RAR Strengths/Weaknesses

[Brad O.]

I am starting this thread to invite those who are actually using ReturnAndReport.org to provide feedback as to the strengths and weaknesses of the system. I think that this feedback would help in properly designing the official Church HT/VT system.

• What are the most important features that work well in the RAR system?
• What are the features that are nice, but you can do without?
• What features do not work as well as you would like? How could they be improved?
• What features are absolutely useless to you?

Ok, I'll start.

The Supervisor Menu is usable, but needs to be completely redesigned and teachers should be allowed to login to report in addition to clicking on the link that is Emailed to them.

I will be placing a link on the RAR site to this thread to encourage actual users to provide feedback.

Thanks,

Brad O.

[jslicer]

When I became a counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency in my ward, we originally called District Leaders to help get our Hometeaching reporting figured out. After a couple months and the Presidency having to do the work of the District Leaders, I investigated online hoping to find some sort of HT reporting tool that had been created. I found Returnandreport.org and found its features to be invaluable to keeping track of hometeaching without having to call, leave voicemails and ultimately guess whether those who had not reported did their hometeaching or not.

We have seen a steady increase in our Hometeachers simply checking off the names of the people they did and didn't visit. For the first time, our Bishop is able to see within a few days of the first part of the month a very accurate view of hometeaching for the previous month and he has already set goals to improve on our current percentage.

I can't say that it was the most intuitive process getting started with the site, but Brad has seriously done an amazing job addressing feedback and there has been alot of steady improvements that keep me and I'm sure many others using the site.

I even created a link to give a central location for instructions to my E.Q. Quorum on how to use R&R.org which I think should be helpful over time. I send this link out every month along with the new assignments as we update them to help new Elders get up to speed with the system and how we report hometeaching.

The instructions are here:

http://www.jakesargeant.com/hometeac...ons/index.html

I believe there still can be many things done to streamline the process of using this online system, but my biggest desire would be to find a way to assign and organiaze hometeaching through the actual R&R.org website (meaning you wouldn't have to be on the single computer with MLS at the church) and then simply upload this back into MLS. I know this sounds like I'm probably asking alot, but with the Church's cooperation, I think this could come about. I'm just going to presume though that alot depends on the Church and their willingness to put more development behind MLS and how it exports and imports data to other programs.

Those are my main comments for now. Thanks Brad for singlehandedly creating a system that has truly transformed how we track and monitor hometeaching in our ward.

-Jake Sargeant-

[deggertsen]

I have been mostly very impressed with RAR. The design elements of the site are not very attractive but since Graphic Design is what I spend most of my time doing that is what my eyes go to. In all reality the functionality is pretty good. The recent improvements in version 2.6 are very nice. Especially that now I can go in and put in more options for the pie chart and that the teachers can use rather than only the 3 previously available options.

One thing that would be nice that is not already available is the ability to assign a date for an update in assignments to be active. I find that in our Elders quorum we are constantly changing the HT assignments however we try to only give the updated lists to the Elders the end of each month so that they can stick to the last assignments they received until the next month. So when I go to update the assignments on RAR I have to wait until the beginning of the next month to make the update because otherwise it effects the current month also... Hopefully I was able to make some sense there...

Another thing I would like to see is in updating the assignments it would be nice if you could update a single district instead of starting all over and having to upload every districts file.

It would be nice if RAR matched MLS better. One examle is that when a families records come into the ward MLS doesn't allow you to mark them as taugh or not taught for the month they come in, however if you update it into RAR it does not recognize that. There are a few other things as far as that goes but most of my problems with RAR come with the updating of assignments.

Other than that I like all the features of RAR and think that they should be used in the up and coming church sponsored RAR.

Thanks!

[robbw]

One of the more unusual requests I've received is to send notifications to multiple email addresses.

Most of our members have work and personal email addresses. One brother said he goes through periods where everything is done with his is work email and weeks will go by without checking his personal email....and then the reverse will be true.

Anyway, I would like to see an option to register and use multiple email addresses.

[Brad O.]

Originally Posted by robbw

One of the more unusual requests I've received is to send notifications to multiple email addresses.

Most of our members have work and personal email addresses. One brother said he goes through periods where everything is done with his is work email and weeks will go by without checking his personal email....and then the reverse will be true.

Anyway, I would like to see an option to register and use multiple email addresses.

robbw: Either you or the teacher can enter multiple Email addresses by separating them by commas. The first Email address is primary and can be used to login. Any additional Email addresses entered cannot be used to login, but will received all Email communications.

Brad O.

[rhndpwlk]

I've been meaning to reply and let you now how

fantastic this service has been for our ward. Our visiting teaching hit
86%
last month! That's the highest it's been in 5 years! I love return and
report, it has made my life 100 times easier. Visiting teaching reporting
and statistics used to be the bane of my existence as relief society
president, now I can totally handle it. I only wish it was hooked up
directly to the clerks office!
Return and report is the best thing next to sliced bread!
Thank you again for such an awesome service (:
Sincerely,
Rhonda Pawlak
Ray 1st ward Relief Society President
Chandler Stake
Chandler Arizona

[Brad O.]

I want to share some amazing statistics with you. These statistics were taken from a real Relief Society in California (not my ward) that began using ReturnAndReport.org in July. It is extremely satisfying to me to see this type of improvement and this is my sole motivation for all the work I have done on this project. This is why I have always been such a proponent of a Church HT/VT Reporting system. Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching is one of the most important things we can do as Church members because it positively influences the lives of others.

Improvements of this magnitude are not experienced by all groups that use the system, but I'd say a healthy majority do experience moderate to extreme improvements. This is why I believe the HT/VT Web-Reporting initiative is so important. Web-Reporting has certainly never hurt the performance of any group that has used the system.

BEFORE USING RAR

Percentage Contacted in May: 47%
Percentage Contacted in June: 49%

USE OF RAR BEGINS

Statistics for July:




Statistics for August:




Statistics for September:

[marianomarini_vi]

Do you think will be possible have it in italian or it's better have an italian server for it?

[mkmurray]

Originally Posted by marianomarini_vi

Do you think will be possible have it in italian or it's better have an italian server for it?

I do know that the Church's Community Project we are building is planning on having localization built into the architecture. I do not remember for sure if phase 1 of the app would go outside the US and Canada or not, but I remember in the requirements for version 1 that a few different languages would be supported.

[Brad O.]

Originally Posted by marianomarini_vi

Do you think will be possible have it in italian or it's better have an italian server for it?

RAR is open for anyone to sign up in any country. Multiple languages is not currently supported, but the contact types can be customized to be in any language. Like mkmurray, I'm not sure whether the official Church project will include multiple languages for phase 1.

Brad O.