Missionary Dinner Calendar
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2014 4:04 pm
Hello all. I would like to ask for some community feedback on a tool I built to help coordinate missionary dinner appointments.
http://demo.missionarydinnercalendar.com
I love the features available with the official church calendar on LDS.org, but the problem I had was that members in general can not sign up for appointments without going through a calendar administrator. I wanted to setup a simple site that could work as a stand-alone replacement to the common paper calendars that get passed in many wards, or in conjunction with a traditional paper calendar for members who are not technology inclined.
Here is how our ward plans to use it:
There are 2 account types for a unit. A general ward membership account which is protected by a shared password. The password is freely shared among ward members, investigators or anyone else interested in feeding the missionaries. The password also appears at the top of the printed calendar and in emails sent regarding missionary meals.
This password lets you see what days are available and sign up for an appointment but does not let you see who has signed up for other to protect those who may not want their name appearing online.
The second account is for administrators and is intended to be shared with Ward Mission Leaders, Asst Ward Mission Leaders, Missionary Meal Coordinators, Bishoprics etc.. and allows those individuals to:
Retrieve appointments for the month
Change or remove names from the calendar
Print or save a PDF of the calendar for circulation at church.
Change the member password
Change the administrator password
Name the companionships serving in the unit (helpful for units with more than one set of missionaries)
Though the calendar is publicly available on the web, I have tried to follow the church policies regarding projects like this. No membership or other data from the church is used.
I have built and tested this to be friendly for phone, tablet and desktop use. Though I have not tested it on an android tablet yet.
The plan is to roll this first out to my ward, and work out any issues that might come up, then make it more widely available if there is interest.
There is one known issue that I have decided to live with because I can't see a great solution. I would welcome any input on it. If you pass the printed paper calendar at church and also have people signing up from their devices while at church there is the potential for collisions when the paper calendar is collected but someone already signed up for a particular day since the time the calendar was printed. There really isn't any way I can see around this without suspending online appointments during church hours but that seems counter productive. My hope is gradually to wean people off the paper calendar, or have them contact the WML/Meal Coordinator directly to make appointments.
Thanks!
http://demo.missionarydinnercalendar.com
I love the features available with the official church calendar on LDS.org, but the problem I had was that members in general can not sign up for appointments without going through a calendar administrator. I wanted to setup a simple site that could work as a stand-alone replacement to the common paper calendars that get passed in many wards, or in conjunction with a traditional paper calendar for members who are not technology inclined.
Here is how our ward plans to use it:
There are 2 account types for a unit. A general ward membership account which is protected by a shared password. The password is freely shared among ward members, investigators or anyone else interested in feeding the missionaries. The password also appears at the top of the printed calendar and in emails sent regarding missionary meals.
This password lets you see what days are available and sign up for an appointment but does not let you see who has signed up for other to protect those who may not want their name appearing online.
The second account is for administrators and is intended to be shared with Ward Mission Leaders, Asst Ward Mission Leaders, Missionary Meal Coordinators, Bishoprics etc.. and allows those individuals to:
Retrieve appointments for the month
Change or remove names from the calendar
Print or save a PDF of the calendar for circulation at church.
Change the member password
Change the administrator password
Name the companionships serving in the unit (helpful for units with more than one set of missionaries)
Though the calendar is publicly available on the web, I have tried to follow the church policies regarding projects like this. No membership or other data from the church is used.
I have built and tested this to be friendly for phone, tablet and desktop use. Though I have not tested it on an android tablet yet.
The plan is to roll this first out to my ward, and work out any issues that might come up, then make it more widely available if there is interest.
There is one known issue that I have decided to live with because I can't see a great solution. I would welcome any input on it. If you pass the printed paper calendar at church and also have people signing up from their devices while at church there is the potential for collisions when the paper calendar is collected but someone already signed up for a particular day since the time the calendar was printed. There really isn't any way I can see around this without suspending online appointments during church hours but that seems counter productive. My hope is gradually to wean people off the paper calendar, or have them contact the WML/Meal Coordinator directly to make appointments.
Thanks!