Will there will be access to schedule classes at stake level?

Beta Lesson Schedules Website feedback
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jdcr256
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#11

Post by jdcr256 »

kisaac wrote:I'm sure that in some stakes, "convenience" and "trickle down" would not be the proper terms describing how "decisions" by the stake president is presented to the wards. Adding such lessons to the stake calendars would continue to be the work-around in some stakes even after the scheduler goes live...

Having an online application where wards control the publishing of their lesson schedules does not preclude the authority of the Stake Presidency to give instruction and guidance, any more than a printed flyer distributed during class does. No authority has been taken away from any Stake leaders. The ability for those leaders to directly input and maintain a ward's schedule, rather than simply giving instruction and allowing the wards to govern themselves, is a "convenience".

We decided the additional complexity of stake administration was not necessary to give wards the ability to publish a lesson schedule, and so would not be a part of the 1.0 release.
kisaac
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#12

Post by kisaac »

aebrown wrote: [*]Stake clerks are specifically responsible for training ward clerks; it's very difficult for them to learn what they need to know in order to provide that training with no access. .....

So if it's not a huge effort, please consider involving stake administrators in lesson schedules.
With the calendar and directory, and both have been out for quite awhile, some wards are off and running, some are not, and need a little "push" from trained people on the stake level. Why would the lesson scheduler, or any new module, be any different?

I would add to aebrown's list one additional point in a case for stake admin ability. And this does speak to Convenience:
If a stake admin COULD enter stake "events" and have it flow to the wards, it would save labor and errors over each organization head or a ward admin doing the entry.

For example, assume two stake conferences and two general conferences. If the stake had ability to specify those, that would be four entries for a stake admin to make, and these could show on each wards lessons for them to schedule around.[INDENT][INDENT]4 conferences = 4 "events" added by a stake admin
[/INDENT][/INDENT]As the beta exists now, and if I understand it, each ward must instead add those four dates separately into each class schedule, for a grand approximate total of entering the dates 244 times in my stake![INDENT][INDENT]4 conferences = 244 "events" added by ward leaders (to all ward schedules individually, across a whole stake)
[/INDENT][/INDENT](hope nobody makes a typo in any of those times....)

(Check my math: Assume nine class schedules per ward X four conference dates = 36 entries made for each ward, times the number of wards (6 for me) = entering four conference dates a total of 244 times!)
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aebrown
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#13

Post by aebrown »

kisaac wrote:(Check my math: Assume nine class schedules per ward X four conference dates = 36 entries made for each ward, times the number of wards (6 for me) = entering four conference dates a total of 244 times!)

Being a math guy, I couldn't help but check your math, and I'm having a hard time figuring out where the number 244 comes from, since 244 is not a multiple of 36. If there were 7 wards in a stake, then 7*36 = 252 is pretty close to 244. Some stakes have 10, 12, or even more wards, so the total number could be 432 or more. But a more realistic way to look at is that 4 out of 52 events are stake and general conferences, so for any schedule we're talking about 7.7% of the weeks on the schedule.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
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#14

Post by kisaac »

aebrown wrote:Being a math guy, I couldn't help but check your math, and I'm having a hard time figuring out where the number 244 comes from, since 244 is not a multiple of 36. If there were 7 wards in a stake, then 7*36 = 252 is pretty close to 244. Some stakes have 10, 12, or even more wards, so the total number could be 432 or more. But a more realistic way to look at is that 4 out of 52 events are stake and general conferences, so for any schedule we're talking about 7.7% of the weeks on the schedule.
Sorry! My mistake! I did some adjusting (adding our "extra" non-traditional unit, more units but with less organizations) and didn't show my math! (yeah, that fourth grade teacher was right, it does get me in trouble....) 244 was my "guesstimate" for us, or 7.7% of the weeks as you put it.
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#15

Post by eblood66 »

kisaac wrote:As the beta exists now, and if I understand it, each ward must instead add those four dates separately into each class schedule, for a grand approximate total of entering the dates 244 times in my stake![INDENT][INDENT]4 conferences = 244 "events" added by ward leaders (to all ward schedules individually, across a whole stake)
[/INDENT][/INDENT](hope nobody makes a typo in any of those times....)

(Check my math: Assume nine class schedules per ward X four conference dates = 36 entries made for each ward, times the number of wards (6 for me) = entering four conference dates a total of 244 times!)

Actually, events like general and stake conference only have to be added once per ward. There is a checkbox to indicate it applies to all courses. Even for events that don't affect all courses, you just check the courses it applies to. You don't create separate events. So it's only 24 events in your case. And creating an event only takes a few seconds. I created all 4 for our ward in just over a minute.
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#16

Post by jasonhyer »

eblood66 wrote:Actually, events like general and stake conference only have to be added once per ward. There is a checkbox to indicate it applies to all courses. Even for events that don't affect all courses, you just check the courses it applies to. You don't create separate events. So it's only 24 events in your case. And creating an event only takes a few seconds. I created all 4 for our ward in just over a minute.

I think this comment illustrates quite well the quandry that stake clerks are going to be in when this goes live. We are responsible for training the wards but we don't have any view into the scheduler at all.

Please don't get me wrong. This is great that the schedule is finally close but it is extremely short sighted to not take the extra time and effort to include the stake administrators. I can pretty much guarantee that rolling it out to the wards will get about 33% utilization in my stake. If the stake were included, I could guarantee 100% utilization. I'm not comfortable touting the virtues of this though when I can't support it. If the Stake can't support it, who will. Do you realize how many questions stake clerks and technology specialist answer so that otherwise would go to church HQ. Are you prepared to shoulder that burden?

Please reconsider at least finding a way to give stake people some administrative access, even if it is ward by ward and it doesn't roll down.

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johnshaw
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#17

Post by johnshaw »

I would like to put in an additional Stake Clerk's opinion. Everything that aebrown said in his post is EXTREMELY valid

There are some very good arguments for giving stake administrators ward-level permissions:
The Handbook gives the stake president specific authority over some of these areas (as kisaac documented) and general authority over all of them.
I whole-heartedly disagree with the response, while it is true the tool doesn't remove the authority, It only makes sense that access at the Stake level is implied.
Stake clerks are specifically responsible for training ward clerks; it's very difficult for them to learn what they need to know in order to provide that training with no access. This is an important issue that seems to be neglected in the current direction of the Church with its leader and clerk web applications. I know I'm going to be asked many questions by ward clerks and others about this new lesson schedule module and I will only have a vague idea how to help them. That's not good.
My Own comment here is that the church has sent out policies, and when you call leader, member and unit support a high priority is given to stake clerks, ward clerks are supposed to funnel up through a stake clerk, who is unable to view/help --> This is my own observation as well, the tools, priorities, seem to go against what I see as a mandate coming down. It makes Stake Clerk's lives very difficult. --> Here is a scenario... Ward Clerk calls Stake Clerk, asks for help, Stake Clerk replies, sorry, I don't have access, I can't see what you see, you'll have to call SLC... Ward Clerk calls SLC, waits on hold a long time because they are not a Stake Clerk, first question from helpdesk, did you talk to your Stake Clerk? Well, I called but he couldn't help me.... Helpdesk, we're need you to work with your Stake Clerk, if he isn't able to help you, please have him call us.
In the specific case of lesson schedules, a stake clerk could provide the first pass at creating priesthood and RS lesson schedules in a way that provides consistency across the stake, then turn over administration to the wards.

So if it's not a huge effort, please consider involving stake administrators in lesson schedules.
I would add additionally, there are stake-level courses that we offer in Family History, Marriage, through LDS Social Services, Know your religion, Institute, etc.. that would be administered at the Stake Level only.
We decided the additional complexity of stake administration was not necessary to give wards the ability to publish a lesson schedule, and so would not be a part of the 1.0 release.


I am personally very interested in who 'we' is, but I realize I'll probably never know. What I hope 'we' is is a collection of Ward and Stake Clerks, experts at MLS from wards and stakes in Utah, but also surrounding areas, maybe some with large boundaries with hours to drive end to end. The perspective would be refreshing I think. Maybe this already happens, but in my experience, a top-down, here's what I'm giving you approach, rather than a bottom-up, what would you like to see approach seems a better thing.

I doubt there is a Stake Clerk in the church that would say... ya... develop it so that only ward clerks have access.
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#18

Post by eblood66 »

JohnShaw wrote:I am personally very interested in who 'we' is, but I realize I'll probably never know. What I hope 'we' is is a collection of Ward and Stake Clerks, experts at MLS from wards and stakes in Utah, but also surrounding areas, maybe some with large boundaries with hours to drive end to end. The perspective would be refreshing I think. Maybe this already happens, but in my experience, a top-down, here's what I'm giving you approach, rather than a bottom-up, what would you like to see approach seems a better thing.

I doubt there is a Stake Clerk in the church that would say... ya... develop it so that only ward clerks have access.

Although I sympathize and basically agree with all your (and aebrown's) points about why Stake Clerks need access for support and training, I'm going to defend their choice to leave it out of version 1.0. There are always many possible things that can go into a release, especially an initial release. Decisions have to be made. And usually the best decision for an initial release is to provide the very minimum that will be useful to someone. Generally this means it may not be useful to everyone (or sometimes even most people). But it does get at least some real users using it which can then provide feedback on what other features are really important (including, in this case, your feedback as a Stake Clerk).

So as valid as your points are, not every ward needs stake help so there will be a fair number of wards that can start using it. And you may be right that no Stake Clerk would say to develop it with only ward level access, but I'm sure there are quite a few ward clerks who would say, "Yes, give it to me sooner even if the Stake Clerk can't help me yet." :)

As I've thought about this issue though, I'm not sure the right way to address the support and training issue is to have every application have to worry about providing the stake clerks direct access to every bit of functionality. That adds a lot of complication.

I wonder if they couldn't do something like new.familysearch.org does where a user can log in as a 'helper' and then act as that other person. What if a ward clerk could go to ldsaccount.lds.org (or someplace) and generate a one-time 'token' (possibly with a expiration date). And then the stake clerk could also go to ldsaccount.lds.org (or someplace) and enter the ward clerks username and the one-time token. While the helper mode was in effect the stake clerk would appear to be the ward clerk online and would see exactly what he would see. When the stake clerk needs his own access again, there would have to be some way to revert back.

This would let the stake assist when necessary but would make sure it was coordinated with the ward clerk. If the stake clerk needs to learn about newly released functionality, he could work with a ward clerk to get temporary access to figure things out.

And, based on my understanding of how the church's single sign-on works, all this could be done on the authentication level. The individual applications wouldn't have to worry about these issues and every new application would support it from the start.
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AileneRHerrick
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#19

Post by AileneRHerrick »

eblood66 wrote:I'm sure there are quite a few ward clerks who would say, "Yes, give it to me sooner even if the Stake Clerk can't help me yet." :)
That's me! As a ward website administrator, it has been frustrating to me to have little to no control over the Priesthood/Relief Society Schedule, especially since the Relief Society Secretary lets me know exactly what the schedule is.

Not to be a stick in the mud among all the other opinions voiced here, but I happen to be VERY happy that it came out on a ward level first. :D

It seems that Stake functionality will eventually be available, and I think the programmers are well aware of the need. So if we're all patient, we'll eventually get what we're asking for. :cool:
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johnshaw
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#20

Post by johnshaw »

I guess for my purposes, why not release it to the stake like any other unit, they are just another unit with roles/positions similar to Branch/Ward leadership. I can understand the complexities about a 'stake level' access that trickles down to the wards, but giving a Stake the ability to use the Lesson Scheduler for Stake Level classes being held, doesn't seem outside the realm of 'ease of initial release' and also allows the stake the ability to provide the training due to access granted and the same ability to create / play with the application.

What is so hard about providing a roadmap to your end users

Initial Release targets Wards and Branches, we made this decision..... beta anticipated 02/2012 - anticipated rollout-Q1 2012
Further Releases will target a stake's ability to override, ...... beta anticipated 06/2012 - anticipated rollout-Q3 2012

It would eliminate a lot of discussion, or at least target the discussion in effective areas.
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