter.

mkmurray wrote:Ok, I can see your argument that this would be a terrific feature for the Community Developed project. I actually agree with you and am willing to defend this feature as well.

However, does this feature "absolutely" have to make it into version 1? Will the application be useless to a majority of Church units if this feature is missing for a little while? Sure, I'd love to see this added back into version 1, but I'm also okay with a decision from Church employees that they would like to focus on other features first in version 1.

I realize this would be a downgrade for current RAR users, but just the idea of this system is an upgrade for a huge majority of Church units. I would prefer to get something simple and useable out sooner rather than later. My goal would then be to improve upon it with lessons learned from RAR with subsequent versions shortly thereafter.

Fair enough.. I'll try not to whine about it anymore.... but I think these are basic features that are important for version 1. There are plenty of good features that I do not think are necessary for version 1. My concern is that if these features do not make it into version 1, they won't be seen for many, many years after version 1 is released.

Brad O.

Your points are well taken. As of now, comments are off the list for legal reasons. There is nothing at this time "fighting for" these features can do. The legal concerns at this time have trumped any valid reasons for having the feature.

For the customizable types, the issue will again be discussed with the Priesthood department. Until it changes, we will leave it the way it is. Thanks for the arguments. They help.

Tom

For those despairing:

Just because certain things are not in version 1 doesnt mean it will stay out forever. Once the application is up and running and working then I wouldnt be surprised if small additions similar to what has been suggested could go in. Somehow it is much easier for non-developers to imagine what is ok and what is not once they have something more "solid" to see and feel Have patience.

I feel good that the church stays on the "safe" side rather than haste into something and look on the bright side: PPI's havent gone away.

dkjorgi wrote:For those despairing:

Just because certain things are not in version 1 doesnt mean it will stay out forever. Once the application is up and running and working then I wouldnt be surprised if small additions similar to what has been suggested could go in. Somehow it is much easier for non-developers to imagine what is ok and what is not once they have something more "solid" to see and feel Have patience.

I feel good that the church stays on the "safe" side rather than haste into something and look on the bright side: PPI's havent gone away.

They do already have something to see and feel... but they are apparently not interested in looking at it. I still think someone should collaborate with the groups who are already using a similar system and then use that gathered information to make some of these decisions. This would avoid many of the problems that I worked through over the past 3 years and would provide the Church with a system that more closely fulfilled the needs of its users.

Brad O. wrote:They do already have something to see and feel... but they are apparently not interested in looking at it. I still think someone should collaborate with the groups who are already using a similar system and then use that gathered information to make some of these decisions. This would avoid many of the problems that I worked through over the past 3 years and would provide the Church with a system that more closely fulfilled the needs of its users.

The problem is that you don't know what you don't know. Talking with your users to find out if they found value in a "comments" feature is a little bit like asking a person who just bought a chocolate bar if they like chocolate. These people have no insight to the bigger legal issues. Do they have a deep understanding of what international and national laws dictate in regards to collecting information? Do they have a history of legal challenges that indicate how some types of procedures can cause problems?

Tom

tomw wrote:The problem is that you don't know what you don't know. Talking with your users to find out if they found value in a "comments" feature is a little bit like asking a person who just bought a chocolate bar if they like chocolate. These people have no insight to the bigger legal issues. Do they have a deep understanding of what international and national laws dictate in regards to collecting information? Do they have a history of legal challenges that indicate how some types of procedures can cause problems?

Tom

I'm not only referring to the Comments feature. By "fighting for these features", I'm referring to two things: 1) spending more time with the Church's legal representatives in an attempt to find out if an alternative is possible and 2) spending time with some of the groups that have real-world experience with this and use their feedback to assist in making some of these decisions as to what will and will not be included.

If every avenue has already been taken, there is nothing more I can say. From my point of view, it seems as though something further could be done, but you're right... I have no clue what has been going on behind the scenes... all I comment on is what I am seeing from my point of view... and from my point of view, I am seeing some not good things happen.

tomw wrote:MLS does not provide an easy means to create and manage districts and also limits one person to use the computer at a time and only form the ward house. Having an online offering will be a much needed improvement.
...
As far as the customizable visit types, that is more a policy issue. Until the Church officially weighs in on what constitutes a visit, different that what is already set, we have to follow the existing policies.

Tom

Visit History
I agree that having a Home & Visiting Teaching assignments managed in a more accessible way is needed and much better that what MLS offers currently. The trick is to tie the visit history obtained from the online solution into MLS so the reports the wards use have the visit record in them. Has this kind of integration been included in the design scope?

Customizable Visit Types
I think it is important to clarify if not differentiate a bit.

As far as "what constitutes a visit" that is spelled out on the Ward Quarterly Report (previously known as the Member Progress Report.) For Home Teaching we record "Total Families visited by home teachers." In years past the Member Progress Report had said "Total Families visited by home teachers in their home" For many a visit in the home remains the definition but I have seen slippage from that increasing in recent years. If the church is looking for consistency then it should be defined on the Ward Quarterly Report to avoid further confusion.

The value of having a customizable visit type is to distinguish between the effort of the home teacher and the visit history for a given household. Too often this visit record is misunderstood to be a record of the home teachers effort when it is more accurately just a reflection of the households visit history. This is why having a visit type of "attempted" which does not constitute a visit is a valuable differentiator for ward or stake leaders.

IMHO

daddy-o wrote:The trick is to tie the visit history obtained from the online solution into MLS so the reports the wards use have the visit record in them. Has this kind of integration been included in the design scope?

There was a long and complicated discussion about this on the Wiki, championed by boomerbubba here on the forums.

I don't even really know what the current status is, but here are links to the discussion from a while back if you want to get fully up to speed (I've tried to keep the discussion in fairly chronological order, although a lot of it happened concurrently in different topic threads):

• https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Tal ... n_with_MLS
• https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Tal ... Management
• https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Tal ... MLS_Web.22
• https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Tal ... ifications

Brad O. wrote:If every avenue has already been taken, there is nothing more I can say. From my point of view, it seems as though something further could be done, but you're right... I have no clue what has been going on behind the scenes... all I comment on is what I am seeing from my point of view... and from my point of view, I am seeing some not good things happen.

I can only speak for myself. I do not have a way to turn off the Moderator tag or I would for this post. This is just me talking.

I admire your willingness to share something you have birthed and loved and developed with the Church. I understand your frustration with the direction some things have taken. I know personally of the lonely feeling that comes from not knowing what is going on behind the scenes. It is akin to sweating blood and tears in a Church calling and then watching as your replacement seemingly undoes everything you were inspired to do. It brings new tears and frustrations and is very difficult to watch.

Thank you for what you have done. Thank you for being willing to share your heart and love and unrewarded effort in a way that has the potential to benefit all who home and visit teach. Thank you for being willing to give up a part of you without knowing how much of it would survive to benefit others. Thank you.

I truly do know what you are going through. I admire you very much for doing it. It is a selfless sacrifice that has turned out to be harder to bear than you thought it would. Please know that you are not alone.

Just wanted to throw this out there as an update to all interested (however, there is no need for debate about legal issues again)...

Chad Fullmer, a Church employee overseeing the HT/VT Application community project, just made an edit to the Functional Specifications on the LDS Tech Wiki that states that Home/Visiting Teachers...

...should be able to request a PPI or contact from their supervisor or quorum president in order to discuss (offline) qualitative info re: their report.