Second meetinghouse for a ward

Because our ward is geographically large (over 150 miles across) we have a second meetinghouse used by a group who live in/near another town. The main ward meetinghouse shows in maps, but the second meetinghouse doesn't. Is it possible to get this second meetinghouse and their sacrament meeting listed? We have heard of numerous cases where people travelling through haven't known there was a meetinghouse with meetings, because they don't appear in maps.

I'm not sure how the data is organized, but I'd think you'd have to be organized as some kind of unit to get a listing. Such as a branch. Perhaps as a group.

Talk with your FM group and/or have your ward or stake clerk call the member service center and see if they can do anything.

There's also a church employee who frequents forums and knows an amazing amount of stuff about things like this. Maybe we'll see him respond.

That was quite a distraction. jonesrk and I have both been mulling it over and had a chance to talk about it and do a little digging.

There isn't a way to do this right now. We'll bring the issue up with the product manager who would be responsible for it, but I don't know whether that will translate into tasks on anyone's development schedule.

If you need a Handbook reference, HB 1: 9.1.4.

russellhltn wrote:If you need a Handbook reference, HB 1: 9.1.4.

Yeah, we looked at that. One of the challenges is the no unit number requirement that the Handbook imposes. Several parts are done today by unit number so that's where some of the work would be.

Yeah, I figured it would be a "fun" change to the data structure. I threw in the Handbook reference since it shows the need is supported by it. Otherwise, this might fall into the "they're doing WHAT???" category. (I'm sure you've got a few stories about that. )

In this case, the group used to be a branch. When it was a branch, they of course appeared in maps with the meetinghouse as normal. But when the branch was dissolved, merged into the nearest ward, and the group formed under the ward, they disappeared off maps.

grahamf72: You might also have your stake president bring this up with his priesthood leader. Even though the church employees are talking with the product manager, from what we've seen in conversations here, stake presidents may have a little more clout in requesting changes.

Church Employees: Looking at HB 1: 9.1.4, it specifies that the membership records are kept in the supervising ward or branch, but there's a Group Leader. It seems like you would also need to make a standard calling of a Group Leader who would have some level of permission to see church records, but less permission than bishopric or clerks. Yes, there are data structures to figure out, but it seems like you first need an analyst to figure out how groups are supposed to function.

mevans wrote:Church Employees: Looking at HB 1: 9.1.4, it specifies that the membership records are kept in the supervising ward or branch, but there's a Group Leader. It seems like you would also need to make a standard calling of a Group Leader who would have some level of permission to see church records, but less permission than bishopric or clerks. Yes, there are data structures to figure out, but it seems like you first need an analyst to figure out how groups are supposed to function.

This thread is only talking about the possibility of getting group meeting locations to appear at maps.lds.org. We're not considering how this would work in LCR. There is no current plan to add this kind of functionality to LCR.

scgallafent wrote:This thread is only talking about the possibility of getting group meeting locations to appear at maps.lds.org.

In what now seems to be the ancient days of Local Unit Web Sites, this was easily taken care of with additional text on the home page announcing that the ward had a second location.

We used this free-form note area to show the relationship between overlay language units. We also used it to show the correct meeting times while we were trying to figure out how to get MLS to update the real unit times, and even to pre-announce upcoming meeting time changes.

I can't quite envision how you would do that with Maps.

russellhltn wrote:...this might fall into the "they're doing WHAT???" category.

Maybe this is one of those situations russellhltn is talking about: Several years ago I was visiting a family member who lived in the mountains. Their ward had two meeting locations. Which one it was on a given Sunday was determined by snowfall (if there's snow below x,000 feet, we meet at location A; otherwise we're at location B). Their ward had fairly large boundaries through the sparsely-populated mountain region. I think the closer meetinghouse to many people was at a higher altitude, but depending on the snowfall, may not have been plowed. So, if the snowfall was too low, they went down the mountain to a bigger city and met at a building there. Yes, that impacted attendance, but that was their situation for a while.

I think communication to unit members is probably easier now, but I still don't know how you could communicate this type of information to visitors? This was pre-LUWS, but as lajackson reminded us, a system like LUWS would have allowed ward leaders to post information about a given Sunday's meeting location. I don't know how you'd handle that type of situation now.

lajackson wrote:In what now seems to be the ancient days of Local Unit Web Sites, this was easily taken care of with additional text on the home page announcing that the ward had a second location.

That helps for some situations, but there are some interesting things that happen when you start digging around in the corners.

How about a group whose parent unit does not meet?

How do you handle significant geographic separation (think travel time in hours) between the group and its parent unit when presenting that information on a map?

So if I’m reading this thread correct, with the current design, this is not possible?

What then would be the correct channels for a feature request - is there an email address to contact? Or does it go up the PH leadership line - bishop, SP, AP etc? (We are outside the USA).

Interestingly, the remote meetinghouse is listed in the Facilities Issues Reporting section of the LDS.org website, and in the FIR app.

grahamf72 wrote:So if I’m reading this thread correct, with the current design, this is not possible?

What then would be the correct channels for a feature request - is there an email address to contact? Or does it go up the PH leadership line - bishop, SP, AP etc? (We are outside the USA).

Interestingly, the remote meetinghouse is listed in the Facilities Issues Reporting section of the LDS.org website, and in the FIR app.

Yeah, we saw that data as we did some investigation. The trick is getting everything tied together so that the maps application can display it correctly including the meeting times

grahamf72 wrote:So if I’m reading this thread correct, with the current design, this is not possible?

We don't think it is possible, but we're not completely certain. Some of the pieces are in place, but no one has tested end-to-end to see where issues might pop up. There are a couple of spots we suspect things don't fit together quite like they need to for this to work.

grahamf72 wrote:What then would be the correct channels for a feature request - is there an email address to contact? Or does it go up the PH leadership line - bishop, SP, AP etc? (We are outside the USA).

Your stake president would be the best person to make the request to the area leadership.