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Home Teaching/ Visiting Teaching Organizer

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:01 pm
by JDKinkle
I am currently serving in an Elder Quorum Presidency and one of the most time consuming we have to do is Home Teaching assignments. To be perfectly honestly we are doing it mostly through google docs to keep track of Companionships and District Leaders.
We do end up putting it in MLS but only once we have worked out the assignments.

Right now I am working on a drag and drop application to make the organizing a lot easier. The program ideally would be usable so the assignments could be uploaded to MLS.

It is similar to the idea how many mission presidents uses magnets to make assignments because it easier to keep track of them that way. In fact, it could be made to do home teaching, visiting teaching, missionary companionships or even general callings within a ward.

Rather than having to write down the names, double checking to make sure each family has one and only one home teaching you could avoid that. Each hometeacher/family would have one icon that you would drag around as needed. You would easily be able to check who hadn't been assigned.

My questions are the following-

How useful would this be?/Would the church be interested in using it?

What problems could you foresee in it's creation?

Would it be more helpful as a application used on a computer or a web app?

Is something like this already being made?

I attached just a screen shot of the rough draft. If you look at the picture the idea would be to drag the buttons from the right to the left in "droppable" areas.
HTscreenshot.JPG
(96.66 KiB) Downloaded 772 times
Give me some feedback please! Respond here on the forum or email me at danny.c.king@gmail.com with any questions, Thanks!

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:29 pm
by kisaac
Welcome to the forum! Yes, it would be immensely useful, and HT / VT organization and reporting is perhaps one of the top requests for inclusion in LDS.org features. A search on "home teaching" certainly will give you many threads. Many have suggested a graphical representation for HT and for callings, like the old magnet boards we remember. We are told something is "in the works" for HT and VT, but most of us here are members like yourself, trying to learn more and help others use technology, so I don't think any of us know the answers. Some developers certainly are active here, but details are sketchy. One of the problems of doing something like this yourself is abiding by all the policies involved, like protection of sensitive data when you are talking about using systems other than MLS in your clerks office or LDS server resources, or privacy laws locally and abroad.

Does that help at all?

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:34 pm
by JDKinkle
Yes kisaac, that does help. I would obviously like it to work within LDS.org or be an application that one could use in the clerks office.

If someone is already working on it, I would love to get involved or try to help.

Do you know what I could do to get involved?

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:42 pm
by kisaac

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:42 pm
by JDKinkle
It seems that it has become an internal project. I would still love to get involved.


https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Talk:HT/VT_Design_Comps

Anyone know who to contact?

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 6:34 pm
by kirtkennedy
There is a 3rd party Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching reporting tool that has been developed and used in many wards in the Church. It is called Return and Report.
Take a look
returnandreport.org

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:02 pm
by targinosilveira
Hello Kisaac,

it's very userfull for everyone in every place, I'm here in Brazil thinking to do some thing like this.

I think that this system should be on the WEB App, than be available on the lds.org.

How can I help to develop it ?

Regards,

Targino Silveira